Why Im not a Christian I have been raised as a Christian my entire life.

My parents were saved and baptized into the church when I was seven. I dont have many memories before that, so as long as I can remember I was in church, absorbing all the teachings like young minds are prone to do. As with most people, for a certain portion of my life I simply believed what my parents believed without understanding it fully. This is not a fault or wrong, it is natural. Everyone is influenced and taught by their parents. In my teenage years I started to think for myself, examining what I believed, forming my own faith. Again, this is normal. Most people go through a similar phase at a similar time. I thought that I made my faith my own at this time, but in retrospect it was still mostly that of those around me. I did read the bible, I did compare other religions, but it was still in the safe confines of my parents guidance and teaching. The books I read about other ways of thinking were not written by adherents of those points of view, rather they were written by Christians critiquing those thoughts. I thought I had done my homework and made the correct decision in following Christ. I didnt understand everything in the biblethere were many things that didnt make sensebut I assumed it was due to my lack of understanding. After all, Gods ways are unfathomable for our feeble minds. I still treated the bible like I had been taughtit was holy, above criticism. Then everything changed. I went to college, and like most people it was in college that the real exposure to outside influences happened. It is not a coincidence that the majority of people who leave the faith they have been raised withwhether that is Christianity, Islam, or something elsedo so in college. It is in college where many of us hear for the first time apposing points of view from the people that actually hold those points of view. It is during this time that professors challenge us to challenge everything, breaking taboos, discussing things that we werent allowed to discuss, or were too afraid to consider. Ironically, my parents had me go to a Christian school to try to avoid this, but it was there that it happened anyway. First my very Christian science teacher said that he did not believe in a young earth. This was something that I had been taught was a prerequisite to be a good Christian, and yet here was a man who was still a Christian telling me that the geological record simply does not support a earth that is 6000 years old. At first I simply dismissed him. I had read lots of books proving the age of the earth. This guy had to be wrong. And yet Then I took a class that the professor opened by challenging usmeto dismantle our worldview. I took the challenge. Nothing was sacred in this class, nothing of limits. The bible? Read it like any other book written by men. The age of the earth? I went and reread the science supporting a young earth, and then read current mainstream science on it. Slowly, but surely, thought by thought, my faith eroded. It turned out that the science supporting a young earth was all either twenty years outdated, or simply false. Genesis became nothing more than a creation myth like so many other cultures myths, conveying a deeper truth for adherents, but not actually true. If Genesis was nothing more than myth, then what about the rest of the bible? I had never considered that the bible could be wrong. I had read it, studied it, and compared it to other religions holy books, but always with the base assumption that it was the source of absolute truth. I stripped that taboo away, and began pulling on that little thread in my mind. Those little nagging incongruities suddenly made sense. Men wrote the different sections, and they had different views. Men are not infallible. I didnt throw the bible away overnightin fact I still use it as there are many wise things in itbut instead of reading it blindly I was using reason to determine if it was true. Love your enemy, treat others like you want to be treated, and patience

is a virtue were deemed as valid. All of these things were shared by other religions, and humanity in general. Reason said they are valid. The parts where God condoned mass killings of whole cities just because they didnt believe in him didnt make the cut. My own morals told me that this was wrong, but this presented a conundrum. There were two options I could take to deal with this. Either God didnt really say those things and the leaders of that time were just using religion as a means of controlling people, or God did say those things, making me more moral than God. The latter option means the immediate demotion of God from almighty deity to nothing. If my morals are better than Gods morals then he isnt God. He is a god just like Marduk or Baal or so many other tribal gods. The former option poses its own problems. If I cant trust what the bible says God is like, how do I know what God is like? Science cant tell us since he isnt observable. In the end he becomes nothing more than an idea. Is there a god? I dont know. What is he like if there is a god? I dont know that either. Eventually the demands for absolute faith and the banishment of doubt within Christianity became untenable for me. All I had was doubt. At first I found solace in the so called emergent church, which is basically postmodern Christianity. I still was willing to make the leap of faith and believehad to believethat there was a God. I could doubt his existence, but that is what faith is after all, belief in the face of doubt. It was the first real faith I ever had. I had to believe since it was too much for me to imagine a world without him giving reason to living, but God wasnt the God of the bible anymore, he was my God. He no longer condemned homosexuality, abortion, family planning, or any number of things that I no longer felt were wrong. This was only a stepping stone for me to eventually become truly agnostic. My logical brain kept following this train of thinking until I came to the conclusion that I no longer needed a God. In reality I was the one deciding what was right and wrong using reason. There may or may not be a god, but even if there is he doesnt need me to believe in him to exist, and I dont need him to live my life. Thus, all pretenses of Christianity were dropped. Some may say that morals based on mans own whims instead of coming from the almighty is dangerous, but I disagree. For one, my morals arent based on whims. They are based on the society, and culture I live in, as well as the situation at hand, and my own reason, experiences, and learning. My morals are fluid, changing, in flux, like everyones, including those that claim morality comes from God. The morals they claim are based on the same things. They no longer stone people for sins, because our culture condemns that. In fact most western Christians would find it abhorrent to hear of a woman being stoned for adultery in an Islamic countrywhich does happenand yet that very same thing is in their own bible. Christians dont even have the same morals as their own holy book. I choose to drop the pretense and take responsibility for my own actions instead of depending on a voice in the sky to tell me whats right and wrong. Many Christians seem to think that without God the only other option is nihilism. God is the one that gives them meaning and a reason to live, and there is nothing without him. At first glance this may be so. If there is no god and were here by chance then nothing really matters since we all die and become nothing. If what we are living for is some reward in another life then sure, life without god is meaningless, but there is this life, and this life is full of rewards of its own that are worth living for. I choose to live for the common good, rising above the seeming meaninglessness, infusing my own life with meaning myself, living to make those around me better, leaving the world when I die a better place for those who come after. Nihilism is far from the only option.

No one will probably ever read this, but I dont really get the chance to ever say these things and express my point of view. To do so with my parents would result in hurt feelings, and bitter words. They blame themselves for my lack of faith, but this couldnt be further from the truth. I did not turn away because I witnessed hypocrisy in other Christians as some people do. I saw nothing but the best of what Christians can be in my parents, but thats not enough for me to claim the same faiththere are billions of good people that are not Christians. As for expressing myself to others besides my parents, I always seem to find a reason not to speak up. The topic of philosophy, and theology doesnt really come up that often in casual conversation anyway. This then is for me, putting in words what I believe. This is my creed: I am responsible for recognizing the things beyond my control, choosing to react to those things, and rising above the apparent meaninglessness by striving to better myself and the world Im in. This is me.