Still waiting to see how Joshua is doing!

Thanks to those who have written on this blog this year! I feel that the “de-conversion” can be a process of getting to know one’s self, just as Joshua stated.
It’s often thought of as someone making a huge leap from a life of, hmmmmm, resisting our sinful nature, to becoming a “slave” to that same nature.
De-conversion is not always that obvious.

The friend I mentioned seems to be doing fine. What I’m troubled with, is I saw subtle hints that my friend was struggling, and he didn’t talk about it to me. I think about the times any of us are in the right place at the right time to give encouragement…

My prayer life and personal relationship with Christ is good. A portion of that spiritual health is due to overhearing a mature adult say to another mature adult, “If you have doubts about your christian faith, go to God with that. Ask Him to help you with your unbelief!” Wow! I had (for years) mistakenly thought that my insecurities were sinful in itself and I had no chance of living a guilt-free life if I was striving to be Christ-like.

enough said, for now

Thanks for sharing your experiences.
I wish all of the best to you in your journey out of abusive religion.
I’ve been there & sometimes it is not easy. But I’d rather
be free, than with a group of people whose relationship
with me was sadly VERY conditional.
When I finally realized it, it was devastating. But I am glad
I saw IT, better late than never. I’m out now & though I’ve had some rough times, I have no regret whatsoever leaving that abusive & controlling environment.

I hope you keep moving forward & all of the best to you.

I found your post by putting in “Christian friend suddenly rejects Christ” in my laptops search engine.

Thank You for your honesty and thought-provoking comments. You have reassured me this evening to not be so “worried” about my friend.

I too, rejected Christ approx. 28 years ago. I am
now “back” with Christ personally, without all the social “hoopla”. People find this odd, as the Bible says for us to not neglect meeting with others of our faith.

The biggest thing for me is striving to NOT live for man’s approval. To me, if someone points out something in the Bible to remind me of my errors, just search a little farther and I can find something there to support my “error”.

For everything there is a season.

I am in no way mocking the Bible.

It helps me to remember that the Bible says that the apostles argued among themselves on who was Jesus’ favorite. Lol.

Josh, I would like to know how You are doing?

Thanks!

“You cannot judge a religion by those that fail to practice it”

A Christian is required to officially be charitable to all, and those that are not are not practicing true Christianity. Of course, no one is perfect, but the ideal is not found wanting.

A philosophy’s atheism consists less in denying God than in not finding a place for Him

The death of God is an interesting opinion, but one that does not affect God

It is not the origin of religions, or their cause, which requires explanation, but rather the cause and origin of their eclipse and neglect.

I know within that love will probably always be a desire to pull me back to orthodox Christianity (I no longer claim a typical evangelical salvation doctrine whatsoever), but the response has still largely been ‘I am still your friend regardless.’ Which is great.

I was thinking today how disturbing it is that people say things like “I wouldn’t be able to get through this if it weren’t for God” or “I wouldn’t be passionate about serving the poor if it weren’t for God,” because if your concern for fellow human beings depends on the existence of something entirely unprovable, I imagine your moral compass is not well-made. Caring for others, including friendships, should not be because “Jesus said so.” That Jesus says so is great, but loving other human beings should not be dependent on a religious background (and, from the number of truly conscientious agnostics and atheists I know, it obviously isn’t).

About a month after writing this article I reached a point where I hit a wall and realized that I needed to cut off as many of my Christian friends as I could for a temporary period… just to heal. It helped immensely. That worked for me a lot, and forced me to search out new friendships among those outside the fold. And yes, meetup.com was involved in that process

After writing this article… I think, though, that for me I began to realize that in all honesty, I didn’t know myself. I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know what I liked or where I was going. I was never allowed to really like myself and what I liked – it was all to be submitted to that Yahweh character. I had never explored my sexuality or… well… really anything related to what I personally wanted.

That lead me through a period of, well, floundering, which included not knowing what kind of friends I wanted, who the hell I would want to date… that in many ways put me in a vulnerable spot. I made some mistakes, but thankfully I can just laugh at myself now instead of feeling guilt or condemnation for not having my life perfect.

You are going to have fun, I guarantee it. I’m not sure how involved you were in the church, but it sounds like maybe a lot. I’m not sure where you are at, but give yourself lots and lots and lots of mercy-room during the transition. Things are hard enough without you also being hard on yourself. There is no longer a standard of perfection you are trying to achieve, so just let yourself go and be you… remembering that your smarts are what keep you safe in your relationships.

I wish you the best!

Wow, Josh, I can SO relate to this! Now that I am no longer a Christian I am really struggling with feeling my relationships are missing something. I was so used to relationships being about God and deep spiritual issues. So in addition to losing Jesus and God, I feel like I’ve lost friendship too, even with the friends I currently have. UGH. Losing faith is hard.

Of course, the Christian’s answer would be that I just need to choose faith again to start experience all of those benefits. They don’t seem to get it. I know all the verses, the arguments for God and all that. But the faith is gone, and “choosing” it to get some kind of benefits would be a lie.

I do admit that I am looking forward to developing some “normal” friendships and have started working on it. Since it can be hard to meet people when you’re used to having social networks in church, I looked at meetup.com and found some local meetup groups. Different kinds of people, hanging out in a group, just having fun…imagine.