Quote:
Originally Posted by Trapped
ExChurchKid, would you be willing to say more about your experience here? i.e. what is your view of God, how did you arrive at that conclusion, etc?
I'm asking because as a church kid who was saved in the local church, my salvation experience was this:
1. got saved
2. hated God for the next few decades
3. only recently found out that the local church preaches about a "god" that is not of the Bible, and am starting to see there is good evidence He 1) exists, and 2) is totally different from what the local church teaches.
I felt like God had me in a straightjacket for years and years as He gleefully watched me suffer in distress, but that was the local church tentacles choking me, while the real creator God was slowly getting me out of the local church so I could hear about Him in the very place I had been told He wasn't - in "evil Christianity".
Anyway, my purpose isn't to preach at you or evangelize, but just to hear some of your thoughts, experiences, conclusions, because I think a lot of church kids have some very intense feelings about God, understandably so, and I also think it's a good thing to be able to get those feelings/thoughts out, if you are comfortable to.
I would just ask any others reading on this thread not to try to "correct" anything ExChurchkid says in response, if she responds to my question, but just to listen and understand.
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Hey Trapped,
That's a really insightful question, thanks for asking. I definitely feel a lot of the same things you're describing, although I don't have a problem with Christianity in general. I've been to a few Catholic masses and they're boring and somewhat pointless in my opinion, but they don't make me angry. Same for a Methodist funeral I went to. I just don't like having religion or God shoved in my face. I cant stand listening to the type of praying or pray-reading or calling on the name of the Lord that happens in an LC. The terminology they use still gets to me. I'd say I'm agnostic at the moment, but for some reason I still read my Bible every night (no footnotes ugh), and I pray in my head in the morning sometimes while I'm in the shower or whatever. Mostly what I need from God right now, if he even cares, is to fix the damage. Even if the LCs got everything crazy wrong, I still tried for 2 decades to be a good Christian. I think that should count for something, but I'm left with anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and a severe lack of close family and friends. It really grinds my gears when someone talks to me in a way that attributes beliefs to me that I don't agree with.