Quote:
Originally Posted by Jo S
This is assuming of course that they had their own faith to begin with.
From what I've seen many or I'd even say most generational LC members have lived their faith vicariously through parents and through a ministry having never developed an actual personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Why do they leave and become functional agnostics? Because they were always agnostic and just haven't had the space to realize it.
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Speaking as one such "functional agnostic" who was raised LC, I resent this line of thinking. While there's little room for doubt that this
may be the case for some, I can say wholeheartedly that I 100% believed until I reached my early 20s. At that point things began to wobble for me as I encountered other viewpoints and considered various critiques of the christian faith. But prior to that, and even for another 5 years or so afterward, I very much thought of myself as a believer, prayed, struggled with doubt, prayed more, met with brothers about my struggles, branched out into other christian authors...At that point in my life, I had plenty of space, too. It wasn't that people were forcing me to do anything.
I'm just saying, even if it is the case that some percentage of exLCers never believed on a personal level, assuming that to be the case for all or most of them robs them of their own journey. Which effectively means being robbed of the choice by overbearing parents on the front end, and being robbed of the experience by observers afterward who write you off as having been a phony all along. Because even though I absolutely agree in hindsight that I wasn't given a free choice, in the moment I nevertheless believed.