Drastic said:
Interesting. I've not heard someone say this before, though I've not often been in this type of discussion.
You had trouble believing in a creator, or a specific doctrine or? (if you don't mind my asking)
I had trouble believing in Christianity in general. I've tried for years, but it has never filled the void in my life as advertised. From this, I tried to figure out why, and from that, I have been able to articulate just why things don't sit right with me.
So, yeah, at first it never worked emotionally, despite my best efforts, so I tried to make it work logically.
That didn't work out so hot, either.
I'm going to post my background, so it's easily skippable if you don't give a toss (understandable).
Wall of text arriving in 3...2...
Ahem.
I was born into a religious family. Christian. Went to church every Sunday, big family get-togethers on Christmas and Easter, vacation Bible school every summer (sometimes more than once, to different churches), the whole shebang. I'd say it's the average amount of religious upbringing, if not a bit more...not fundamentalists, thank the Lord who I don't think actually exists, but religious. God made the universe, but he didn't necessarily do it in six days. Jesus was definitely divine. No questions were asked, we went and that was that.
The first blow to my beliefs was when my parents divorced. [Also, I was five.] How could this be with a God who loved me? I was in a small town, (about a hundred people at the time, if I recall correctly), and there wasn't much in the way of playmates. My older siblings usually had nothing to do with me, so my parents were essentially the cornerstone of my existence. Then they split up. To this day, I don't know why. But I was baffled. Usual questions you'd expect from a kid whose parents divorced, but with the added conflict that I actually paid attention in Sunday school. I had questions. How did this, this unfathomable event fit into God's plan for me? I doubt I phrased it exactly that way, but... the only answers I ever got amounted to "God works in mysterious ways." I didn't give up religion, though. I trusted all of the people who told me to put my faith in Jesus, because, well, I was still a child, and authority figures were right. They were authority figures, after all. I kept going to church.
[I remember one incident vividly...it was VBS, and they were doing some thing where they talked about what it took to be a Christian. We were to pray to God, and tell him we loved him and accepted him as our Savior, and then we would KNOW he was in our hearts. Something like that. After we did that, the pastor said "shut your eyes, and if anyone has any questions, raise your hand." I did so. "Okay, if you raised your hand, stay behind, but everyone else can go." They went to go play outside. I was the only one left with the preacher. I think they were playing freeze tag. "What's your question?" says he. I said something like, "How do I become a Christian?" Since I was still in elementary school, I was unable to articulate what I actually wanted to say, which was "Why don't I feel anything at all?"]
This pattern of talking about stuff I had no right to question continued. My mom switched churches, this time to a Church of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons, although the pedant in me would like to point out that they prefer "LDS"). I went for a few years. I was baptized when I was eight. About this time, I was told I should "bear my testimony", which is where any member of the church can come up and tell about how they know the church is true. I did so, but I sorta mumbled the last bit. They chalked it up to stage fright, but I didn't know the church was true at all. I was talking with the Elders at this point, asking why I couldn't have tea, little stuff like that, mostly because I lacked the courage to say "I don't believe."
So, all throughout junior high and high school, (after I moved to a bustling metropolis of 264,418 people) I tried. I read the Bible. I went to many different churches, trying to find one that felt right. I talked to preachers, pastors, and padres. When I was asked to join the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in high school, I said, "I'm not an athlete, sorry", and changed the subject. I don't think they caught on, since they kept asking. I started calling myself a Pastafarian so that they would think I was joking around about not being Christian.
When we studied Paradise Lost in high school, it was taught by a woman who believes every word of the Bible is literally true. Good person, and usually a good teacher, but we had to read Genesis in class. In my public school. (I hear she's teaching a Bible class soon, but that's another thread altogether.) Anyway, she was real big on debate in the classroom. That was an interesting experience, I guess you could say. Usually, it was not so much about Milton and mostly about the tenets of Christianity. There were some gems there, let me tell you. That's where I learned that religion doesn't have to do with the supernatural, for one. I had my first big fight with the girl I was dating at the time (the girl who made me happy to be alive for the first time that I could remember, love of my life and everything that was right in the world, but that's another thread etc.) over that class. If I recall correctly, I took the position that God was responsible for evil, and she said evil is the absence of God, and I said God is everywhere, and also he made the world as it is, and also...but that's beside the point.
The point, I think, was explaining the claim that I tried, but I still don't believe. This is sappy, and probably will be dismissed as the hormone-driven claim of a teenager, but to put it simply, if I couldn't believe for her, I was unable to believe.
I've looked around since then, continued my spiritual journey, so to speak, and it's only once I realized that it was okay to be an atheist did I start feeling better about the whole thing. At any time in high school, I could have just said, "Nah, man, I'm not a Christian." The atmosphere, though, and the fact that everyone else I knew (again, except for three people) was Christian made me afraid to, though. That's one of the things that led to me giving up altogether. That, and the treatment of homosexuality by people who were supposed to be loving their neighbor. That was a big one. Um. There's more, and I could go on, but I've already typed up a pretty sizable exposition.
[/wall of text]
Yeah. I tried to believe. It didn't work.
