Today for the first time my mother asked me why I'd left the Christian church. I was deeply involved for a number of years and really did love the ideas and feelings it gave me. She sent me a letter and I sent back with this. It's the clearest and most level-headed way I had of telling her what happened and I figure it's safe to share with the INFJ's here.
Hey Mom,
Honestly? It was probably the people and the questions nobody would answer. Some people can take things like 'God works in mysterious ways' as an answer. I took it the same way you'd take a cop issuing a traffic ticket and then saying 'The law works in mysterious ways'. You'd want to know why and if enough people told you that 'This is how things are, just deal with it' then you'd start to get pretty angry.
I wanted to know lots of things and since then, I started finding answers to many of those questions but the information just wasn't there in the language of the bible to answer those questions. Christianity is a language. Like you wouldn't use Zulu to try to explain particle physics. The language just doesn't have words for it without making up a bunch of new ones nobody understands. It would be a lot harder to use that language than to use a language that's closer. Christianity has lots of good words for interacting with each other and for ideas like 'You are part of the universe' and 'Be kind to one another to make civilization operate'.
I like a lot of the ideas of the book but I always found preachers a little evil. I know evil is a powerful word and it implies a lot of things. Preachers are there to 'lead the flock'. Why couldn't people lead themselves? They've got the book. Nobody would ever tell me what qualified them to lead and everyone else to follow. I always wanted to put my hand up in Church and say 'Hey...that doesn't mesh with this other bit of the Bible. Is that a mis-translation or do you just not understand it?'
They all seemed to have some kind of political inclination and a leader in the spiritual who makes the spiritual political is making God into a thing of politics. I can think of no meaner or more base impulse of man than politics. They're dictating to people with an umbrella of God rather than letting God operate on people and the people make their own decisions. I know people are supposed to lead their own lives but not many of them do. Sad thing.
As for the book...I found too many versions. Translations which were flat out contradictory. I never knew which to take as real and I felt that if I couldn't take the whole as real that nobody could ever really tell me what was real in it and at that point I'd just be making it up as I went along. The whole idea of religion is learning from someone else about the nature of living and if you're just making it up, you're not learning from God. At least, I didn't feel like I was learning from God.
I could feel God sometimes. I felt the same thing a few years later on magic mushrooms, and again having sex with a person with whom I'm deeply compatible. It was the exact same emotion. I know it's purely subjective, but it was precisely the same. I'd pray and I'd feel God after a little while, like a warmth in my mind and a quietness in my heart. It was like experiencing the universe except without senses getting in the way and mucking things up.
Finding out the experience wasn't unique to one religion and that lots of people who've never even heard of Christ or Yaweh could experience that same said thing really took some of the significance out of what I believed when I was younger. My beliefs and feelings weren't special or unique anymore. Heck, anyone with the right mindset could find that place and touch those feelings and didn't have to jump through hoops like 'Go to church' or 'believe abortion is wrong' or 'don't be gay'.
I read some other holy books and none of them seemed to be any more 'right' or 'wrong' than the Bible. Okay, some of them were a bit retarded (Magic Mormon Underwear springs to mind) but...still.
These are the reasons I left. I never stopped looking for deeper meaning.
Love,
Chessie
Again, I love feedback.
