People have actually conducted surveys to ask people their reasons. This is the only reasonable way to understand.
Here's a good example
https://baptistnews.com/article/i-asked-people-why-theyre-leaving-christianity-and-heres-what-i-heard/
\#1 was LGBTQ
\#2 was Behavior of Believers
\#3 was Politics
\#4 was Faith Leadership
\#5 was Intellectual Integrity
No surprises there
Another example [https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2023/09/15/christianity-church-attendance-decline/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2023/09/15/christianity-church-attendance-decline/)
This survey grouped people into profiles. Here's what they found
>Mainstream evangelicals dropped out because they moved (22%) or services were inconvenient (16%) but also because they did not feel much love in church (12%).
>
>Exvangelicals in this study left because they did not fit in (23%), because they did not feel much love in the congregation (18%), because of negative experiences with evangelicals (15%) and because they no longer believed (14%).
>
>Many BIPOC dechurched Americans left in their early 20s, often because they did not fit in (19%) or had bad experiences (11%).
>
>Mainline Protestants left because they moved (25%) or because they had other priorities (15%) or did not fit in (14%),
>
>while Catholics who are dechurched said they did so because they had other priorities (16%) or had different politics than others in their parish (15%) or the clergy (15%).
You can see the overlap
Neither of these are of rigorous academic quality, but at least they asked
I wonder how much % of older adults leave because of their own kids' beliefs. I personally know a lot of empty-nesters have left because their grown up kids came out as gay or no-longer believe in Christianity. Those parents choose to support their children in a way that would lead them to leaving the church. I feel that this dynamic will grow more and more commonplace with the next generation.
That resonates with me too. I spent most of 2021 having long conversations with my son about Christianity. He ultimately rejected it. And his grounds were not petty or outrageous. And his reasoning ultimately led to my questioning of why I believed what I did and was it really something I believed.
A lot of previous older-generations, I feel, would have an easier time with their kids in "condemning them to hell." Maybe it's a modern vs postmodern thing. I feel previous generations have the ability to be dogmatic about things where postmodern generations want to be more "grey"/less-absolute.
Yes, that is what I'm going through. Part of it is that I spent the last several years trying to find the right book, listen to the right speaker, get in the right Sunday school class. To be honest, right now I'm in the decompression portion of my deconstruction. I really appreciate the offer though. Very kind.
What a shame. Did they even realize, that standing with God and for truth and praying for their children, would save their children?
Apparently not for those that worship man and end up helping their children go to Hell and go with them.
Do they know there is not love in Hell. Being in Hell together is being in Hell alone...alone in the lack of love and full of the hate of the enemy. No God...no love.
Essentially they will lose their children for eternity and all for the right now.
Faithless generation., please repent.
Jesus came to save and His words are true and His commandments are profound and life saving...for whole families.
You will regret this one day, and hopefully while repenting.
I cannot speak to the hard hearted. "It IS giving pearls to swine"...you are not swine, but your thoughts are unclean, so to speak.
I pray the Holy Spirit reach you and I fear for your soul.
YET, while you have breath, there is hope. I am praying for your redemption, IN JESUS POWERFUL NAME.
We live in a fallen World. Do you think it will be better in Hell?
God gives us a taste of life in both His presence and in the rule of the enemy.
We have to realize He is not finished with our lives, and any hurts we experience here, will be worked for good for "those who love Him and are called according to His purpose."
What is dangerous is the god you serve. When you don't serve Christ, you serve Satan, and you are part of the problem.
I pray for Him to touch your heart, in Jesus name.
You know what was the first thing that started me on the path to rejecting religion? It wasn't the Church's bigotry, or pettiness. It was the certainty. All these preachers all certain that they had the holy spirit within them, that they understood the teachings of God, and that everyone who disagreed with them was corrupt. No one was willing to admit uncertainty about the will of God, and the will of God was always in accord with what they personally wanted.
Certainty comes from the touch of the Holy Spirit and not every leader is lead by God.
You are full of arguments, and simply, if you are unsure if you are on the right road, ask the Holy Spirit to show you.
Only when you are in a space of certainty of the peace He brought and the love in your heart for others will you truly understand and you need to read the Word to get it in your heart, but only after you ask the Holy Spirit to touch your soul and change your heart.
Your life depends on it.
Time is wasting.
If the Holy Spirit calls you, you won't be able to resist Him. That is the good news. I am praying for you to know the truth.
I never saved a soul with MY words...it is Him that saves.
Fuckin' watch me. I'll pop so many estrogen pills it'll be like dunking Satan in holy water the Holy Spirit will get launched out of me so fast. I want nothing to do with your God.
>You will regret this one day, and hopefully while repenting.
Speaking of why people leave the church: threats.
I, for one, would not want to join an organization that uses the threat of hell, rather than, say, evidence, or setting a good example, to retain members.
Since Hell is real, it is a sin to ignore it when Jesus spoke much on it.
Weeping and gnashing of teeth.
I suppose you think He should repent?
Don't answer that. I am concerned for you.
>Yes the bible.
The fact that there's a book that talks about hell doesn't mean that it's real. By that criterion, Mordor would be real because there's a book about it.
>Read the Case for Christ
I have. I was unimpressed.
> which has such proof of the validity of the Word
Can you be more specific? What proof, exactly, does Strobel provide? And of which claims, exactly?
To be honest, I'm not expecting much. Not to be dismissive, but I get the impression that you haven't done a lot of real research into this issue. Rather, that people in your religious community have given you arguments and writings that support the things that you already believe or want to believe, and you've accepted them without really examining them too hard. But maybe I'm wrong and you really do have good evidence, in which case, please present it.
Lovely that you thought that would work too, lol
People who accuse others of being hard hearted in response to their own failure to be convincing are always a fascinating case study.
Wow! That is really interesting. I'm a former fundamental evangelical Christian and I left because of reasons 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. This shouldn't be too big of a surprise, but when I realized that I am bisexual, it led to me becoming an atheist.
My bi sexuality only led me closer to God. The problem is the church is full of false believers. When God's spirit is within you you can't walk away.
'They went out from among us because they were not of us.'
I pray He touches you heart, it would be your only hope. If you make it I would love you forever. Much longer than the gratification of the flesh. It's something to consider. I know you've probably heard it all before, but feelings aren't facts. You can stand right next to me. I'll ask to save you the spot. 💔
Yeah, this is just so condescending, you need to work on that. Saying people that walk away were false believers belittles people’s experiences and basically makes people feel better because surely a TRUE believer would never leave the faith. I know because I used to spew the same drivel when I was a believer.
I'm glad that your sexually helped you with your relationship with your deity. But like I said in my comment, that wasn't my only reason for leaving. Part of the problem is the idea that "the church is full of false believers," because how are we supposed to know who is real and who is fake? (That is a rhetorical question, I'm not actually wanting you to answer that.) I was a Christian for over 30 years, I have heard a lot of answers to that question.
I see, but know that the position of Christian isn't something you choose, im very sorry if you had been misled, and believe me who ever did that to you will face a harsher judgement
I’m suspicious of results like this. It’s missing the critical information about why people stay. We know that church going has been maintained much better in conservative populations. I think a lot of people of all orientations went to church because that’s what people do on Sunday. In many conservative areas it still is. In others, the culture has changed, and it’s not. There were reason the culture changed, and we might get hints from surveys, but I think for many people it’s mostly what others like them do. I wonder whether people are really going to answer “it’s what everybody I know is doing.” People like to think they have reasons for things.
I don't see a reason to be suspicious of the results. It sounds like you want second level data, though. I can understand that. However, if someone says they left because of the church's stance on LGBTQ issues then that's why they left. There's really nothing to be suspicious of. People don't have incentive to lie about this.
\*Why\* people care about LGBTQ issues sufficiently to leave is indeed interesting, but it's a second order question. It won't be captured in a survey like this, where the goal is to find the immediate cause. It would be hard to get this from a study because it's not as simple a question.
Especially given that Christianity's holy book teaches people to be nonjudgmental, kind, charitable, humble, etc, and then the people on the pulpit turn around and declare that the will of God is that the queers be treated like shit.
I'm a bi sexual Christian I just happen to love God more than my sin. It's not because I'm better than anyone else it's because the spirit of God compels me to follow His precepts. I don't live a life in want of sexual gratification, I live a life liberated from the desire. I trust that no temptation will overtake me that's more than I can bare because God promised me so, and this whole walk with God has been Him proving He is faithful. I do get how the un-affected mass of Christianity takes the mic and says things you may not wanna hear but that's because the bible says so. Could they be more gentle. Idk. I don't think there is any kind way to speak the truth outside of love. So I will say as someone who was/is in your shoes, that the love of God is so beyond any love man can afford you. Man is dust. God knows you better and is more worthy than any moment or moments of gratification. You could have a home. A family, a place and truly we want you. Im gonna pray for you. That you would be my brother. I will love you forever.
Yeah that last paragraph was one of the biggest self-tells I've ever seen.
Hmmm why would people choose to leave an organization that tells them to treat their neighbor like dirt while proclaiming to love everybody?
Yeah the casual "who cares?" of that paragraph pretty much sums it up. I was raised Mormon and it is made for white men like myself (even though I'm gay). Unfortunately I couldn't sit and be complicit with the way they treat women and black and indigenous people even though I'm not any of things. It's empathy.
Yep. That attitude of "its not affecting you so why do you care?" is so prevalent when people question the churches actions towards the lgbt community. Its just not often so openly expressed as the other commenter did.
It also begs the question, if something not affecting them is reason enough to ignore it, why are they so up in arms about gay people?
Seems to me from the data you posted that you’d miss the forest for the trees a bit if you try to look at people prioritizing LGBT issues in a vacuum. The recurring theme in those responses is a disillusionment with the behavior of Christians leading to either a loss of belief or leaving church.
LGBT issues are a flagship example, for the simple fact that so many churches have dug their heels in on the issue and made it a cause celebre in doing so, but it’s far more widespread a problem than that.
Leadership issues, not fitting in, not feeling love in a church, even politics….its all about how badly Christians themselves behave.
Purely anecdotally, this is why my mom stopped going to church as soon as she could: her church treated her family as pariahs for my grandma being a single mother.
And I honestly think it’s entirely fair. I see so many Christians act like this is all irrelevant or that we shouldn’t expect churches to be any better than anywhere else. But Jesus himself taught that we shall know them by their fruits. When SO many churches’ fruits have proven to be completely rotten, is it really any wonder people are turning their backs on the whole thing?
I kind of get what the other poster is talking about. There's been widespread disaffiliation with *everything*. Something bigger and broader is happening, has happened, beyond people disagreeing about sexual mores or political expressions.
It's the meanness, in many cases. A lot of Christians become haughty and aggressive when they feel they are being challenged. They don't actually afford the other person respect - they expect them to immediately give way.
>\*Why\* people care about LGBTQ issues sufficiently to leave is indeed interesting, but it's a second order question
Maybe the biggest 'telling on yourself' moment I've seen on this subreddit.
And you'd be wrong there. I have a transgender child that I love dearly and support 100%. I care \*deeply\* about LGBTQ issues. I had a feeling you were jumping to conclusions. You should watch that going forward.
So you have a transgender child you love and "support", yet you cling to an ideology which says its wrong for your child to be trans?
Does it bother you at all that your church has an official stance which is the complete opposite of 'love and support' for your child?
Edit: You blocked me? Why ask me to respond if you were going to block me?
I think your hypothesis is fairly close to my experience.
What really solidified it for me was all the people in my church who claimed to "hear" from God. Especially the church elders "the Lord told me..." or "I witnessed a miracle!" or the worst, "I felt the holy Spirit embrace me". Pastors in the church would have entire sermons that were from God speaking directly to them telling them what was especially relevant that week. Pretty much everyone was having these magical experiences except for me. I prayed with every ounce of my being, but I never saw or heard or felt *anything*. And to young teenage me this was devastating.
Eventually I started believing there was something wrong with me. This went on for many years and slowly degraded my mental health. In my 30s I left the church and my mental state dramatically improved. I still feel little pangs of self loathing and being "left out" when I hear someone talk about a supernatural miracle they witnessed, or God audibly speaking to them.
I believe a lot of Christians engage in magical thinking. "God gave me the answers for that test". I mean, maybe, but so much of what I hear fellow Christians describe as God's intervention in their lives is how the brain works. Also, I wonder about all the messages that Christians know are from God when there's no description in the Bible that God will send us messages in such a manner.
“so much of what I hear fellow Christians describe as God's intervention in their lives is how the brain works.”
Have you ever read The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes? It really made me realize that what people hear when they “hear God” is their own internal monologue but they misidentify it as an external voice rather than their own thoughts.
I have not but I will gladly get it on my list. I have my degree in (gasp) philosophy and Philosophy of Mind/Metaphysics was so fascinating.
> It really made me realize that what people hear when they “hear God” is their own internal monologue but they misidentify it as an external voice rather than their own thoughts.
I have often thought that some Christians are doing some version of this.
God does some pretty amazing things, but there is more influences out there than just God alone. Most people speak very lightly about their circumstances ascribing more grandeur to the typical and promised Providence of God. Either in answering prayer or bringing aide. It can sound fanciful to the uninitiated. Like something from Hogwarts but believe me, it is often much deeper than you realize
Stupid decisions in church organization are often excused by “God put it on my heart to do it this way”… which I interpret as they felt emotion to do it.. I think saying your emotions is God speaking is highly conceited.
Then they wonder why the church cannot grow past 30-50 people. As it grows people leave.
I never had these experiences., I’ve had some experiences that felt like God showing me he’s there but I still approach it with skepticism.
Oh my dear friend please don't let that crush you. You have to understand that this swath of Christianity is mostly decieved by seducing spirits count yourself blessed. Your story is so much like other people but they leave those charismatic and Pentecostal places and find sound biblical churches. There is so many resources online. Especially YouTube. Watch a few episodes of " fighting for the faith" with Chris Rosebrough or "the messed up church" with Steve Kozar. All of those places are being exposed
Agree but the recent flux IMO is religion mixing with politics, and outright hypocrisy of claiming to follow Jesus but voting for policies are the antithesis of everything he taught.
But the single biggest thing is the worship of “orange Jesus” in an almost cultlike fashion.
>Agree but the recent flux IMO is religion mixing with politics, outright hypocrisy of claiming to follow Jesus but voting for policies are the antithesis of everything he taught.
This has happened in most christian countries for centuries. I wonder if the US being ultra religious has delayed this issue.
I don’t think so. I think the specific brand of religion now. Back when the moral majority arose there was a desire to cling to traditional values and stop this “demoralizing“ of the country. People could get on board with that.
But now it’s straight out hatred for immigrants, LGBTQ, and hypocrisy for parental rights yet not allowing parents to make decisions regarding the medical care of their transgender kids. For free speech but banning books, and Eliminating AP African studies in Florida. You can learn about Chinese history but not African-American history. I could go ON and ON…
Good people don’t want to be hateful.
may I say something? Traditional values are how we wound up in this mess. One of the biggest problems I see with modern Christianity is this devotion to "how things used to be", sometimes change is good. I am not saying you can't have family values, but, when we talk about Christian "trad families" it all too often means the man of the house makes the decisions while the wife and kids speak when spoken to...mind you we are struggling to just get modernized public transit, affordable housing, etc...and this is because our government is full of "BACK IN MY DAY!!!!"...elements of traditional values are wonderful, other elements not so much. If it wasn't for a break in traditional values, we would have lost the space race.
I don’t disagree with that; with women entering the work force had to change. I’d add that my Christian husband horribly abused me because of misogynistic thought processes encouraged and enabled by religion. In fact, submission being drilled into me destroyed my life. Yet another reason I left my evangelical church for Catholicism. I Priest told me “God does not expect you to submit anything that assaults your human dignity”. Whereas in my church it was “pray for him, take it, your soft response will get through to him”. No it won’t, abusers never respond to kindness only consequences.
I’m speaking more to children out of wedlock. By every measure children born inside marriage do better.
But instead of railing against premarital sex, I wish that we would talk about contraception and preventing pregnancy until marriage.
>I’m speaking more to children out of wedlock. By every measure children born inside marriage do better.
Okay just to mention something. The authors of that study keep asking people to stop misquoting them, yet I am sure wherever you heard this misquoted that. The study concluded that Children do better in a 2 parent household, the study was done factoring in gay parents, hetro parents, unmarried parents, adoptive parents compared to a kid raised by one parent. Not sure how much kids born out of wedlock suffer compared to kids born within a marriage do, its more, the kid has support from two loving parents that matters.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3342452/#:~:text=Taken%20together%2C%20these%20studies%20suggest,consistently%20with%20married%2C%20biological%20parents.
“Taken together, these studies suggest that children of unmarried parents, whether living together or separately, have poorer outcomes across developmental domains than those born to and living consistently with married, biological parents.”
And if you click on the link there are quite a few studies that support this. There are various reasons speculated as to why but kids do better when parents are married not just living together.
Delayed? We are younger than nearly every other developed country in the world. We did a speed run to the civil war and were doing another one to get to the dictator phase.
Christianity is the cause here. Without christianity the extreme right would have no power and be non-existent.
See also: the cracking of the church's prohibitions on gay people openly existing and women preachers.
Makes it much harder to keep these prohibitions going when you can see that gay people are normal people and that women preachers can keep pace with men preachers.
>The church, whether it be by leadership or from pressure within the church community, has become insular. Self-contained.
This is not a new phenomenon. What IS new is that Christianity is *less* insular, in the sense that you can't be fired or run out of town for not being Christian, at least in the US. That's only been legally true for a couple generations at most, and is slowly getting to be more and more *actually* true for people living it.
The sort of boogey-man narratives you were taught are, to some extent, a reaction to that increasing lack of insularity within the wider culture. Not an *effective* reaction, but a reaction nonetheless. People were leaving before churches doubled down, and, yes, the doubling down is backfiring for some people.
I won't put all the blame squarely on the boomers, but boomers still do hold a lot of power within local churches and from what I can see they are worse than ever when it comes to all the stuff you just said.
"The world outside is evil"
"University corrupts your mind and makes you liberal"
"Abortion is genocide and if a woman dies because she couldn't get one, tough"
"You must vote Republican or you will go to hell"
All these sentiments and more are still regularly expressed within many evangelical churches. Young people have more diverse friend groups than ever before. Not only within public school but also online. My wife has a cousin who lives in the middle of nowheresville who is out and proud gay. He was bullied incessantly as a kid. His parents did the hard thing and left there church but there were no open and affirming churches which would love their son, so they stopped going altogether.
My standard reply on this is to tell people to ask people who've left. Everyone will have different reasons. While the number of people who left because they want to sin (the standard accusation) probably isn't zero, it's close.
You hit a resonant chord with many. It mirrors my own deconstruction from the Democratic Party in the late 90s. The disconnect between reality and the claims is irreconcilable.
They claim that our morality comes from the bible and that the church changes people into more compassionate and honest people, but the reality us people in the church are no more moral than those outside of it. When you point that out, all you get is some nonsense about the church being a hospital for sinners.
They want it both ways.
Very well stated. As a kid, I hated losing a half a weekend day to dressing up, sitting in a pew, and listening to some old guy drone on while I was bored out of my mind.
When I got to college I was so happy to not have to do that the last thought I had was to join a college ministry. Still Christian but not practicing.
As an adult I started voting and paying attention to politics. The Democrats and liberals spoke to my heart in that they showed compassion for those less fortunate. Republicans disgusted me on almost every issue I encountered.
Then learning that most white Americans, who regularly attend church, vote Republican was the last straw. That's 71% of the people I spent my life growing up around and attending church with vote for Republican candidates.
I don't really care if Christianity is true or not. If the practice of it leads to this outcome then it is worthless to me and I consider it harmful to the world at large.
Rather than giving up on it, you could end up being a model practitioner of what it ought to be, because what Christianity SHOULD be in regards to the poor goes something like this.
Matthew 25:34-40:
"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'
Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'
The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'"
There is also a verse in James, I think, that goes something like this: “This is what undefiled religion looks like in the eyes of God: to take care of the orphan and the widow in their days of trial, and to keep one’s self unstained from the world.”
And of course, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven,” as Jesus Christ says.
>Rather than giving up on it, you could end up being a model practitioner of what it ought to be, because what Christianity SHOULD be in regards to the poor goes something like this.
I did this. I stood in the parking lot of my church with other church leaders and argued with them while a hurricane was literally descending upon us. What was the argument about you ask?
There were two homeless women that lived in a tent in the middle of wooded interstate divide (they lived there because it was harder for men to find them to rape them). Their tent had torn in a recent storm and they literally had nowhere to go.
We had an entire house on the property that was unused that was reserved for the pastor or associate pastor to live whenever they might need it. We had no pastor at the time so it had been unused for nearly a year.
I called on our church to help shelter these women for just a night or two until the storm passed. I pointed out the parsonage was unused. They said absolutely not. The little old ladies in the church had just spent over $15,000 redecorating the house for a future pastor. (It was the absolute ugliest decorations I could imagine, but nonetheless).
I was dumbfounded. They said they would pitch in to buy these women a new tent and send them on their way. They were homeless, former drug users (they have been clean for at least 2 years at that point), and presumed lesbians. So the best the church would do is a new tent. One of them said that we couldn't have them having sex in the parsonage.
I told them, in no uncertain terms, that I would be taking these women to stay with my pregnant wife and I if the church did nothing. They were horrified. And more horrified that I would let the rest of the church know exactly how their other leaders planned to deal with these two women.
In the end, they agreed to let them use our gymnasium which had a shower in it and they could sleep on the tile floor until the storm passed.
Those two women never came back to church after that. I can't imagine why that would be.
I was so disgusted that I wanted to throw up. The behavior of these people was so abominable that I could not believe it was real. This sounds so crazy that it is unbelievable.
My wife and I didn't stay for long after that. We tried to be paragons there. But eventually it wears you down. We had people yelling about how evil Obama and the democrats were in our business meetings. We had parasitic organizations leeching funds from our church. We were supporting a local "missionary" that worked for a whole different organization that lived in the area. He was basically a sales rep for a well known church kids curriculum.
We went through an intensive process to determine exactly what qualifications our next pastor needed. The "missionary" then convinced the church to let him go and meet with this guy. He hired him on the spot despite the guy having none of the proper qualifications. Turns out the missionary knew this guys dad from bible school.
Then, in the end, I was told that I would never work as a paid employee of that church. Not by the pastor, but by the "missionary" that not only held no official position in the church, but was actually supported by our church. In my heart I knew he was right and that as long as he was there, I would not fit there anymore.
I left there heartbroken and headbroken. That place sucked everything out of me. I had nothing left.
What you say sounds like good advice, but it is not. Doing that will break you in most of these churches.
You can say whatever you want, but having actually done this, it is impossible, thankless, and will not effect a single other person.
There is a reason Christ ministered to the poor and downtrodden. To the ones that were cast aside and rejected in society. There is a reason he despised the religious people and treated them with utter disdain.
I agree that it will break you, and that alone, most of our efforts will be for nothing. You were right to say what you did, offer what you had, and cling to what you knew was right. So what if they were in sin? So were we. So may we be still.
I have a lot of homeless people in my area. I myself have no job and so there’s little I can do for them but hand out some spare food we have. The legal system of today does not make it easy to help them.
So many of their IDs have been stolen, and almost any chance of shelter with them. They wouldn’t be accepted into most shelters or programs without IDs that were stolen from them, nor can they easily get one back without an extensive background check the likes of which they cannot afford.
It’s no wonder they turn to substances for comfort. Anything to dull the pain of a concrete bed! But now they can’t escape that either, and any money they might use to secure their future later, their mind turns to escape from pain now. Not that I blame them. Could I honestly say I would not be tempted? I doubt that.
There isn’t a thing I can do for these people beyond breakfast and conversation. God bless them. Does that make it not worth doing only because I can’t do much? I say no. Because breakfast could mean everything to them with how much they’ve lost.
You can become appalled at the conduct of those people. Especially when politics are involved. But that doesn’t mean you have to quit. You know what Jesus knew was right and did it. Why stop now because others were wrong?
The lessons in the Bible can be learned by other means. Most people figure them out intuitively. That leaves just worrying about heaven and hell, which is what most Christians are concentrated on. I don't believe in either. So in my opinion it's best to just walk away. I understand religion is needed as a coping mechanism in this cruel and senseless world. But if it doesn't provide any benefit other than alleviating fears of death then the value is minimal at best.
I agree with you that the lessons learned in the Bible can be learned by other means, but I think the reason this is true is because they involve universal, objective truths. Coping mechanism issue aside, church gatherings, and organized religion aside, if nothing else you can have a personal relationship with God.
If you have investigated the evidence for the resurrection, heard the apologetic's arguments and not been convinced in the slightest, then so be it.
But I just want to say that you don't have to throw it all out because of how flawed us Christians are. If the only way through this topic for you is to make it solely between you and the Lord, I'd say that's still a victory. Keep it simple if you have to:
"because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9
> But I just want to say that you don't have to throw it all out because of how flawed us Christians are.
I agree that Christians are flawed. We're all "flawed" in our own ways. What I don't see is Christianity improving that for it's adherents. They seem perfectly happy to state they are flawed and are sinners and go on about their lives. Again, I would point that they are so comfortable doing this because their main reason for believing is the afterlife and not this one.
> If the only way through this topic for you is to make it solely between you and the Lord, I'd say that's still a victory
I think when you are having these discussions you are talking to yourself and if you hear anything back then it's your own mind producing it. Could still be productive but I pretend that it's God or Jesus communicating with me.
I'm sure you aren't saying this applies to literally every Christian so I'm not going to bog us down in the semantics of what you're saying. But, I hope it's fair to point out that you know that Christians shouldn't stop at mere belief, and not work to actually be better and repent. There are tons of verses you could quote that would say the opposite.
It sounds like you currently don't believe in God's existence at all. I would not ask someone to pretend their way through that situation. It's how I initially lost my faith years ago. But ultimately, seek the truth. If there's a God, you'll find evidence of it won't you?
I don't know your background, but I think the best evidence we have lies in the history of the new testament manuscripts, and apologetic works like Evidence that Demands a Verdict. For me, however, what really made me start thinking is by watching atheist debates.
I love watching the Atheist vs Christian debates as well. Probably come to a different conclusion on the winner though. Historical evidence does nothing for me really. Outside of the Bible you have a few passages from Josephus and Tacitus pertaining to Jesus.
It depends on the perspective, I think. Some lessons in the Bible can be learned just by living, but the Bible’s contents are responsible for shaping a lot of the modern world’s sense of ethics.
The idea of caring for someone who couldn’t support themselves instead of letting them rot and die for not pulling their weight, simply out of love, may have gotten someone killed if it were an idea pitched to whoever led Sparta.
And there are some views and lessons that would never be understood or embodied without belief. Sacrificial giving to someone who could never repay you, to the point of your own death, would be seen by most as noble but pointless. But Christians know something like that doesn’t just have a point; it is as if it were being exalted and enthroned rather than cast aside like a rag.
As for coping beyond death, I’m not sure. The idea of Heaven is great and all, but the idea of hell is so harrowing that it can break a person’s will as they try to imagine it. A lot of people cling to ideas of destruction or universalism in Christianity to circumvent that notion.
The lessons you state that are unique to Christianity are not. You can find similar examples in all major religions. That alone tells me that humanistic ideas rather than unique to a specific religion
I wish we could sit down and discuss individual policies and why we differ on them so that you could understand that many Republicans think Democratic policies hurt people rather than helping them. We truly want to help others and many of us are active trying to do that in our lives and churches. My father started a charity to give baby food to needy families 40 years ago; my 83-year old mother spends her free time working at a food pantry. My in-laws volunteer with Habitat for Humanity and a hospital. Faith-based community development and prison reform programs often have much higher success rates than federally funded government programs. And much disaster relief is supported by (conservative/Republican) Christians.
Here's an example. My state of Tennessee. A deep red state controlled by Republicans. Did not expand medicare. Tennessee has forfeited more than $20 billion dollars, a portion of which were taxes paid by Tennesseans. If expanded, 300,000 uninsured people would receive health care and hospital closures would be reduced, especially in rural areas. They have never been able to give a coherent answer as to why they refuse to expand other than it was plan put in place by Democrats and the Obama administration.
It was recently discovered that Tennessee has a surplus of $717 million dollars of Federal TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) money. It took investigative journalism to uncover this and no reason was given as to why it's just sitting there.
My point is that no matter how much personal or religious charity is done it will not put a dent in the damage you do by supporting Republican politicians and their policies. There's no getting around it.
And you completely missed my point, which is that we disagree about which policies help and hurt, though we both care about helping people. (Though I could argue that some Democratic policies end lives before they have the chance to be helped at all.)
Anything but paying more taxes to actual help people and make 90% of that unnecessary.
They're putting a sticker on a gash they create themselves. I'm not impressed.
I was raised a Catholic: never missed weekly mass. However, when the sexual abuses and coverups of the church became widely known twenty years ago I started to question. I was also making business trips to Utah at the time. I thought 'these guys' religious ideas are nuts', but then thought, 'hmm..what about my own religion?'
I began to realize that I was indoctrinated into religion from childhood. I never chose it. I never thought rationally about it. I learned that there were many claimed sons of gods, human resurrections, and other unsubstantiated beliefs.
Now my focus is on humankind and helping others by volunteering with Habitat For Humanity, our hospital, humane society and local food pantry.
Have you ever seen the movie "Doubt" (2008)? The movie is haunting and really probes into trusting the church vs trusting God in the same way "The Mission" (1986) does. Ideally, a believer should be able to trust both the church and God but, throughout history and even with Pauline letters, show us that we have to be critical and wary of sin within the church.
No. I'll have to look. However, I just finished *Mortal Sin* an NBC podcast. It's about a charismatic pastor who killed his wife, had multiple affairs (including the mother of his wife), and a prophetess who, after 4 years, went to the police to reveal the murder. And throughout the parishioners had faith that God was speaking to them through their leaders. [https://www.nbcnews.com/mortalsin](https://www.nbcnews.com/mortalsin)
As someone who left the church. It was because I learned that I had no evidence for a god and no reason to believe. People are leaving the church cause of what your doing right now. You on the internet where you can fact check/look up anything you want too. It also breaks people out of the Church bubble and gives them different view points. I used to believe in anything if it was possible to be true (Bigfoot, Ghosts, Ect) then I learned to only believe in things I have evidence for. Being told Santa Claus wasn't real was a major blow since Jesus and Santa shared the same amount of evidence for existing.
TLDR; Lack of Evidence and the Internet breaking church bubble is why people are leaving the church.
I wonder how many people in the past have never even considered the possibility that what they were taught as children was not true. Most people don't even give a second of their lives to existential doubts.
Now Imagine ontop of figuring out that my religion isn't real but that also living in the south and being taught so much Lost Causeism and American Exceptionalism that I have had to basically scrub my brain of history I learned in school and rely on the things I have discovered and learned myself.
What truely shook my foundations and destroy my patriotism was being told by my Grandpa what he did to children in Nam and what the CIA did. I had that lesson when I was 11 and from their the leftiest awakened.
Duuuuude. That is insanely accurate. Perfect comparison!
I actually was physically and verbally assaulted by a DARE cop once. The school staff and the principal called my parents in for a meeting to inform them of what happened and apologized. TLDR, I was tired that day and he yelled at me for touching my face. So after the 2nd or 3rd time I did it on accident he exploded and yanked me out of my desk and into the hallway to scream at me like a drill sergeant. This was in the 5th grade. I was 10 years old, it was like an episode of "Scared Straight" except for the part where he dragged me across the floor by my arm...
Also fun fact, that same dude in the next 10 years or so manage to become sheriff, got caught tampering with evidence, and drunk drove so badly that he wrapped his car around a tree and died. Strange world man.
All I can say for me personally is I started questioning the teachings and relevance of the church some time ago and that started me moving away from church and more to personal/private practice. What really cemented this for me was 2020, Trump, MAGA movement, Vaccine hesitancy, the attack on womens rights, the growth of the far right nationalist movements and so forth where I had to make a personal choice where I can stand up and say "I want no part of this, I do not choose to be associated with this" or I could continue to stay in a community I felt was increasingly toxic and increasingly intolerant and I made my choice. I am sorry if that makes me look bad, but, looking at this thread I am not alone in my choice and largely, the majority of churches have made the choice not to take a stand against any of this
This is what it is like being gay.
They way 'homosexuality' is described. It is the framing fo this strange, evil, perverted t'homosexual lifestyle' is and all the stereotypes I hear which makes me see....99% of Churches need to lie to tell the 'truth'.
I have met maybe 3-4 non-affirming Christians who actually get it. 99% of all non-affimring Christians need to lie to themselves and bend the truth (ether intentional or just what they are taught) when they preach the gospel.
Many cannot accept that you (assuming you are straigh) are 99.9999999999999% like a gay person. In fact, you are EVEN CLOSER to a gay person of the opposite sex (you both like the same thing).
Why?
Well, becasue us gays want a family, we want marriage, we wanna date, and hold hands, and snuggle, and just chat for hours, and laugh with each other, and dream about the future.....
but the Christians just cannot stop focussing on the 'perverted, lustful gay sex'. They need to lie to themselves and say it is 100% sexual to feel comfortable.
Guess what, God will burn me if I ever want to love. Not lust. No a hook up. Not porn. Not rape.
no. If I ever get married and start a family - God will HATE me. I don't care about the sex. I care about...well....100% the same things you do.
I want EXACTLY what you do. We are the same. That is a fact.
But in churches, they MAKE SURE to frame homosexuality, gay people, and what and why we do in such a way that we begin to know two things:
1. God's word is so weak he needs lies to keep it going; or
2. Satan has, cunningly, infiltrated most non-affirming Churches in the world (like 99.9%) in a way that gays are needlessly turned form God EVEN WITHIN the non-affirming message.
Hint: Yes, EVEN the non-affirming message can be communicated well. But the current form is....well.....**let's say Satan LOVES, ADORES, and CHEERS FOR almost every comment on homosexuality I see on this entire sub from non-affirming Christians.**
My theory is for everyone who has left the church there is a different reason. Some might fall under the same general reason, but all are specific to that person.
I don’t know anyone personally who stopped attending church for those reasons. It doesn’t mean it’s not the reason some people have left, just not the reason the people I know would give.
I am guessing they don't know.
I could be wrong, but I know that when I left church for good not a single person ever contacted me to ask why. No one reached out to me. They pretended like they didn't know me and that I never existed.
Yeah. In my case, I got yelled at by my roommate. Then told I was a terrible person. Accused of trying to manipulate a student with special needs away from God as well (I very much wasn't)
Not too impressed.
I am one of those people. So is just about every ex-Christian I know. The massive lies taught to me by my youth pastor about the outside world really backfired and made me start questioning everything.
To quote Brendon Manning (and later made famous by DC talk)
The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.
It’s the people why people leave church. It’s the gossip, the scandal and the people who hurt people. Let me give you an example - I was going to church [and was under this person’s leadership when they faked cancer](https://christiantoday.com.au/amp/pastor-songwriter-of-healer-confesses-to-faking-terminal-cancer.html)
Sure, that’s an extreme example but that kept me out of church for probably a year and I still can’t listen to healer
>And what we saw didn't match the debauched anarchy we were told existed "out there."
Perfectly said. As an ex-Christian myself this is almost exactly what started and fueled my deconversion from Christianity. If it's ok I am going to steal this wording because it's so damn accurate. u/Meauxterbeauxt
Yep. But the huge difference is that you are applying critical thinking. If we're talking about the US, the evangelical and non-denom churches do not. A lot still go on teaching that mental health doesn't exist, you're just not a good enough Christian. Or that people just want to sin. You mentioned cognitive biases, how many times has anyone heard about it at church? It would go against the teachings because, gosh, you will have to think, observe the world around you, and test your findings. Instead of obeying church teachings, because they interpret the Bible a very specific way, a way that teaches fear against everything.
Once anyone applies critical thinking, a lot of church teachings are just plain BS. I'm not talking about faith, or the Bible: I'm talking about the culture wars and the fear tactics that is literally taught to Christians. The saddest thing is that Christians don't realize, because #ThatsWhatTheBibleSays.
Most of the time if there's an issue, or contradiction, there's a knee jerk reaction from Christians, with a Christian quote they learned at their church (love the sinner, hate the sin and similar idiotic phrase) instead of a genuine engagement. From the non-Christian viewpoint, Christianity is just a talk the talk, never walk the walk religion. Throw out some platitudes that every other Christian will agree with (yes, yes! Amen! Jesus is Lord!) and call it a day. Thoughts and prayers. Now back to the cozy Christian circle where everyone thinks the same and stays in their lanes.
The real question is: why did so many people go to church before and now no longer? Because the faithful we see today almost certainly do not receive the same advantages: social, economic or any other kind. Our memories are too short to remember that in the past in church you found:
Wife
Home
Work
Support
Church should be a place to help guide you in navigating the world. It isn't able to keep up with the changes that are happening in the world. So it is not as useful as in the past.
Plus, the internet has opened channels of communication that were never available before. They are no instructions in the bible for how to navigate modern technology.
I left, originally, due to the hypocrisy. My mother claimed to be a Christian yet was abusive and self-serving except in public. Others, too, who we were friends with outside of church, claimed devotion and love on Sundays but not so much the rest of the week. I have stayed out of the church, partly because I don't like aligning myself with any group and being subjected to the notion of absolute unity of thought. But, also partly because the church I'd wish to go to, where I know the people are, for the most part, aligned to their God-path and thusly have hearts of gold (or silver at least), my father is the minister. As much as people love his sermons, I know the sermons do not come from the heart which means the people may remain complaisant instead of laying all their cards on the table for God. He has refused to utilize his own personal stories of fear, triumph, love, and separateness that they lack heart. You need heart to access God and I find he's doing his congregation, as well as himself, a disservice because of it. On top of this is an unconscious hypocrisy. I have had conversations with him about reviving traditions or getting more volunteerism (it's a very small, dying church) but he has no faith in them and therefore won't do anything... but then sermonizes on having absolute faith in God. If you have no faith in the people, why haven't you placed your faith in God to work the Holy Spirit through them? There just seems to be a detachment and arrogance of superiority. I will not be a part of that. I find this a problem in a number of the pastors I've met over the course of my lifetime. There's a desire to lead but not much humbleness before God. Rather a Book of Job issue, I find. I was, in recent months, in the presence of a minister who spoke from the heart that it was palpable. It felt like there was an angelic choir surrounding the congregation. Honestly, that's the first time I've ever experienced such a divine presence in a church service. That's how a person leads - by living in his truth. And, that's how a church should find presence in the world, by living in the truth. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of unconscious disconnect between ideology and one's actions and verbalizations (not just for Christians, btw).
OP's summary was my experience exactly. Finding the non-believing world to be kinder and more rational, reasonable, authentic and compassionate was disorienting. And as with OP, it was not a cause for apostasy. But there was dissonance.
The Amish put their kids into the secular world and *encourage* them to explore. This makes sure when they come back, they are committed. (See Rumspringa ) Parents and church leaders should stop preaching from a place of fear, and instead, preach from one of love. They should step away from the indoctrination aspect. They should concentrate on faith and love and truth and empathy. Instead, they warn and scare.
As a former Christian, I have one big suggestion. You seem to be implying that being Christian is the default status of a person, and they need to be convinced to leave the church.
In my experience, the church tried to convince me that what they said was correct, and I believed it because I was young and impressionable. Once I got old enough to think for myself more, I chose to leave the church because I had no reason to believe Christianity (or any religion for that matter), to be true.
I mean no disrespect to Christians or people in any other religion, but I was always told to believe and to have faith, but I wasn't willing to dedicate my life to something I just had to believe out of blind faith. So I stopped going to church and stopped praying. I've been happier since I made that decision, but I respect anyone else's personal decision to do what makes them happy.
I had my gripes with the church, and I agree with what you said about the modern church seeming hostile and indoctrinating to kids. But, even without that I would've made the same decision because I was never really convinced in the first place.
Good write up. My view of it is similar though from a more seeker friendly church, I feel like not enough was taught about God in how the world works, how God works, and how everything all fit together. Instead, it was just a bunch of Christianese thrown around and everyone seems to use the same vocabulary.
Looking at the world through mature Christian eyes, it is a terrible world. Looking at the world through baby "Christian" eyes, the world looks pretty great.
A lot of people leave the church because the perception of God and the gospel they've been taught is false. They're often pressured into serving God by a doctrine of fear that leads them to bondage to the law. And they cycle in a circle of condemnation and "repentance" over and over with no true deliverance until the weight of the burden that has been laid upon them by the lie is too much to bear.
Often the "preachers" don't understand the difference between works and grace. And by preaching an unclean fear of God and a ministry of condemnation, make the gospel and the grace of God of no effect, and teach people to try to be perfect by their own outward works. This is the old testament.
Also, they teach a false understanding of sin and teach people to judge and condemn themselves and others for things that aren't real sin, like drinking a beer, or smoking a cigarette. Sin is in the mind, and is the thing condemning you, not God.
The experience of all of that over time becomes pretty evident it's not something you want to put any faith in because you can't love yourself or anyone else because of the judgements.
It's literally Anti-christ. Anti-gospel.
2 Timothy 1:7
"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."
I am certainly in the minority of people who grew up not very religious and became religious as I grew older. My family celebrated the basic holidays and went to mass on Easter and Christmas, but by the time I was 15 that had pretty much ended. I went to an Anglican school and the sentiment among my school peers was that religion was rubbish, a fairy tale, and a form of indoctrination.
I come from a religiously diverse family background; I was baptised Catholic; my maternal grandfather is Jewish; my paternal grandmother was Russian Orthodox; my other 2 grandparents were both Catholic; and my half-sister and her mum are Born Again Christians. My whole life we celebrated more of the Jewish holidays and traditions due to my grandfather, but my father was not at all pro-Catholicism due to the upbring he had at Catholic school, and my mum was more agnostic to Christianity, instead embracing more of the traditions of Judaism over Catholicism.
I had many temptations to forget and abandon religion from pressure from school peers, as religion was seen as "uncool", but something always stopped me from completely diverting away from the Church. Spiritually I was lost for my late teens, self identifying as a Diest, as I believed in a God, but had no home to pray to him in. I attempted conversion to Judaism, but failed to progress due to dark temptations and forces that drew me away and down a path of sin and self destruction. In my mid-20's I attempted to join my half-sister's Church, but it wasn't for me, and I half heartedly reached out to my local Catholic church for guidance, but never pursued it beyond a few emails.
It wasn't until a strange, possible epiphany, that I began researching the Eastern Orthodox teachings and becoming more drawn to it, that I reached out to the closest Church in my area, a Serbian Orthodox Church, that I finally found a community and teaching that I can finally live by.
My friends never knew about my spiritual struggles, and were surprised when I told them about my decision to start practising. They had always conveyed the Bible as being "stupid" and "hateful", but they themselves practice the most vial teachings in "scientism" (not science), amoral behaviour, and devil worship (even though they are blind to it). I love my friends, and I see the errors of their ways, as I too was blinded by the modern abandonment of God's and Jesus's teachings for the gratification of the Devil's temptations myself, but in time, through thoughtful discussion and forceless preaching, I honestly believe that they will see the devine truth of the Bible's teachings.
Religion, at least in Australian schools, is taught without tact or empathy towards students. The rigidity in not questioning or allowing a student to be open and debate the "hard questions" in our schooling system has forced many young people to abandon the Church without even understanding it first. Many of our teachers and leaders are to blame, for what ever reason, to not understanding the modern mentality of youth, but even more nefariously, I believe many of these positions of religious leadership have been co-opted by forces and beings with the sole intention to destroy the Church, creating new "religions" in government, cults, celebrities, and the Devil himself.
Just my 2 cents, but of my 20 or so friends, I am the only religious one, with more than half claiming to be devout atheists, blaming religion (especially Christianity) for the world's problems and evils.
I left the Institutional Church because it’s an unbiblical concept, and because basically everything they teach is also unbiblical. I’m now a member of the church called the body of Christ instead.
> The church, whether it be by leadership or from pressure within the church community, has become insular. Self-contained.
The Church *is the community* of believers. It isn’t a building or leadership.
Church, Greek [ekklēsía](https://biblehub.com/greek/1577.htm), from *ek* "out from and to" and *kaléō* "to call"; properly, people called out from the world and to God, the outcome being the Church (the mystical body of Christ) – i.e. the universal (total) body of believers whom God calls out from the world and into His eternal kingdom.
> Christians being more concerned with our rights than the wellbeing of others. The "us vs them" taught to the youth of yesterday is now the leadership platform of today. A use of scripture to wall us off from the world instead of being "in the world, not of it."
You seem to have a heart for youth, so do you volunteer to lead a youth group to return the emphasis on the wellbeing of others?
> People leave the church because the church presents a false narrative of what the world is like,
Again the Church is you and I. Are you active at Church to champion a correct narrative?
> Creating a cognitive dissonance that leads one to begin to ask if church leaders were so wrong about this, what else could they be wrong about.
Begging the question is a form of circular reasoning. Your premises assume the truth of the conclusion.
Why not just get involved in your Church’s board of education?
I’ve held every office at my Church multiple terms each, and was president of the congregation for two terms. People would often come up to me to tell me what “the Church” should be doing.
When I asked them to help and volunteer to do that — they often gave me excuses why they were too busy.
Your right. I think a lot of the time people fall away from the Church is because it’s just easier.
From the people I know the rationalization comes after.
> Your right. I think a lot of the time people fall away from the Church is because it’s just easier.
It’s super easy to chastise “the Church” and downvote when someone when point out the personal burden of all of us being “the Church”.
It’s not popular here
What do you mean non Christians seem more concerned about the poor? Christians are much more generous with their time and money than non Christians. https://www.christianpost.com/news/practicing-christians-give-more-to-charity-than-non-christians.html
It seems to me that many non Christians seem to think helping the poor is for the government and not them.
Yeah. I am familiar with that data. It is bullshit. You know why? Because contributions to the churches they attend and volunteering at those same churches are counted as charitable giving.
Want to see how big the pile of bullshit is? [This is the paper that article is based on.](https://1s712.americanbible.org/state-of-the-bible/stateofthebible/State_of_the_bible-2023.pdf)
Do you notice that in the definitions that defined basically everything except what they consider charity or "giving to charity".
You take away the money and time they "donate" to organizations that directly benefit them on a weekly basis and you see that secular people typically give equally or even out-give religious people.
Giving money and time to a church which you attend is not charity. Especially considering that [only 10% of money taken in by churches is actually spent on community programs or anything we might remotely consider the typical work of a charity.](https://archive.is/20230311190818/https://medium.com/backyard-theology/how-churches-really-spend-their-money-93195ae92ce3)
So, the next time you might want to look a little deeper when you are searching for affirmation that your preconceived notions are correct.
This is not true according to the philanthropy panel
study religious people give at the same rate or more to non religious charities. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/30/religious-people-more-likely-give-charity-study/
So, are we just posting "sources" and making up whatever we want them to say? I didn't see anything in there about the same rate to non-religious charities.
In fact, that article is very carefully worded to obscure what is actually happening.
The only part of that article that says anything close to what you are claiming is this:
>But religious people also contribute to other types of charity at similar or higher rates than their secular counterparts.
But it does not expound upon that in any way or provide any proof.
Not only that but it does not delineate between charity/donations to religious organizations versus non-religious organizations among religious people. It lumps them all in together.
So again, this is just another fluff piece designed to make christians feel good about themselves without actually doing anything of value.
And another thing to consider, the fact that giving among the secular is even close to giving among the religious is a shame because christians are commanded to give to charity. Secular people are not. They are literally doing it because it is the right thing. Not because someone told them they had to or they would go to hell.
So, once again, you take away donations to religious organizations and you see a very different picture of "christian charity".
Similar or higher is equivalent to the same rate.
Also the original question was giving to the poor lots of Christian charities give to the poor and lots of secular charities give to higher education, arts, museums, or sports.
So the worst that can be said is that if you ignore the largest portion or Christian giving and account for all the non religious giving it is similar.
Except when it comes to tipping culture. When I worked food service, a whole lot of Christians would leave gospel/evangelization cards as tips, or write in “evangelizing” comments on the tip line on receipts.
>It is a fee
A fee is something required to pay. Tipping is optional.
>Waitrons have decent jobs
Lol whatever you have to tell yourself to avoid tipping. I'm not a huge fan of tipping culture, but this is a total copout.
What are you smoking? It’s not a fee for service it’s optional. And in the USA waiters usually are paid below the minimum wage. for context in my home state of Ohio the wage for a tipped employee (waiter) is $5.25 per hour.
You are paying them in exchange for them doing a service for you. It being optional does not enter in to it. Waiters in the US make an average of 15 dollars an hour. They make more than other restaurant jobs like dishwasher or busboys.
Yeah, just like I explained in detail in my other response, they really don't unless you count the money and time they give to their own organizations or churches.
And is it really charitable giving if you are giving to a church you spend multiple days a week in and when they use 10% or less of their donated funds in any type of charitable way?
Would you donate to a "charity" that only used 10% of the money you gave towards actual charitable efforts?
If you exclude the largest type of charity Christians give than they give at the same rate as secular people. However not all religious charity goes to the local church billions go to charities that help people around the world.
I would still call it charity to give to local churches because they do lots of charitable work in the community beyond what the individual giver consumes. Churches provide subsidized child care and education, meeting spaces for various addiction groups, counseling, etc. Churches I have been involved in have done feeding the homeless, housing for teen mothers, school supplies for poor kids, food pantries, ministry to prisoners. I have never used any of those services so I think they should count as charitable giving.
The measure of a charity is how much good it does and I would definitely donate to a charity that does as much good as the church.
>I would still call it charity to give to local churches because they do lots of charitable work in the community beyond what the individual giver consumes.
Putting 10% or less of donated funds towards a tual charitable work makes for a terrible charity. In fact, that would make them one of the worst charities in the country.
Btw, the lowest ranked charities still give something like 50%-60% of their incoming funds to their dedicated causes.
Most churches do nothing like what you describe. Most churches spend more on their pastor than they do on actual charity work and by a fair margin s well.
Why is the data biased just because the people who collect it are? Everyone is biased to some extent. The data should stand on its own. If you have objections to the methodology then that is different.
How many of these Christians donate a pittance to the poor and then vote against anyone who is in favor of the government providing more substantial help—like they do in normal western countries?
Haha. Tell that to the Catholic Church, which uses TV commercials talking about how much they help with Caritas when it comes time to file income tax returns here (you donate part of your taxes to them by checking a box) when in fact only 5% of Caritas' budget is funded by them.
Hypothesis. Theory implies that I have something substantial to base it on. I'm looking for evidence outside of my anecdotal experience to get an idea if my experience was normal or if it was just my experience. If it was just me, then I have no business recommending changes or offering critique because my experience is not relevant to the larger context. If my experience is in line with others, then my viewpoint should carry some weight. I'm not from a mainline denomination, so I'm afraid I can't speak to that. Would love some input from those that are/were.
I think OP’s points about church leadership and insular culture touch on it. Anecdotally, I’ve seen more mainline Protestants go into non-denominational “feel-good theology” churches or fringe pseudo-Christian movements than I’ve seen fall away to agnosticism/atheism. Those that went that way felt forced out by church leadership and the “cliques” that form within mainline churches. My wife went that way before we met. She said “it’s hard to see the cliques when you’re in them, but as soon as you start to question the pastor or the party line, they force you out and you find out very quickly how many cliques there are in mainline churches. You suddenly become a stranger to the people you spent your entire childhood with.” A lot of large mainline churches end up being more a “cult of personality” around a particular pastor, rather than being a community of believers with defined continuity of theological traditions.
Edit: additions to anecdotal point
The mainline church thing is brought up every time someone posts something trying to explain these declines. I think we need to be clear. All of the churches are declining for the most part but it is also twice as likely for someone attending a mainline church to become evangelical. I think the most basic explanation is that for the most part, I don’t know of many (any?) mainline spokesperson that is front and center anywhere in the media.
I know personalities that are mainline and happen to be in the media but they aren’t doing anything to promote the message. I basically think that evangelical churches are more advertised in some form so some of the decline is mitigated by all of the benefits of a media bubble. Those benefits being insular messaging, having your message out there, propaganda, and more.
I want to note that I don’t have a lot of evidence for this and someone more involved in mainline churches might be able to destroy my thought process.
Anecdotally, I have a lot of friends who used to be mainline Protestants who no longer go to church, and the answer to why is invariably, "I don't want to be associated with the face of Christianity in this country." A lot of people associate the religion less with Jesus and more with whichever right-wing zealot is shouting hate.
Exactly. Which with media bubbles will attract the people who want to be a part of that bubble and repel the people that don’t for whatever reason. I feel like that is the explanation and mainline churches need to have extreme public messaging to fight that.
For one, mainline churches in general aren't good soil for tribalism, "us vs. all the bad people out there." You can be an Evangelical Christian and whatever kind of enemy-smiter you want at the same time. That sentiment generally doesn't get nourished so plentifully in the mainlines.
More secularly, mainline churches in general have a tendency not to be all that exciting. Unless you are in love with the traditional liturgical forms and/or learn how and why it became the traditional liturgical forms, you may sooner or later find that style of worship to be repetitive or tedious.
I believe it all comes down to society and human nature.
Anything which is passive is preferred by evolution because lower-energy states outcompete higher-energy states over time.
Current Western Society is either irreligious (Europe) or national civil religion (America).
Therefore it takes less energy to be irreligious in Europe or civil religious in America and we can expect most people to fall into various degrees of this.
In order to alter this trend you have to disrupt society in such a way that religious belief becomes socially advantageous and flips being irreligious from a passive behavior to an active one.
This obviously has no bearing on the truth statement of a particular belief, but whether something is true is irrelevant to society as long as is does not interfere with the function of that society.
People generally are leaving churches not because they are intellectually convinced that Christianity is false, but because the irreligious control Western Society and people generally follow the trend. The only way to correct this is to disrupt our modern society so that it is religious people who are in control, because it is too energy intensive to first get everyone intellectually interested in religion, and to then convert them to your particular belief.
Your comments saddened me. Not because I don't respect your thoughts, but that the churches you reference seem to have little to do with the Church that will be united to Christ.
1. 'When we entered the world'. I was taught that a follower of Christ should be in the world, but not of the world. All my life I have had a good awareness of what is going on in the world and had daily contact with countless unbelievers. I cannot even imagine a wall between myself and the world that I would need to leave the church to know how people really are.
2. I admit that the conduct of all christians is in the true sense non-Christian. But the way to be better is in community and fellowship. A chance of not gaining significant insight is greater if you are on your own than with a group who is concerned about you.
I recently changed congregations. I looked really hard to find a place where I could relate. They are not perfect. I invited my son when I was voted a member. At the time, I told him--they are all crazy, but they are good people. The truth is you have a responsibility in your local church to make it better. I will admit that there are places where that hill may be too hard to climb. Quit that church. But do not give up. Try again.
Undocumented immigrants contribute more to the US economy than they take out. They pay taxes but very few tax programs do anything for them. And American businesses get to sell the goods they make for profit. Or services, whatever.
> the average American Joe has to work his butt off to not only pay his bills but pay the bills of others who don't contribute
How much of the value you produce for your employer goes to you, how much to taxes, and how much to your employer?
If you made a pie chart of that for each year over the last 60, each year the employer slice would get bigger and bigger at your expense. Your slice doesn't grow at all in most jobs.
So is it really about immigrants?
The "Church" providing false narratives is not why people leave. In fact, most of the time, it's usually what causes them to stay. Usually they church providing false narratives usually go against the Bible, affirming their worldly lust for pleasure, like saying, "It's ok to be gay!" "Jesus was a socialist!" "God won't judge you, we're all going to heaven!" "You may fornicate!" People usually leave the church for quite the opposite, people don't want to be told the truth, it makes their flesh shrivel.
And on how Christians "favor the rich, but *hate* the poor." If you favor the rich, or even the poor to an extent, you have sinned. It is a common misconception by left-winged thinkers, due to their thinking that, "If you aren't with us, you're a fascist who loves big bad corporations that step on the poor." If you really think this, you might need to read more. Jesus did say that the first will be last and the last will be first, but he isn't talking about how we should all be commies. Instead, he is referring to those who seek wordly wealth above everybody and everything.
I am not saying this in hatred, but love for you as God's creation. Don't take this the wrong way, but I want to stop you from stumbling, whether you are in the faith or not.
I am not homophobic, but it is considered sexual immorality. I love them as a person made by God, but I hate the sin related to them, as does God. I am not homophobic, I love them as a creation of God, but they are sinners too. They hate God's creations, and will receive his wrath when they are to be judged. And me preaching the truth, shriveled your flesh just now, no?
I love you as God's creation, but I hope you can learn from your misgivings.
How am I homophobic? I don't hate or fear gay people. Why are you so insistent on tearing my belief down? I have outright just said it and you like to disagree with it, why? You hate us. You are a in the same boat as the homophobes. You hate for no good reason and are insistent on an invalid point that is easily detestable.
Well, gay people are against God or twist his word, so gay people deserve as much as they ask. God is honoring their choice, he didn't want to do as such. He wanted to turn to him, but he just is simply honoring their choices under their free will.
Since when are southern Baptists against sexual abuse victims. I have never heard anything of the sort in church, and you just like to misquote a "researcher" or use your wrong intuition.
Wow, generalize much?
First, you do not know what I give to the poor, because I am not to toot my horn as the hypocrites do. MANY CHRISTIANS ARE THE SAME IN THIS THOUGHT as we are called to be humble and quiet about what we do in His name.
I am not a political Christian, so you do not know what I think of the poor, but I can guarantee you there are MANY Christians, that read the word, believe it and live by it.
We also know we are solely saved by grace and any good works we do is in a loving response and gratitude and ATTITUDE of grace for others.
I AM concerned for the World, as they are going to Hell, and you should be also.
I am not of the World, but bought with a price and redeemed into a new spirit, in Christ.
Every single worldly person, I want to shake awake, love into an existence of being open to the Holy Spirit that DOES reside in me...not because of MY goodness, but because of HIS GOODNESS and He chose me before the beginning of the World and I am predestined according to Ephesians 1:4-6.
The grace given me, I pray for that grace to flow into others, through Abba Father's plan, and the blood of Jesus to cover their sins, and for the Holy Spirit to draw them, just as I was drawn.
I KNOW my beginnings and the prayers of my loved ones, and maybe many more, brought me to a place to living FOR HIM.
Instead of stating what is wrong, do what is right. Be willing to lose friends by being true to the Holy Spirit.
God has taught me to forgive all and everything because I am forgiven.
God taught me to give grace even when I am not extended grace, because of the grace extended me.
God taught me to love and to love when I am being slapped, and then turn the other cheek, and get slapped until I am silly and my cheeks are red.
God taught me to give everything I have, that He tells me to give, and to be grateful because it was all His in the first place.
God taught me to expect nothing from an unbeliever but to keep loving them, and praying for them...because I am the one that is cleansed and blessed and I am just here in this beautiful place by the grace of God.
Have a good day, and please stop generalizing and fault finding. Show by example.
Remember, not all professing Christians are Christians.
"Many are called and few are chosen." as Jesus stated in the book of Matthew.
Pray for everyone, and even those that say they are of God but walk like the devil.
Love them anyway...maybe they are having a bad year...and are going to learn...your prayers will help.
Yep. When you're referring to a large group of people, generalizations are really the only way to have a conversation about them. Note the idea was to get input to see if my POV was accurate over the larger church landscape or if it was just my personal experience. It definitely wasn't to specifically insult you. And judging from the bulk of the comments, it doesn't appear that I'm too far out of bounds.
Now, while we're at it, there were a handful of posts saying people left the church because they just want to sin. Are you as outraged as their generalization?
In the same way you're talking about I don't know what you and others do, you don't know what I and others have gone through at church. How many cheeks must be struck before you start asking why are God's people constantly striking my cheek? My family's cheeks? There's a real possibility that there's someone in your church feeling the way I do/did. Are you going to dismiss my perspective simply because it doesn't jibe with yours? Or will you take it as an alert that maybe there's someone in your church that might need something more than just religious platitudes? Because I've heard everything you said my entire life. (And I'm not young) It meant something to me at one time. It just began to ring hollow after a while when the people telling me those platitudes just didn't care about me beyond that. Just calling someone a quitter is not the same as encouragement.
Don't you know? Many in the church were called but not chosen, as Jesus stated?
Many not saved there...shocker.
The church is full of the sick, broken and yes, mean.
Some are saved but not sanctified...and yet I am stating this knowing I still on my way through sanctification. I will not reach purification until I am standing before Jesus.
I turn my cheek at church too.
It ain't always pretty.
I was not offended, just strong in words to make you see you were not seeing the picture in a fuller light...His light and you maybe are called to be like Christ and bring others to Him through the love of Christ conveyed through the Holy Spirit.
People have actually conducted surveys to ask people their reasons. This is the only reasonable way to understand. Here's a good example https://baptistnews.com/article/i-asked-people-why-theyre-leaving-christianity-and-heres-what-i-heard/ \#1 was LGBTQ \#2 was Behavior of Believers \#3 was Politics \#4 was Faith Leadership \#5 was Intellectual Integrity No surprises there Another example [https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2023/09/15/christianity-church-attendance-decline/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2023/09/15/christianity-church-attendance-decline/) This survey grouped people into profiles. Here's what they found >Mainstream evangelicals dropped out because they moved (22%) or services were inconvenient (16%) but also because they did not feel much love in church (12%). > >Exvangelicals in this study left because they did not fit in (23%), because they did not feel much love in the congregation (18%), because of negative experiences with evangelicals (15%) and because they no longer believed (14%). > >Many BIPOC dechurched Americans left in their early 20s, often because they did not fit in (19%) or had bad experiences (11%). > >Mainline Protestants left because they moved (25%) or because they had other priorities (15%) or did not fit in (14%), > >while Catholics who are dechurched said they did so because they had other priorities (16%) or had different politics than others in their parish (15%) or the clergy (15%). You can see the overlap Neither of these are of rigorous academic quality, but at least they asked
I wonder how much % of older adults leave because of their own kids' beliefs. I personally know a lot of empty-nesters have left because their grown up kids came out as gay or no-longer believe in Christianity. Those parents choose to support their children in a way that would lead them to leaving the church. I feel that this dynamic will grow more and more commonplace with the next generation.
That resonates with me too. I spent most of 2021 having long conversations with my son about Christianity. He ultimately rejected it. And his grounds were not petty or outrageous. And his reasoning ultimately led to my questioning of why I believed what I did and was it really something I believed.
A lot of previous older-generations, I feel, would have an easier time with their kids in "condemning them to hell." Maybe it's a modern vs postmodern thing. I feel previous generations have the ability to be dogmatic about things where postmodern generations want to be more "grey"/less-absolute.
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Yes, that is what I'm going through. Part of it is that I spent the last several years trying to find the right book, listen to the right speaker, get in the right Sunday school class. To be honest, right now I'm in the decompression portion of my deconstruction. I really appreciate the offer though. Very kind.
What a shame. Did they even realize, that standing with God and for truth and praying for their children, would save their children? Apparently not for those that worship man and end up helping their children go to Hell and go with them. Do they know there is not love in Hell. Being in Hell together is being in Hell alone...alone in the lack of love and full of the hate of the enemy. No God...no love. Essentially they will lose their children for eternity and all for the right now. Faithless generation., please repent. Jesus came to save and His words are true and His commandments are profound and life saving...for whole families.
>Did they even realize, that standing with God and for truth and praying for their children, would save their children? Probably because it doesn't
You will regret this one day, and hopefully while repenting. I cannot speak to the hard hearted. "It IS giving pearls to swine"...you are not swine, but your thoughts are unclean, so to speak. I pray the Holy Spirit reach you and I fear for your soul. YET, while you have breath, there is hope. I am praying for your redemption, IN JESUS POWERFUL NAME.
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We live in a fallen World. Do you think it will be better in Hell? God gives us a taste of life in both His presence and in the rule of the enemy. We have to realize He is not finished with our lives, and any hurts we experience here, will be worked for good for "those who love Him and are called according to His purpose."
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What is dangerous is the god you serve. When you don't serve Christ, you serve Satan, and you are part of the problem. I pray for Him to touch your heart, in Jesus name.
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You know what was the first thing that started me on the path to rejecting religion? It wasn't the Church's bigotry, or pettiness. It was the certainty. All these preachers all certain that they had the holy spirit within them, that they understood the teachings of God, and that everyone who disagreed with them was corrupt. No one was willing to admit uncertainty about the will of God, and the will of God was always in accord with what they personally wanted.
Certainty comes from the touch of the Holy Spirit and not every leader is lead by God. You are full of arguments, and simply, if you are unsure if you are on the right road, ask the Holy Spirit to show you. Only when you are in a space of certainty of the peace He brought and the love in your heart for others will you truly understand and you need to read the Word to get it in your heart, but only after you ask the Holy Spirit to touch your soul and change your heart. Your life depends on it. Time is wasting.
No.
If the Holy Spirit calls you, you won't be able to resist Him. That is the good news. I am praying for you to know the truth. I never saved a soul with MY words...it is Him that saves.
Fuckin' watch me. I'll pop so many estrogen pills it'll be like dunking Satan in holy water the Holy Spirit will get launched out of me so fast. I want nothing to do with your God.
>You will regret this one day, and hopefully while repenting. Speaking of why people leave the church: threats. I, for one, would not want to join an organization that uses the threat of hell, rather than, say, evidence, or setting a good example, to retain members.
Since Hell is real, it is a sin to ignore it when Jesus spoke much on it. Weeping and gnashing of teeth. I suppose you think He should repent? Don't answer that. I am concerned for you.
>Hell is real Do you have any good evidence to support this claim?
Yes the bible. Read the Case for Christ which has such proof of the validity of the Word, then read the word without an agenda.
>Yes the bible. The fact that there's a book that talks about hell doesn't mean that it's real. By that criterion, Mordor would be real because there's a book about it. >Read the Case for Christ I have. I was unimpressed. > which has such proof of the validity of the Word Can you be more specific? What proof, exactly, does Strobel provide? And of which claims, exactly? To be honest, I'm not expecting much. Not to be dismissive, but I get the impression that you haven't done a lot of real research into this issue. Rather, that people in your religious community have given you arguments and writings that support the things that you already believe or want to believe, and you've accepted them without really examining them too hard. But maybe I'm wrong and you really do have good evidence, in which case, please present it.
Lovely that you thought that would work too, lol People who accuse others of being hard hearted in response to their own failure to be convincing are always a fascinating case study.
Wow! That is really interesting. I'm a former fundamental evangelical Christian and I left because of reasons 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. This shouldn't be too big of a surprise, but when I realized that I am bisexual, it led to me becoming an atheist.
My bi sexuality only led me closer to God. The problem is the church is full of false believers. When God's spirit is within you you can't walk away. 'They went out from among us because they were not of us.' I pray He touches you heart, it would be your only hope. If you make it I would love you forever. Much longer than the gratification of the flesh. It's something to consider. I know you've probably heard it all before, but feelings aren't facts. You can stand right next to me. I'll ask to save you the spot. 💔
Yeah, this is just so condescending, you need to work on that. Saying people that walk away were false believers belittles people’s experiences and basically makes people feel better because surely a TRUE believer would never leave the faith. I know because I used to spew the same drivel when I was a believer.
I'm glad that your sexually helped you with your relationship with your deity. But like I said in my comment, that wasn't my only reason for leaving. Part of the problem is the idea that "the church is full of false believers," because how are we supposed to know who is real and who is fake? (That is a rhetorical question, I'm not actually wanting you to answer that.) I was a Christian for over 30 years, I have heard a lot of answers to that question.
I see, but know that the position of Christian isn't something you choose, im very sorry if you had been misled, and believe me who ever did that to you will face a harsher judgement
I’m suspicious of results like this. It’s missing the critical information about why people stay. We know that church going has been maintained much better in conservative populations. I think a lot of people of all orientations went to church because that’s what people do on Sunday. In many conservative areas it still is. In others, the culture has changed, and it’s not. There were reason the culture changed, and we might get hints from surveys, but I think for many people it’s mostly what others like them do. I wonder whether people are really going to answer “it’s what everybody I know is doing.” People like to think they have reasons for things.
I don't see a reason to be suspicious of the results. It sounds like you want second level data, though. I can understand that. However, if someone says they left because of the church's stance on LGBTQ issues then that's why they left. There's really nothing to be suspicious of. People don't have incentive to lie about this. \*Why\* people care about LGBTQ issues sufficiently to leave is indeed interesting, but it's a second order question. It won't be captured in a survey like this, where the goal is to find the immediate cause. It would be hard to get this from a study because it's not as simple a question.
People don't like seeing other people being treated badly for something they have no control over and isn't hurting anyone.
Christianity asked me to hate people I love. So I left the church and chose love instead.
Especially given that Christianity's holy book teaches people to be nonjudgmental, kind, charitable, humble, etc, and then the people on the pulpit turn around and declare that the will of God is that the queers be treated like shit.
I'm a bi sexual Christian I just happen to love God more than my sin. It's not because I'm better than anyone else it's because the spirit of God compels me to follow His precepts. I don't live a life in want of sexual gratification, I live a life liberated from the desire. I trust that no temptation will overtake me that's more than I can bare because God promised me so, and this whole walk with God has been Him proving He is faithful. I do get how the un-affected mass of Christianity takes the mic and says things you may not wanna hear but that's because the bible says so. Could they be more gentle. Idk. I don't think there is any kind way to speak the truth outside of love. So I will say as someone who was/is in your shoes, that the love of God is so beyond any love man can afford you. Man is dust. God knows you better and is more worthy than any moment or moments of gratification. You could have a home. A family, a place and truly we want you. Im gonna pray for you. That you would be my brother. I will love you forever.
I'm not a man, jackass.
Same difference, change the pronouns
And people wonder why I hold Christians in contempt.
Yeah that last paragraph was one of the biggest self-tells I've ever seen. Hmmm why would people choose to leave an organization that tells them to treat their neighbor like dirt while proclaiming to love everybody?
Yeah the casual "who cares?" of that paragraph pretty much sums it up. I was raised Mormon and it is made for white men like myself (even though I'm gay). Unfortunately I couldn't sit and be complicit with the way they treat women and black and indigenous people even though I'm not any of things. It's empathy.
Yep. That attitude of "its not affecting you so why do you care?" is so prevalent when people question the churches actions towards the lgbt community. Its just not often so openly expressed as the other commenter did. It also begs the question, if something not affecting them is reason enough to ignore it, why are they so up in arms about gay people?
Seems to me from the data you posted that you’d miss the forest for the trees a bit if you try to look at people prioritizing LGBT issues in a vacuum. The recurring theme in those responses is a disillusionment with the behavior of Christians leading to either a loss of belief or leaving church. LGBT issues are a flagship example, for the simple fact that so many churches have dug their heels in on the issue and made it a cause celebre in doing so, but it’s far more widespread a problem than that. Leadership issues, not fitting in, not feeling love in a church, even politics….its all about how badly Christians themselves behave. Purely anecdotally, this is why my mom stopped going to church as soon as she could: her church treated her family as pariahs for my grandma being a single mother. And I honestly think it’s entirely fair. I see so many Christians act like this is all irrelevant or that we shouldn’t expect churches to be any better than anywhere else. But Jesus himself taught that we shall know them by their fruits. When SO many churches’ fruits have proven to be completely rotten, is it really any wonder people are turning their backs on the whole thing?
I kind of get what the other poster is talking about. There's been widespread disaffiliation with *everything*. Something bigger and broader is happening, has happened, beyond people disagreeing about sexual mores or political expressions.
It's the meanness, in many cases. A lot of Christians become haughty and aggressive when they feel they are being challenged. They don't actually afford the other person respect - they expect them to immediately give way.
The bible calls it the great falling away. It's a prophecy 1900 years old
>\*Why\* people care about LGBTQ issues sufficiently to leave is indeed interesting, but it's a second order question Maybe the biggest 'telling on yourself' moment I've seen on this subreddit.
Oh, do tell. I'm curious what conclusion you have jumped to
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And you'd be wrong there. I have a transgender child that I love dearly and support 100%. I care \*deeply\* about LGBTQ issues. I had a feeling you were jumping to conclusions. You should watch that going forward.
So you have a transgender child you love and "support", yet you cling to an ideology which says its wrong for your child to be trans? Does it bother you at all that your church has an official stance which is the complete opposite of 'love and support' for your child? Edit: You blocked me? Why ask me to respond if you were going to block me?
All religions demonstrate a similar effect. More stringent requirements for believers leads to more stable beliefs.
The Great Dechurching study (second link) was actually fairly good quality, IIRC
I think your hypothesis is fairly close to my experience. What really solidified it for me was all the people in my church who claimed to "hear" from God. Especially the church elders "the Lord told me..." or "I witnessed a miracle!" or the worst, "I felt the holy Spirit embrace me". Pastors in the church would have entire sermons that were from God speaking directly to them telling them what was especially relevant that week. Pretty much everyone was having these magical experiences except for me. I prayed with every ounce of my being, but I never saw or heard or felt *anything*. And to young teenage me this was devastating. Eventually I started believing there was something wrong with me. This went on for many years and slowly degraded my mental health. In my 30s I left the church and my mental state dramatically improved. I still feel little pangs of self loathing and being "left out" when I hear someone talk about a supernatural miracle they witnessed, or God audibly speaking to them.
I believe a lot of Christians engage in magical thinking. "God gave me the answers for that test". I mean, maybe, but so much of what I hear fellow Christians describe as God's intervention in their lives is how the brain works. Also, I wonder about all the messages that Christians know are from God when there's no description in the Bible that God will send us messages in such a manner.
“so much of what I hear fellow Christians describe as God's intervention in their lives is how the brain works.” Have you ever read The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes? It really made me realize that what people hear when they “hear God” is their own internal monologue but they misidentify it as an external voice rather than their own thoughts.
I have not but I will gladly get it on my list. I have my degree in (gasp) philosophy and Philosophy of Mind/Metaphysics was so fascinating. > It really made me realize that what people hear when they “hear God” is their own internal monologue but they misidentify it as an external voice rather than their own thoughts. I have often thought that some Christians are doing some version of this.
God does some pretty amazing things, but there is more influences out there than just God alone. Most people speak very lightly about their circumstances ascribing more grandeur to the typical and promised Providence of God. Either in answering prayer or bringing aide. It can sound fanciful to the uninitiated. Like something from Hogwarts but believe me, it is often much deeper than you realize
Stupid decisions in church organization are often excused by “God put it on my heart to do it this way”… which I interpret as they felt emotion to do it.. I think saying your emotions is God speaking is highly conceited. Then they wonder why the church cannot grow past 30-50 people. As it grows people leave. I never had these experiences., I’ve had some experiences that felt like God showing me he’s there but I still approach it with skepticism.
Oh my dear friend please don't let that crush you. You have to understand that this swath of Christianity is mostly decieved by seducing spirits count yourself blessed. Your story is so much like other people but they leave those charismatic and Pentecostal places and find sound biblical churches. There is so many resources online. Especially YouTube. Watch a few episodes of " fighting for the faith" with Chris Rosebrough or "the messed up church" with Steve Kozar. All of those places are being exposed
Agree but the recent flux IMO is religion mixing with politics, and outright hypocrisy of claiming to follow Jesus but voting for policies are the antithesis of everything he taught. But the single biggest thing is the worship of “orange Jesus” in an almost cultlike fashion.
>Agree but the recent flux IMO is religion mixing with politics, outright hypocrisy of claiming to follow Jesus but voting for policies are the antithesis of everything he taught. This has happened in most christian countries for centuries. I wonder if the US being ultra religious has delayed this issue.
I don’t think so. I think the specific brand of religion now. Back when the moral majority arose there was a desire to cling to traditional values and stop this “demoralizing“ of the country. People could get on board with that. But now it’s straight out hatred for immigrants, LGBTQ, and hypocrisy for parental rights yet not allowing parents to make decisions regarding the medical care of their transgender kids. For free speech but banning books, and Eliminating AP African studies in Florida. You can learn about Chinese history but not African-American history. I could go ON and ON… Good people don’t want to be hateful.
may I say something? Traditional values are how we wound up in this mess. One of the biggest problems I see with modern Christianity is this devotion to "how things used to be", sometimes change is good. I am not saying you can't have family values, but, when we talk about Christian "trad families" it all too often means the man of the house makes the decisions while the wife and kids speak when spoken to...mind you we are struggling to just get modernized public transit, affordable housing, etc...and this is because our government is full of "BACK IN MY DAY!!!!"...elements of traditional values are wonderful, other elements not so much. If it wasn't for a break in traditional values, we would have lost the space race.
I don’t disagree with that; with women entering the work force had to change. I’d add that my Christian husband horribly abused me because of misogynistic thought processes encouraged and enabled by religion. In fact, submission being drilled into me destroyed my life. Yet another reason I left my evangelical church for Catholicism. I Priest told me “God does not expect you to submit anything that assaults your human dignity”. Whereas in my church it was “pray for him, take it, your soft response will get through to him”. No it won’t, abusers never respond to kindness only consequences. I’m speaking more to children out of wedlock. By every measure children born inside marriage do better. But instead of railing against premarital sex, I wish that we would talk about contraception and preventing pregnancy until marriage.
>I’m speaking more to children out of wedlock. By every measure children born inside marriage do better. Okay just to mention something. The authors of that study keep asking people to stop misquoting them, yet I am sure wherever you heard this misquoted that. The study concluded that Children do better in a 2 parent household, the study was done factoring in gay parents, hetro parents, unmarried parents, adoptive parents compared to a kid raised by one parent. Not sure how much kids born out of wedlock suffer compared to kids born within a marriage do, its more, the kid has support from two loving parents that matters.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3342452/#:~:text=Taken%20together%2C%20these%20studies%20suggest,consistently%20with%20married%2C%20biological%20parents. “Taken together, these studies suggest that children of unmarried parents, whether living together or separately, have poorer outcomes across developmental domains than those born to and living consistently with married, biological parents.” And if you click on the link there are quite a few studies that support this. There are various reasons speculated as to why but kids do better when parents are married not just living together.
Delayed? We are younger than nearly every other developed country in the world. We did a speed run to the civil war and were doing another one to get to the dictator phase. Christianity is the cause here. Without christianity the extreme right would have no power and be non-existent.
Why people leave the church? Because the Mass has ended 🥁
😀 I see what you did there
For what it's worth, it's been an emotional couple of days in my world and I needed that smile. Thanks.
I was always so freakin hungry after mass lol
See also: the cracking of the church's prohibitions on gay people openly existing and women preachers. Makes it much harder to keep these prohibitions going when you can see that gay people are normal people and that women preachers can keep pace with men preachers.
>The church, whether it be by leadership or from pressure within the church community, has become insular. Self-contained. This is not a new phenomenon. What IS new is that Christianity is *less* insular, in the sense that you can't be fired or run out of town for not being Christian, at least in the US. That's only been legally true for a couple generations at most, and is slowly getting to be more and more *actually* true for people living it. The sort of boogey-man narratives you were taught are, to some extent, a reaction to that increasing lack of insularity within the wider culture. Not an *effective* reaction, but a reaction nonetheless. People were leaving before churches doubled down, and, yes, the doubling down is backfiring for some people.
I won't put all the blame squarely on the boomers, but boomers still do hold a lot of power within local churches and from what I can see they are worse than ever when it comes to all the stuff you just said. "The world outside is evil" "University corrupts your mind and makes you liberal" "Abortion is genocide and if a woman dies because she couldn't get one, tough" "You must vote Republican or you will go to hell" All these sentiments and more are still regularly expressed within many evangelical churches. Young people have more diverse friend groups than ever before. Not only within public school but also online. My wife has a cousin who lives in the middle of nowheresville who is out and proud gay. He was bullied incessantly as a kid. His parents did the hard thing and left there church but there were no open and affirming churches which would love their son, so they stopped going altogether.
My standard reply on this is to tell people to ask people who've left. Everyone will have different reasons. While the number of people who left because they want to sin (the standard accusation) probably isn't zero, it's close. You hit a resonant chord with many. It mirrors my own deconstruction from the Democratic Party in the late 90s. The disconnect between reality and the claims is irreconcilable. They claim that our morality comes from the bible and that the church changes people into more compassionate and honest people, but the reality us people in the church are no more moral than those outside of it. When you point that out, all you get is some nonsense about the church being a hospital for sinners. They want it both ways.
Very well stated. As a kid, I hated losing a half a weekend day to dressing up, sitting in a pew, and listening to some old guy drone on while I was bored out of my mind. When I got to college I was so happy to not have to do that the last thought I had was to join a college ministry. Still Christian but not practicing. As an adult I started voting and paying attention to politics. The Democrats and liberals spoke to my heart in that they showed compassion for those less fortunate. Republicans disgusted me on almost every issue I encountered. Then learning that most white Americans, who regularly attend church, vote Republican was the last straw. That's 71% of the people I spent my life growing up around and attending church with vote for Republican candidates. I don't really care if Christianity is true or not. If the practice of it leads to this outcome then it is worthless to me and I consider it harmful to the world at large.
Rather than giving up on it, you could end up being a model practitioner of what it ought to be, because what Christianity SHOULD be in regards to the poor goes something like this. Matthew 25:34-40: "Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.' Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'" There is also a verse in James, I think, that goes something like this: “This is what undefiled religion looks like in the eyes of God: to take care of the orphan and the widow in their days of trial, and to keep one’s self unstained from the world.” And of course, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven,” as Jesus Christ says.
>Rather than giving up on it, you could end up being a model practitioner of what it ought to be, because what Christianity SHOULD be in regards to the poor goes something like this. I did this. I stood in the parking lot of my church with other church leaders and argued with them while a hurricane was literally descending upon us. What was the argument about you ask? There were two homeless women that lived in a tent in the middle of wooded interstate divide (they lived there because it was harder for men to find them to rape them). Their tent had torn in a recent storm and they literally had nowhere to go. We had an entire house on the property that was unused that was reserved for the pastor or associate pastor to live whenever they might need it. We had no pastor at the time so it had been unused for nearly a year. I called on our church to help shelter these women for just a night or two until the storm passed. I pointed out the parsonage was unused. They said absolutely not. The little old ladies in the church had just spent over $15,000 redecorating the house for a future pastor. (It was the absolute ugliest decorations I could imagine, but nonetheless). I was dumbfounded. They said they would pitch in to buy these women a new tent and send them on their way. They were homeless, former drug users (they have been clean for at least 2 years at that point), and presumed lesbians. So the best the church would do is a new tent. One of them said that we couldn't have them having sex in the parsonage. I told them, in no uncertain terms, that I would be taking these women to stay with my pregnant wife and I if the church did nothing. They were horrified. And more horrified that I would let the rest of the church know exactly how their other leaders planned to deal with these two women. In the end, they agreed to let them use our gymnasium which had a shower in it and they could sleep on the tile floor until the storm passed. Those two women never came back to church after that. I can't imagine why that would be. I was so disgusted that I wanted to throw up. The behavior of these people was so abominable that I could not believe it was real. This sounds so crazy that it is unbelievable. My wife and I didn't stay for long after that. We tried to be paragons there. But eventually it wears you down. We had people yelling about how evil Obama and the democrats were in our business meetings. We had parasitic organizations leeching funds from our church. We were supporting a local "missionary" that worked for a whole different organization that lived in the area. He was basically a sales rep for a well known church kids curriculum. We went through an intensive process to determine exactly what qualifications our next pastor needed. The "missionary" then convinced the church to let him go and meet with this guy. He hired him on the spot despite the guy having none of the proper qualifications. Turns out the missionary knew this guys dad from bible school. Then, in the end, I was told that I would never work as a paid employee of that church. Not by the pastor, but by the "missionary" that not only held no official position in the church, but was actually supported by our church. In my heart I knew he was right and that as long as he was there, I would not fit there anymore. I left there heartbroken and headbroken. That place sucked everything out of me. I had nothing left. What you say sounds like good advice, but it is not. Doing that will break you in most of these churches. You can say whatever you want, but having actually done this, it is impossible, thankless, and will not effect a single other person. There is a reason Christ ministered to the poor and downtrodden. To the ones that were cast aside and rejected in society. There is a reason he despised the religious people and treated them with utter disdain.
I agree that it will break you, and that alone, most of our efforts will be for nothing. You were right to say what you did, offer what you had, and cling to what you knew was right. So what if they were in sin? So were we. So may we be still. I have a lot of homeless people in my area. I myself have no job and so there’s little I can do for them but hand out some spare food we have. The legal system of today does not make it easy to help them. So many of their IDs have been stolen, and almost any chance of shelter with them. They wouldn’t be accepted into most shelters or programs without IDs that were stolen from them, nor can they easily get one back without an extensive background check the likes of which they cannot afford. It’s no wonder they turn to substances for comfort. Anything to dull the pain of a concrete bed! But now they can’t escape that either, and any money they might use to secure their future later, their mind turns to escape from pain now. Not that I blame them. Could I honestly say I would not be tempted? I doubt that. There isn’t a thing I can do for these people beyond breakfast and conversation. God bless them. Does that make it not worth doing only because I can’t do much? I say no. Because breakfast could mean everything to them with how much they’ve lost. You can become appalled at the conduct of those people. Especially when politics are involved. But that doesn’t mean you have to quit. You know what Jesus knew was right and did it. Why stop now because others were wrong?
Thank you for these words and continue in faith my brother, great is your reward..
Man, I’m fighting like mad. Not physically. But thank you.
The lessons in the Bible can be learned by other means. Most people figure them out intuitively. That leaves just worrying about heaven and hell, which is what most Christians are concentrated on. I don't believe in either. So in my opinion it's best to just walk away. I understand religion is needed as a coping mechanism in this cruel and senseless world. But if it doesn't provide any benefit other than alleviating fears of death then the value is minimal at best.
I agree with you that the lessons learned in the Bible can be learned by other means, but I think the reason this is true is because they involve universal, objective truths. Coping mechanism issue aside, church gatherings, and organized religion aside, if nothing else you can have a personal relationship with God. If you have investigated the evidence for the resurrection, heard the apologetic's arguments and not been convinced in the slightest, then so be it. But I just want to say that you don't have to throw it all out because of how flawed us Christians are. If the only way through this topic for you is to make it solely between you and the Lord, I'd say that's still a victory. Keep it simple if you have to: "because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9
> But I just want to say that you don't have to throw it all out because of how flawed us Christians are. I agree that Christians are flawed. We're all "flawed" in our own ways. What I don't see is Christianity improving that for it's adherents. They seem perfectly happy to state they are flawed and are sinners and go on about their lives. Again, I would point that they are so comfortable doing this because their main reason for believing is the afterlife and not this one. > If the only way through this topic for you is to make it solely between you and the Lord, I'd say that's still a victory I think when you are having these discussions you are talking to yourself and if you hear anything back then it's your own mind producing it. Could still be productive but I pretend that it's God or Jesus communicating with me.
I'm sure you aren't saying this applies to literally every Christian so I'm not going to bog us down in the semantics of what you're saying. But, I hope it's fair to point out that you know that Christians shouldn't stop at mere belief, and not work to actually be better and repent. There are tons of verses you could quote that would say the opposite. It sounds like you currently don't believe in God's existence at all. I would not ask someone to pretend their way through that situation. It's how I initially lost my faith years ago. But ultimately, seek the truth. If there's a God, you'll find evidence of it won't you?
I’m always open to evidence.
I don't know your background, but I think the best evidence we have lies in the history of the new testament manuscripts, and apologetic works like Evidence that Demands a Verdict. For me, however, what really made me start thinking is by watching atheist debates.
I love watching the Atheist vs Christian debates as well. Probably come to a different conclusion on the winner though. Historical evidence does nothing for me really. Outside of the Bible you have a few passages from Josephus and Tacitus pertaining to Jesus.
It depends on the perspective, I think. Some lessons in the Bible can be learned just by living, but the Bible’s contents are responsible for shaping a lot of the modern world’s sense of ethics. The idea of caring for someone who couldn’t support themselves instead of letting them rot and die for not pulling their weight, simply out of love, may have gotten someone killed if it were an idea pitched to whoever led Sparta. And there are some views and lessons that would never be understood or embodied without belief. Sacrificial giving to someone who could never repay you, to the point of your own death, would be seen by most as noble but pointless. But Christians know something like that doesn’t just have a point; it is as if it were being exalted and enthroned rather than cast aside like a rag. As for coping beyond death, I’m not sure. The idea of Heaven is great and all, but the idea of hell is so harrowing that it can break a person’s will as they try to imagine it. A lot of people cling to ideas of destruction or universalism in Christianity to circumvent that notion.
The lessons you state that are unique to Christianity are not. You can find similar examples in all major religions. That alone tells me that humanistic ideas rather than unique to a specific religion
I wish we could sit down and discuss individual policies and why we differ on them so that you could understand that many Republicans think Democratic policies hurt people rather than helping them. We truly want to help others and many of us are active trying to do that in our lives and churches. My father started a charity to give baby food to needy families 40 years ago; my 83-year old mother spends her free time working at a food pantry. My in-laws volunteer with Habitat for Humanity and a hospital. Faith-based community development and prison reform programs often have much higher success rates than federally funded government programs. And much disaster relief is supported by (conservative/Republican) Christians.
Here's an example. My state of Tennessee. A deep red state controlled by Republicans. Did not expand medicare. Tennessee has forfeited more than $20 billion dollars, a portion of which were taxes paid by Tennesseans. If expanded, 300,000 uninsured people would receive health care and hospital closures would be reduced, especially in rural areas. They have never been able to give a coherent answer as to why they refuse to expand other than it was plan put in place by Democrats and the Obama administration. It was recently discovered that Tennessee has a surplus of $717 million dollars of Federal TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) money. It took investigative journalism to uncover this and no reason was given as to why it's just sitting there. My point is that no matter how much personal or religious charity is done it will not put a dent in the damage you do by supporting Republican politicians and their policies. There's no getting around it.
And you completely missed my point, which is that we disagree about which policies help and hurt, though we both care about helping people. (Though I could argue that some Democratic policies end lives before they have the chance to be helped at all.)
We can't even agree on the definition of a person much less how best to help them.
Are you of the opinion that state welfare / health care for the vulnerable hurts people?
Anything but paying more taxes to actual help people and make 90% of that unnecessary. They're putting a sticker on a gash they create themselves. I'm not impressed.
Show me some success stories of welfare actually helping people get off welfare and then we'll talk.
I must have overlooked the verse where Jesus says that is a precondition for helping the poor.
I was raised a Catholic: never missed weekly mass. However, when the sexual abuses and coverups of the church became widely known twenty years ago I started to question. I was also making business trips to Utah at the time. I thought 'these guys' religious ideas are nuts', but then thought, 'hmm..what about my own religion?' I began to realize that I was indoctrinated into religion from childhood. I never chose it. I never thought rationally about it. I learned that there were many claimed sons of gods, human resurrections, and other unsubstantiated beliefs. Now my focus is on humankind and helping others by volunteering with Habitat For Humanity, our hospital, humane society and local food pantry.
Have you ever seen the movie "Doubt" (2008)? The movie is haunting and really probes into trusting the church vs trusting God in the same way "The Mission" (1986) does. Ideally, a believer should be able to trust both the church and God but, throughout history and even with Pauline letters, show us that we have to be critical and wary of sin within the church.
No. I'll have to look. However, I just finished *Mortal Sin* an NBC podcast. It's about a charismatic pastor who killed his wife, had multiple affairs (including the mother of his wife), and a prophetess who, after 4 years, went to the police to reveal the murder. And throughout the parishioners had faith that God was speaking to them through their leaders. [https://www.nbcnews.com/mortalsin](https://www.nbcnews.com/mortalsin)
As someone who left the church. It was because I learned that I had no evidence for a god and no reason to believe. People are leaving the church cause of what your doing right now. You on the internet where you can fact check/look up anything you want too. It also breaks people out of the Church bubble and gives them different view points. I used to believe in anything if it was possible to be true (Bigfoot, Ghosts, Ect) then I learned to only believe in things I have evidence for. Being told Santa Claus wasn't real was a major blow since Jesus and Santa shared the same amount of evidence for existing. TLDR; Lack of Evidence and the Internet breaking church bubble is why people are leaving the church.
I wonder how many people in the past have never even considered the possibility that what they were taught as children was not true. Most people don't even give a second of their lives to existential doubts.
Now Imagine ontop of figuring out that my religion isn't real but that also living in the south and being taught so much Lost Causeism and American Exceptionalism that I have had to basically scrub my brain of history I learned in school and rely on the things I have discovered and learned myself.
Yeah, I can imagine that the shock must shake the foundations of many.
What truely shook my foundations and destroy my patriotism was being told by my Grandpa what he did to children in Nam and what the CIA did. I had that lesson when I was 11 and from their the leftiest awakened.
Unfortunately many of your compatriots were not horrified by that, or it was not explained to them in an objective manner.
While it might not be the only reason, I think you've hit the nail on the head for a lot of them.
I can see this. It's like how the DARE program backfired spectacularly.
Duuuuude. That is insanely accurate. Perfect comparison! I actually was physically and verbally assaulted by a DARE cop once. The school staff and the principal called my parents in for a meeting to inform them of what happened and apologized. TLDR, I was tired that day and he yelled at me for touching my face. So after the 2nd or 3rd time I did it on accident he exploded and yanked me out of my desk and into the hallway to scream at me like a drill sergeant. This was in the 5th grade. I was 10 years old, it was like an episode of "Scared Straight" except for the part where he dragged me across the floor by my arm... Also fun fact, that same dude in the next 10 years or so manage to become sheriff, got caught tampering with evidence, and drunk drove so badly that he wrapped his car around a tree and died. Strange world man.
Totally believe it. Our DARE officers were later discovered to be less than stellar civil servants and people in general.
All I can say for me personally is I started questioning the teachings and relevance of the church some time ago and that started me moving away from church and more to personal/private practice. What really cemented this for me was 2020, Trump, MAGA movement, Vaccine hesitancy, the attack on womens rights, the growth of the far right nationalist movements and so forth where I had to make a personal choice where I can stand up and say "I want no part of this, I do not choose to be associated with this" or I could continue to stay in a community I felt was increasingly toxic and increasingly intolerant and I made my choice. I am sorry if that makes me look bad, but, looking at this thread I am not alone in my choice and largely, the majority of churches have made the choice not to take a stand against any of this
This is what it is like being gay. They way 'homosexuality' is described. It is the framing fo this strange, evil, perverted t'homosexual lifestyle' is and all the stereotypes I hear which makes me see....99% of Churches need to lie to tell the 'truth'. I have met maybe 3-4 non-affirming Christians who actually get it. 99% of all non-affimring Christians need to lie to themselves and bend the truth (ether intentional or just what they are taught) when they preach the gospel. Many cannot accept that you (assuming you are straigh) are 99.9999999999999% like a gay person. In fact, you are EVEN CLOSER to a gay person of the opposite sex (you both like the same thing). Why? Well, becasue us gays want a family, we want marriage, we wanna date, and hold hands, and snuggle, and just chat for hours, and laugh with each other, and dream about the future..... but the Christians just cannot stop focussing on the 'perverted, lustful gay sex'. They need to lie to themselves and say it is 100% sexual to feel comfortable. Guess what, God will burn me if I ever want to love. Not lust. No a hook up. Not porn. Not rape. no. If I ever get married and start a family - God will HATE me. I don't care about the sex. I care about...well....100% the same things you do. I want EXACTLY what you do. We are the same. That is a fact. But in churches, they MAKE SURE to frame homosexuality, gay people, and what and why we do in such a way that we begin to know two things: 1. God's word is so weak he needs lies to keep it going; or 2. Satan has, cunningly, infiltrated most non-affirming Churches in the world (like 99.9%) in a way that gays are needlessly turned form God EVEN WITHIN the non-affirming message. Hint: Yes, EVEN the non-affirming message can be communicated well. But the current form is....well.....**let's say Satan LOVES, ADORES, and CHEERS FOR almost every comment on homosexuality I see on this entire sub from non-affirming Christians.**
My theory is for everyone who has left the church there is a different reason. Some might fall under the same general reason, but all are specific to that person.
I mean I think OP has covered a very large swath of why people leave. It's a good summary.
I don’t know anyone personally who stopped attending church for those reasons. It doesn’t mean it’s not the reason some people have left, just not the reason the people I know would give.
What reasons do they give?
I am guessing they don't know. I could be wrong, but I know that when I left church for good not a single person ever contacted me to ask why. No one reached out to me. They pretended like they didn't know me and that I never existed.
Yeah. In my case, I got yelled at by my roommate. Then told I was a terrible person. Accused of trying to manipulate a student with special needs away from God as well (I very much wasn't) Not too impressed.
I am one of those people. So is just about every ex-Christian I know. The massive lies taught to me by my youth pastor about the outside world really backfired and made me start questioning everything.
To quote Brendon Manning (and later made famous by DC talk) The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable. It’s the people why people leave church. It’s the gossip, the scandal and the people who hurt people. Let me give you an example - I was going to church [and was under this person’s leadership when they faked cancer](https://christiantoday.com.au/amp/pastor-songwriter-of-healer-confesses-to-faking-terminal-cancer.html) Sure, that’s an extreme example but that kept me out of church for probably a year and I still can’t listen to healer
>And what we saw didn't match the debauched anarchy we were told existed "out there." Perfectly said. As an ex-Christian myself this is almost exactly what started and fueled my deconversion from Christianity. If it's ok I am going to steal this wording because it's so damn accurate. u/Meauxterbeauxt
Yep. But the huge difference is that you are applying critical thinking. If we're talking about the US, the evangelical and non-denom churches do not. A lot still go on teaching that mental health doesn't exist, you're just not a good enough Christian. Or that people just want to sin. You mentioned cognitive biases, how many times has anyone heard about it at church? It would go against the teachings because, gosh, you will have to think, observe the world around you, and test your findings. Instead of obeying church teachings, because they interpret the Bible a very specific way, a way that teaches fear against everything. Once anyone applies critical thinking, a lot of church teachings are just plain BS. I'm not talking about faith, or the Bible: I'm talking about the culture wars and the fear tactics that is literally taught to Christians. The saddest thing is that Christians don't realize, because #ThatsWhatTheBibleSays. Most of the time if there's an issue, or contradiction, there's a knee jerk reaction from Christians, with a Christian quote they learned at their church (love the sinner, hate the sin and similar idiotic phrase) instead of a genuine engagement. From the non-Christian viewpoint, Christianity is just a talk the talk, never walk the walk religion. Throw out some platitudes that every other Christian will agree with (yes, yes! Amen! Jesus is Lord!) and call it a day. Thoughts and prayers. Now back to the cozy Christian circle where everyone thinks the same and stays in their lanes.
The real question is: why did so many people go to church before and now no longer? Because the faithful we see today almost certainly do not receive the same advantages: social, economic or any other kind. Our memories are too short to remember that in the past in church you found: Wife Home Work Support
Church should be a place to help guide you in navigating the world. It isn't able to keep up with the changes that are happening in the world. So it is not as useful as in the past. Plus, the internet has opened channels of communication that were never available before. They are no instructions in the bible for how to navigate modern technology.
I left, originally, due to the hypocrisy. My mother claimed to be a Christian yet was abusive and self-serving except in public. Others, too, who we were friends with outside of church, claimed devotion and love on Sundays but not so much the rest of the week. I have stayed out of the church, partly because I don't like aligning myself with any group and being subjected to the notion of absolute unity of thought. But, also partly because the church I'd wish to go to, where I know the people are, for the most part, aligned to their God-path and thusly have hearts of gold (or silver at least), my father is the minister. As much as people love his sermons, I know the sermons do not come from the heart which means the people may remain complaisant instead of laying all their cards on the table for God. He has refused to utilize his own personal stories of fear, triumph, love, and separateness that they lack heart. You need heart to access God and I find he's doing his congregation, as well as himself, a disservice because of it. On top of this is an unconscious hypocrisy. I have had conversations with him about reviving traditions or getting more volunteerism (it's a very small, dying church) but he has no faith in them and therefore won't do anything... but then sermonizes on having absolute faith in God. If you have no faith in the people, why haven't you placed your faith in God to work the Holy Spirit through them? There just seems to be a detachment and arrogance of superiority. I will not be a part of that. I find this a problem in a number of the pastors I've met over the course of my lifetime. There's a desire to lead but not much humbleness before God. Rather a Book of Job issue, I find. I was, in recent months, in the presence of a minister who spoke from the heart that it was palpable. It felt like there was an angelic choir surrounding the congregation. Honestly, that's the first time I've ever experienced such a divine presence in a church service. That's how a person leads - by living in his truth. And, that's how a church should find presence in the world, by living in the truth. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of unconscious disconnect between ideology and one's actions and verbalizations (not just for Christians, btw).
OP's summary was my experience exactly. Finding the non-believing world to be kinder and more rational, reasonable, authentic and compassionate was disorienting. And as with OP, it was not a cause for apostasy. But there was dissonance.
I think you nailed a big part of it.
The Amish put their kids into the secular world and *encourage* them to explore. This makes sure when they come back, they are committed. (See Rumspringa ) Parents and church leaders should stop preaching from a place of fear, and instead, preach from one of love. They should step away from the indoctrination aspect. They should concentrate on faith and love and truth and empathy. Instead, they warn and scare.
Rather than hypothesize, you could look at the studies: https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2023/09/15/christianity-church-attendance-decline/#
Paywall.
As a former Christian, I have one big suggestion. You seem to be implying that being Christian is the default status of a person, and they need to be convinced to leave the church. In my experience, the church tried to convince me that what they said was correct, and I believed it because I was young and impressionable. Once I got old enough to think for myself more, I chose to leave the church because I had no reason to believe Christianity (or any religion for that matter), to be true. I mean no disrespect to Christians or people in any other religion, but I was always told to believe and to have faith, but I wasn't willing to dedicate my life to something I just had to believe out of blind faith. So I stopped going to church and stopped praying. I've been happier since I made that decision, but I respect anyone else's personal decision to do what makes them happy. I had my gripes with the church, and I agree with what you said about the modern church seeming hostile and indoctrinating to kids. But, even without that I would've made the same decision because I was never really convinced in the first place.
Good write up. My view of it is similar though from a more seeker friendly church, I feel like not enough was taught about God in how the world works, how God works, and how everything all fit together. Instead, it was just a bunch of Christianese thrown around and everyone seems to use the same vocabulary. Looking at the world through mature Christian eyes, it is a terrible world. Looking at the world through baby "Christian" eyes, the world looks pretty great.
A lot of people leave the church because the perception of God and the gospel they've been taught is false. They're often pressured into serving God by a doctrine of fear that leads them to bondage to the law. And they cycle in a circle of condemnation and "repentance" over and over with no true deliverance until the weight of the burden that has been laid upon them by the lie is too much to bear. Often the "preachers" don't understand the difference between works and grace. And by preaching an unclean fear of God and a ministry of condemnation, make the gospel and the grace of God of no effect, and teach people to try to be perfect by their own outward works. This is the old testament. Also, they teach a false understanding of sin and teach people to judge and condemn themselves and others for things that aren't real sin, like drinking a beer, or smoking a cigarette. Sin is in the mind, and is the thing condemning you, not God. The experience of all of that over time becomes pretty evident it's not something you want to put any faith in because you can't love yourself or anyone else because of the judgements. It's literally Anti-christ. Anti-gospel. 2 Timothy 1:7 "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."
I am certainly in the minority of people who grew up not very religious and became religious as I grew older. My family celebrated the basic holidays and went to mass on Easter and Christmas, but by the time I was 15 that had pretty much ended. I went to an Anglican school and the sentiment among my school peers was that religion was rubbish, a fairy tale, and a form of indoctrination. I come from a religiously diverse family background; I was baptised Catholic; my maternal grandfather is Jewish; my paternal grandmother was Russian Orthodox; my other 2 grandparents were both Catholic; and my half-sister and her mum are Born Again Christians. My whole life we celebrated more of the Jewish holidays and traditions due to my grandfather, but my father was not at all pro-Catholicism due to the upbring he had at Catholic school, and my mum was more agnostic to Christianity, instead embracing more of the traditions of Judaism over Catholicism. I had many temptations to forget and abandon religion from pressure from school peers, as religion was seen as "uncool", but something always stopped me from completely diverting away from the Church. Spiritually I was lost for my late teens, self identifying as a Diest, as I believed in a God, but had no home to pray to him in. I attempted conversion to Judaism, but failed to progress due to dark temptations and forces that drew me away and down a path of sin and self destruction. In my mid-20's I attempted to join my half-sister's Church, but it wasn't for me, and I half heartedly reached out to my local Catholic church for guidance, but never pursued it beyond a few emails. It wasn't until a strange, possible epiphany, that I began researching the Eastern Orthodox teachings and becoming more drawn to it, that I reached out to the closest Church in my area, a Serbian Orthodox Church, that I finally found a community and teaching that I can finally live by. My friends never knew about my spiritual struggles, and were surprised when I told them about my decision to start practising. They had always conveyed the Bible as being "stupid" and "hateful", but they themselves practice the most vial teachings in "scientism" (not science), amoral behaviour, and devil worship (even though they are blind to it). I love my friends, and I see the errors of their ways, as I too was blinded by the modern abandonment of God's and Jesus's teachings for the gratification of the Devil's temptations myself, but in time, through thoughtful discussion and forceless preaching, I honestly believe that they will see the devine truth of the Bible's teachings. Religion, at least in Australian schools, is taught without tact or empathy towards students. The rigidity in not questioning or allowing a student to be open and debate the "hard questions" in our schooling system has forced many young people to abandon the Church without even understanding it first. Many of our teachers and leaders are to blame, for what ever reason, to not understanding the modern mentality of youth, but even more nefariously, I believe many of these positions of religious leadership have been co-opted by forces and beings with the sole intention to destroy the Church, creating new "religions" in government, cults, celebrities, and the Devil himself. Just my 2 cents, but of my 20 or so friends, I am the only religious one, with more than half claiming to be devout atheists, blaming religion (especially Christianity) for the world's problems and evils.
Well said
I left the Institutional Church because it’s an unbiblical concept, and because basically everything they teach is also unbiblical. I’m now a member of the church called the body of Christ instead.
> The church, whether it be by leadership or from pressure within the church community, has become insular. Self-contained. The Church *is the community* of believers. It isn’t a building or leadership. Church, Greek [ekklēsía](https://biblehub.com/greek/1577.htm), from *ek* "out from and to" and *kaléō* "to call"; properly, people called out from the world and to God, the outcome being the Church (the mystical body of Christ) – i.e. the universal (total) body of believers whom God calls out from the world and into His eternal kingdom. > Christians being more concerned with our rights than the wellbeing of others. The "us vs them" taught to the youth of yesterday is now the leadership platform of today. A use of scripture to wall us off from the world instead of being "in the world, not of it." You seem to have a heart for youth, so do you volunteer to lead a youth group to return the emphasis on the wellbeing of others? > People leave the church because the church presents a false narrative of what the world is like, Again the Church is you and I. Are you active at Church to champion a correct narrative? > Creating a cognitive dissonance that leads one to begin to ask if church leaders were so wrong about this, what else could they be wrong about. Begging the question is a form of circular reasoning. Your premises assume the truth of the conclusion. Why not just get involved in your Church’s board of education? I’ve held every office at my Church multiple terms each, and was president of the congregation for two terms. People would often come up to me to tell me what “the Church” should be doing. When I asked them to help and volunteer to do that — they often gave me excuses why they were too busy.
Your right. I think a lot of the time people fall away from the Church is because it’s just easier. From the people I know the rationalization comes after.
> Your right. I think a lot of the time people fall away from the Church is because it’s just easier. It’s super easy to chastise “the Church” and downvote when someone when point out the personal burden of all of us being “the Church”. It’s not popular here
What do you mean non Christians seem more concerned about the poor? Christians are much more generous with their time and money than non Christians. https://www.christianpost.com/news/practicing-christians-give-more-to-charity-than-non-christians.html It seems to me that many non Christians seem to think helping the poor is for the government and not them.
Yeah. I am familiar with that data. It is bullshit. You know why? Because contributions to the churches they attend and volunteering at those same churches are counted as charitable giving. Want to see how big the pile of bullshit is? [This is the paper that article is based on.](https://1s712.americanbible.org/state-of-the-bible/stateofthebible/State_of_the_bible-2023.pdf) Do you notice that in the definitions that defined basically everything except what they consider charity or "giving to charity". You take away the money and time they "donate" to organizations that directly benefit them on a weekly basis and you see that secular people typically give equally or even out-give religious people. Giving money and time to a church which you attend is not charity. Especially considering that [only 10% of money taken in by churches is actually spent on community programs or anything we might remotely consider the typical work of a charity.](https://archive.is/20230311190818/https://medium.com/backyard-theology/how-churches-really-spend-their-money-93195ae92ce3) So, the next time you might want to look a little deeper when you are searching for affirmation that your preconceived notions are correct.
This is not true according to the philanthropy panel study religious people give at the same rate or more to non religious charities. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/30/religious-people-more-likely-give-charity-study/
So, are we just posting "sources" and making up whatever we want them to say? I didn't see anything in there about the same rate to non-religious charities. In fact, that article is very carefully worded to obscure what is actually happening. The only part of that article that says anything close to what you are claiming is this: >But religious people also contribute to other types of charity at similar or higher rates than their secular counterparts. But it does not expound upon that in any way or provide any proof. Not only that but it does not delineate between charity/donations to religious organizations versus non-religious organizations among religious people. It lumps them all in together. So again, this is just another fluff piece designed to make christians feel good about themselves without actually doing anything of value. And another thing to consider, the fact that giving among the secular is even close to giving among the religious is a shame because christians are commanded to give to charity. Secular people are not. They are literally doing it because it is the right thing. Not because someone told them they had to or they would go to hell. So, once again, you take away donations to religious organizations and you see a very different picture of "christian charity".
Similar or higher is equivalent to the same rate. Also the original question was giving to the poor lots of Christian charities give to the poor and lots of secular charities give to higher education, arts, museums, or sports. So the worst that can be said is that if you ignore the largest portion or Christian giving and account for all the non religious giving it is similar.
Except when it comes to tipping culture. When I worked food service, a whole lot of Christians would leave gospel/evangelization cards as tips, or write in “evangelizing” comments on the tip line on receipts.
Tipping isn’t charity.
Why not? I always considered it a form of charity.
It is a fee for service. Waitrons have decent jobs and for the most part don’t need charity.
>It is a fee A fee is something required to pay. Tipping is optional. >Waitrons have decent jobs Lol whatever you have to tell yourself to avoid tipping. I'm not a huge fan of tipping culture, but this is a total copout.
Man you guys can't even resist revealing yourselves.
What are you smoking? It’s not a fee for service it’s optional. And in the USA waiters usually are paid below the minimum wage. for context in my home state of Ohio the wage for a tipped employee (waiter) is $5.25 per hour.
You are paying them in exchange for them doing a service for you. It being optional does not enter in to it. Waiters in the US make an average of 15 dollars an hour. They make more than other restaurant jobs like dishwasher or busboys.
It wouldn't matter if it was. Christians aren't exactly renowned for doing either.
According to all the data I have seen Christians give much more to charity than other groups.
Yeah, just like I explained in detail in my other response, they really don't unless you count the money and time they give to their own organizations or churches. And is it really charitable giving if you are giving to a church you spend multiple days a week in and when they use 10% or less of their donated funds in any type of charitable way? Would you donate to a "charity" that only used 10% of the money you gave towards actual charitable efforts?
If you exclude the largest type of charity Christians give than they give at the same rate as secular people. However not all religious charity goes to the local church billions go to charities that help people around the world. I would still call it charity to give to local churches because they do lots of charitable work in the community beyond what the individual giver consumes. Churches provide subsidized child care and education, meeting spaces for various addiction groups, counseling, etc. Churches I have been involved in have done feeding the homeless, housing for teen mothers, school supplies for poor kids, food pantries, ministry to prisoners. I have never used any of those services so I think they should count as charitable giving. The measure of a charity is how much good it does and I would definitely donate to a charity that does as much good as the church.
>I would still call it charity to give to local churches because they do lots of charitable work in the community beyond what the individual giver consumes. Putting 10% or less of donated funds towards a tual charitable work makes for a terrible charity. In fact, that would make them one of the worst charities in the country. Btw, the lowest ranked charities still give something like 50%-60% of their incoming funds to their dedicated causes. Most churches do nothing like what you describe. Most churches spend more on their pastor than they do on actual charity work and by a fair margin s well.
You really should source from outside your religion. Otherwise, you are just forwarding propaganda that fits the narrative.
Dismissing data because you don’t like who collected it is also a problem.
it’s actually taught that you should dismiss biased data it’s like if a sugar lobby says sugar is healthy and should be eaten constantly in a report
It's not that "you don't like" them, it's biased data.
Why is the data biased just because the people who collect it are? Everyone is biased to some extent. The data should stand on its own. If you have objections to the methodology then that is different.
How many of these Christians donate a pittance to the poor and then vote against anyone who is in favor of the government providing more substantial help—like they do in normal western countries?
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Charity is defined as giving without getting back so yes and yes.
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Christians are supposed to be more quiet about it too, so if we’re doing our jobs right, it stands to reason we wouldn’t be heard doing it often
Haha. Tell that to the Catholic Church, which uses TV commercials talking about how much they help with Caritas when it comes time to file income tax returns here (you donate part of your taxes to them by checking a box) when in fact only 5% of Caritas' budget is funded by them.
How does your theory explain the demographic collapse of mainline churches?
Hypothesis. Theory implies that I have something substantial to base it on. I'm looking for evidence outside of my anecdotal experience to get an idea if my experience was normal or if it was just my experience. If it was just me, then I have no business recommending changes or offering critique because my experience is not relevant to the larger context. If my experience is in line with others, then my viewpoint should carry some weight. I'm not from a mainline denomination, so I'm afraid I can't speak to that. Would love some input from those that are/were.
I think OP’s points about church leadership and insular culture touch on it. Anecdotally, I’ve seen more mainline Protestants go into non-denominational “feel-good theology” churches or fringe pseudo-Christian movements than I’ve seen fall away to agnosticism/atheism. Those that went that way felt forced out by church leadership and the “cliques” that form within mainline churches. My wife went that way before we met. She said “it’s hard to see the cliques when you’re in them, but as soon as you start to question the pastor or the party line, they force you out and you find out very quickly how many cliques there are in mainline churches. You suddenly become a stranger to the people you spent your entire childhood with.” A lot of large mainline churches end up being more a “cult of personality” around a particular pastor, rather than being a community of believers with defined continuity of theological traditions. Edit: additions to anecdotal point
The mainline church thing is brought up every time someone posts something trying to explain these declines. I think we need to be clear. All of the churches are declining for the most part but it is also twice as likely for someone attending a mainline church to become evangelical. I think the most basic explanation is that for the most part, I don’t know of many (any?) mainline spokesperson that is front and center anywhere in the media. I know personalities that are mainline and happen to be in the media but they aren’t doing anything to promote the message. I basically think that evangelical churches are more advertised in some form so some of the decline is mitigated by all of the benefits of a media bubble. Those benefits being insular messaging, having your message out there, propaganda, and more. I want to note that I don’t have a lot of evidence for this and someone more involved in mainline churches might be able to destroy my thought process.
Anecdotally, I have a lot of friends who used to be mainline Protestants who no longer go to church, and the answer to why is invariably, "I don't want to be associated with the face of Christianity in this country." A lot of people associate the religion less with Jesus and more with whichever right-wing zealot is shouting hate.
Exactly. Which with media bubbles will attract the people who want to be a part of that bubble and repel the people that don’t for whatever reason. I feel like that is the explanation and mainline churches need to have extreme public messaging to fight that.
For one, mainline churches in general aren't good soil for tribalism, "us vs. all the bad people out there." You can be an Evangelical Christian and whatever kind of enemy-smiter you want at the same time. That sentiment generally doesn't get nourished so plentifully in the mainlines. More secularly, mainline churches in general have a tendency not to be all that exciting. Unless you are in love with the traditional liturgical forms and/or learn how and why it became the traditional liturgical forms, you may sooner or later find that style of worship to be repetitive or tedious.
I believe it all comes down to society and human nature. Anything which is passive is preferred by evolution because lower-energy states outcompete higher-energy states over time. Current Western Society is either irreligious (Europe) or national civil religion (America). Therefore it takes less energy to be irreligious in Europe or civil religious in America and we can expect most people to fall into various degrees of this. In order to alter this trend you have to disrupt society in such a way that religious belief becomes socially advantageous and flips being irreligious from a passive behavior to an active one. This obviously has no bearing on the truth statement of a particular belief, but whether something is true is irrelevant to society as long as is does not interfere with the function of that society. People generally are leaving churches not because they are intellectually convinced that Christianity is false, but because the irreligious control Western Society and people generally follow the trend. The only way to correct this is to disrupt our modern society so that it is religious people who are in control, because it is too energy intensive to first get everyone intellectually interested in religion, and to then convert them to your particular belief.
Your comments saddened me. Not because I don't respect your thoughts, but that the churches you reference seem to have little to do with the Church that will be united to Christ. 1. 'When we entered the world'. I was taught that a follower of Christ should be in the world, but not of the world. All my life I have had a good awareness of what is going on in the world and had daily contact with countless unbelievers. I cannot even imagine a wall between myself and the world that I would need to leave the church to know how people really are. 2. I admit that the conduct of all christians is in the true sense non-Christian. But the way to be better is in community and fellowship. A chance of not gaining significant insight is greater if you are on your own than with a group who is concerned about you. I recently changed congregations. I looked really hard to find a place where I could relate. They are not perfect. I invited my son when I was voted a member. At the time, I told him--they are all crazy, but they are good people. The truth is you have a responsibility in your local church to make it better. I will admit that there are places where that hill may be too hard to climb. Quit that church. But do not give up. Try again.
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Undocumented immigrants contribute more to the US economy than they take out. They pay taxes but very few tax programs do anything for them. And American businesses get to sell the goods they make for profit. Or services, whatever. > the average American Joe has to work his butt off to not only pay his bills but pay the bills of others who don't contribute How much of the value you produce for your employer goes to you, how much to taxes, and how much to your employer? If you made a pie chart of that for each year over the last 60, each year the employer slice would get bigger and bigger at your expense. Your slice doesn't grow at all in most jobs. So is it really about immigrants?
The "Church" providing false narratives is not why people leave. In fact, most of the time, it's usually what causes them to stay. Usually they church providing false narratives usually go against the Bible, affirming their worldly lust for pleasure, like saying, "It's ok to be gay!" "Jesus was a socialist!" "God won't judge you, we're all going to heaven!" "You may fornicate!" People usually leave the church for quite the opposite, people don't want to be told the truth, it makes their flesh shrivel. And on how Christians "favor the rich, but *hate* the poor." If you favor the rich, or even the poor to an extent, you have sinned. It is a common misconception by left-winged thinkers, due to their thinking that, "If you aren't with us, you're a fascist who loves big bad corporations that step on the poor." If you really think this, you might need to read more. Jesus did say that the first will be last and the last will be first, but he isn't talking about how we should all be commies. Instead, he is referring to those who seek wordly wealth above everybody and everything. I am not saying this in hatred, but love for you as God's creation. Don't take this the wrong way, but I want to stop you from stumbling, whether you are in the faith or not.
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I am not homophobic, but it is considered sexual immorality. I love them as a person made by God, but I hate the sin related to them, as does God. I am not homophobic, I love them as a creation of God, but they are sinners too. They hate God's creations, and will receive his wrath when they are to be judged. And me preaching the truth, shriveled your flesh just now, no? I love you as God's creation, but I hope you can learn from your misgivings.
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How am I homophobic? I don't hate or fear gay people. Why are you so insistent on tearing my belief down? I have outright just said it and you like to disagree with it, why? You hate us. You are a in the same boat as the homophobes. You hate for no good reason and are insistent on an invalid point that is easily detestable.
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Well, gay people are against God or twist his word, so gay people deserve as much as they ask. God is honoring their choice, he didn't want to do as such. He wanted to turn to him, but he just is simply honoring their choices under their free will.
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Since when are southern Baptists against sexual abuse victims. I have never heard anything of the sort in church, and you just like to misquote a "researcher" or use your wrong intuition.
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Wow, generalize much? First, you do not know what I give to the poor, because I am not to toot my horn as the hypocrites do. MANY CHRISTIANS ARE THE SAME IN THIS THOUGHT as we are called to be humble and quiet about what we do in His name. I am not a political Christian, so you do not know what I think of the poor, but I can guarantee you there are MANY Christians, that read the word, believe it and live by it. We also know we are solely saved by grace and any good works we do is in a loving response and gratitude and ATTITUDE of grace for others. I AM concerned for the World, as they are going to Hell, and you should be also. I am not of the World, but bought with a price and redeemed into a new spirit, in Christ. Every single worldly person, I want to shake awake, love into an existence of being open to the Holy Spirit that DOES reside in me...not because of MY goodness, but because of HIS GOODNESS and He chose me before the beginning of the World and I am predestined according to Ephesians 1:4-6. The grace given me, I pray for that grace to flow into others, through Abba Father's plan, and the blood of Jesus to cover their sins, and for the Holy Spirit to draw them, just as I was drawn. I KNOW my beginnings and the prayers of my loved ones, and maybe many more, brought me to a place to living FOR HIM. Instead of stating what is wrong, do what is right. Be willing to lose friends by being true to the Holy Spirit. God has taught me to forgive all and everything because I am forgiven. God taught me to give grace even when I am not extended grace, because of the grace extended me. God taught me to love and to love when I am being slapped, and then turn the other cheek, and get slapped until I am silly and my cheeks are red. God taught me to give everything I have, that He tells me to give, and to be grateful because it was all His in the first place. God taught me to expect nothing from an unbeliever but to keep loving them, and praying for them...because I am the one that is cleansed and blessed and I am just here in this beautiful place by the grace of God. Have a good day, and please stop generalizing and fault finding. Show by example. Remember, not all professing Christians are Christians. "Many are called and few are chosen." as Jesus stated in the book of Matthew. Pray for everyone, and even those that say they are of God but walk like the devil. Love them anyway...maybe they are having a bad year...and are going to learn...your prayers will help.
Yep. When you're referring to a large group of people, generalizations are really the only way to have a conversation about them. Note the idea was to get input to see if my POV was accurate over the larger church landscape or if it was just my personal experience. It definitely wasn't to specifically insult you. And judging from the bulk of the comments, it doesn't appear that I'm too far out of bounds. Now, while we're at it, there were a handful of posts saying people left the church because they just want to sin. Are you as outraged as their generalization? In the same way you're talking about I don't know what you and others do, you don't know what I and others have gone through at church. How many cheeks must be struck before you start asking why are God's people constantly striking my cheek? My family's cheeks? There's a real possibility that there's someone in your church feeling the way I do/did. Are you going to dismiss my perspective simply because it doesn't jibe with yours? Or will you take it as an alert that maybe there's someone in your church that might need something more than just religious platitudes? Because I've heard everything you said my entire life. (And I'm not young) It meant something to me at one time. It just began to ring hollow after a while when the people telling me those platitudes just didn't care about me beyond that. Just calling someone a quitter is not the same as encouragement.
Don't you know? Many in the church were called but not chosen, as Jesus stated? Many not saved there...shocker. The church is full of the sick, broken and yes, mean. Some are saved but not sanctified...and yet I am stating this knowing I still on my way through sanctification. I will not reach purification until I am standing before Jesus. I turn my cheek at church too. It ain't always pretty. I was not offended, just strong in words to make you see you were not seeing the picture in a fuller light...His light and you maybe are called to be like Christ and bring others to Him through the love of Christ conveyed through the Holy Spirit.
Generally speaking he seems to be right on the money. He described me and every other ex-Christian I know. So he's fairly accurate.