It is hard to know the moment when I actually began believing in God, coming from a Catholic background and taught from early childhood of his existence. An important shift in thought would have been the time I started taking God more seriously, which involved incorporating teachings from the bible into my life and this did not occur till young adulthood.
A triggering event that prompted a more thorough study of the bible were the visitations by Jehovah Witnesses, who were distributing their pamphlets while educating me of their views. I was impressed by what seemed to be the amount of biblical knowledge they had and at the time of their visits, both my husband and I were experiencing problems of our own so these meetings had become a welcome.
I would say most people within Catholicism do not invest a lot of time in studying the bible, for many of us leave the instructions to the priests, though childhood can be filled with memories of learning rote prayers, and the rosary which pretty much was the extent of my Christian education, with what little I learned at Catechism classes.
One reason that bore a desire to learn more about the bible came as a result of being informed by the JW's that heaven had already been filled with 144,000 people, and upon death, life after the resurrection would remain here with a restored paradise on earth. This did not sit well since it conflicted with what I had been taught about the after-life, a destination of heaven, purgatory or hell and as far as I knew most of humanity would be given time in purgatory prior to moving on to heaven. Hell was held out for the exceptionally bad, or those that rejected God. Already having been indoctrinated with the belief that there was a God, dissent from Christianity was not an option, rather the alternative for me was looking deeper into the bible for answers.
Bible study, from then on became a permanent part of my daily routine giving me an added sense of purpose as I learned more about Jesus, applying these biblical lessons when times were tough it became an added sense of encouragement and strength. Jesus was now that much needed companion to walk with during lifes tougher moments, and shortly thereafter I became a member of an Evangelical church for close to 20 years.
Notions like critiquing the bible for error or fault had not occured to me, for its purpose was to teach us of God and why he had to send his son to die. So any and all of my extended literature supported the basic fundamental Christian viewpoint, reinforcing further a need for redemption along with an increased interest of books on end time eschatology.
Not until my church started a class on learning the Hebrew language, a keen interest of mine, did I look more closely at the Old Testament. There I discovered discrepencies in the translations of the different New Testaments subsequently opening the door for a much needed and long overdue curiosity which included the possibility that the bible may not be innerrant or even infallible. Without informing other church members I had purchased several Jewish books, some on the significance of the Hebrew language (God's perfect language spoken to Adam and Eve) and others on the perspective of why Jesus is not the Jewish messiah learning first-hand just how imperfect, even "doctored" the New Testament was.
A search for the truth now had trumped the need for belonging to a church community, so I stopped attending and the pertinent issue was now focusing on the correct belief of God.
After purchasing a siddur prayer book, a Tanach, a few books on Jewish history with an online study group, I had begun what I thought was to be a journey towards home. Judaism was the only logical choice with the God of Israel being the same as the God of Christianity. Hashem, now being the universal creator of us all with no need for a human redeemer sent to die on a cross. This I learned was a foreign concept not recorded in the Tanach. All of the prophecies in the New Testament that were to have been fulfilled or yet to be fulfilled were either interpolations, skewed or just created.
Close to three years I remained outside the Christian faith, increasing my Hebrew language education and searching for the answers I held to be within Judaism. This avenue however turned out to be more discouraging as I learned Judaism not only doesn't have an outreach for the ex-Christian but doesn't seek converts either, a disappointment that added to my confusion with respect to what I thought a benevelant God should be, comparing this to Christianities outreach for the "lost." Since I was no longer grafted into the root, having left the 'body' it was becoming more obvious that the Torah/Tanach are a work written exclusively for the Jewish people possibly even a work created by man.
It was during this search that I first read the works of Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and also several other books by those who had once been Pastors, now turned atheists. Discovering that we are an evolved species rather than created with a special purpose was a huge paradigm shift that left me no doubt the bible was never divinely inspired, and attempts at reconciling Genesis with a theistic evolutionary approach does far more damage to the context and credibility of Genesis.
Am I angry? As I recall the major life decisions made from this false monotheistic belief system, including that of educating my children into it the answer is yes. But, with a small consolation that they have now rejected the bible as truth and coming from a divine source. I resent mostly having not been given a choice or correct education concerning religion but was instead indoctrinated with the concept of hell hanging over me should I choose wrongly. Is that really a choice? No resurrection after we die is a welcomed relief from the threats of an afterlife, even one of a heaven.
I can only hope now that with future generations, our children will cease to be indoctrinated into religious belief but on the contrary, be taught about its history and origins with respect to the new scientific discoveries including that of what modern archeology has uncovered. Once the religious spell is broken, these grown children have every right to be angry after having been fed religious lies basing decisions they may have made differently had they been given the truth while young.
You mention learning things by rote and leaving the thinking to the preachers and such. When I was first learning the Bible (with the Southern Baptist Church as a participate at one of their summer camps), I memorized the list of the books of the Bible, the verses associated with the so-called Roman Road in the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, along with learning to quickly look up verses that were called out – we actually had races to look up verses, and whoever could look them up more quickly would win small prizes. Much of what I learned was just to put everything into the memory. We learned a lot of things this way – from common phrases used in prayer to well-known hymns and songs of praise, from doctrines of sin and atonement to conceptions of the end of the world (eschatology). We simply heard these things again and again in church and learned to adopt them in our own thinking.
ReplyDeleteThe first question that made me think for myself was that of the rapture and the millennial reign – I grew up with Dispensationalism and was shown its falsehood at age 17, which started the separation from the process of learning from authorities. I then had to deal with the idea of human sexuality, another major issue that caused me to put all of the Fundamentalist teachers into doubt. The fact that I was mistaught by “authorities” at every step was enough to force me to think for myself, and the biblical languages gave me the tools to break away from relying on what Bible teachers were telling me and to find truths for myself. I understand how this process, though different in your case, was essential in your breaking away from faith.
I have to say that my major regret is that I never learned evolution as it should be taught. I ignored what my Biology teachers told me and resisted anything that didn’t have to do with God. In the end, I did nothing but would my own mind and stunt my growth intellectually. That was my own fault, though, so I can’t resent anything. I just regret this more than I regret anything in my life.