I have talked to many believers face to face and online for about six years. Not one of them believes me when I say there isn’t anything important they can tell me that I haven’t considered before. Almost to a person they speak and write as if they can share something new that would cause me to change my mind. It’s pathetic to me, and frustrating. I have to start all over with each new believer to convince them of this. Even now some believer just may comment below with what is perceived as something new, or a new approach to reaching me. Many have tried arguing with me. Others have ridiculed me–remember, it’s supposed to have an effect when we do it to believers!? Some have tried being kind to me. A few have asked me to come “experience God” at their worship service.
I agree completely with John’s sentiment.
I was part of the Christian church for fifty years. I was an Evangelical pastor for twenty five years. I spent most of my life DAILY reading and studying the Bible. I have spent countless hours reading theology books. While the Bible may be a “timeless” book, as some Christians say, it is not an inexhaustible book. I am quite confident that I have exhausted its contents and that it has nothing more to say to me.
I am quite sure many Christians will find my words quite arrogant. They are convinced that the Bible is a magic book that keeps on giving. No matter how many times you read it, it tells you something new and original, the Christian says.
No, it doesn’t and I think a lot of Christians who SAY this really don’t believe it. How else do we explain the fact the most Christians rarely, if ever read the Bible, and IF they read it, they read Psalms, Proverbs, and portions of the New Testament, leaving vast portions of the Bible untouched?
The Bible may still be a bestseller but it is a bestseller that is collecting dust or found residing in the back window of the car, only to removed from its resting place for an hour or two on Sunday.
Yet, these same Christians think they have something they can tell me that will cause me to repent and return, or come for the first time, to Jesus. Since most Christians never read the Bible from cover to cover how is it they think they have anything to say to me? Their theology is as deep as the 3 minutes they spend in Our Daily Bread. Their reading habit consists of reading books written by pabulum giving Evangelical authors of the day. These people think Joel Osteen and TD Jakes are scholars.
No bragging here, just facts. I know the Bible inside and out. Over the past four years, countless Christians have tried to win me back to Jesus. Some have tried to use all the apologetical magic tricks in the book to get me to see the error of my way. No matter the ploy, I have heard nothing new. Nothing that would cause me to change my mind or reconsider the false claims of Christianity.
If that is arrogance, so be it. I prefer to think that I am a man who has weighed God/Jesus/Christianity/Bible in the balance and found them wanting.
Yeah, pretty much. I’m not a Christian precisely because the whole system – from Original Sin to Salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus – makes no sense to me. It doesn’t speak to me; it doesn’t resonate with me. Very, very few of the proselytizing approaches even begin to address that; most won’t even go near it.
Of course, because you have already been chosen before the beginning of time to be a “reprobate”, according to the calvinists anyway. Lol!
The whole reason I am no longer a Christian is because I started to actually study and READ the bible! I wanted to know truth so badly and so I decided to start educating myself on how we actually got our bible. it’s origins and started actually studying some of the greek and hebrew.. When I did this….this is when the proverbial shit hit the fan for my faith. I could not in good conscience continue to go to a church or call myself a Christian anymore.
That’s how it went for me as well. I took an online Old Testament study course for credit and by the end of it I couldn’t look at the bible the same again. From there I found “Misquoting Jesus” and other books on textual criticism and the historic Jesus. My views on faith, Christianity and theology completely changed and it all started with actually reading the bible. Maybe that’s why most Christians don’t.
“Original sin” is particularly “iffy”. If you take the Bible literally, the talking snake told Eve she would get knowledge by eating the fruit that God forbade them to eat. What was so wrong with that? Then in the discussions that follow, the Christian will say “It wasn’t supposed to be taken literally”. It’s a no win situation. Even if Eve did directly disobey God, so what? Does the punishment fit the crime. I don’t think so! Even Jesus dying on the cross for a couple of days, and knowing he would be resurrected in a couple more days, is not that much suffering compared to man having to spend eternity in Hell. And that is without even mentioning evolution and the impossibility of there being just one original pair of humans
I have always thought it was really odd how much of a big deal was made out of the suffering that Jesus had on the cross. Even when I was a Christian, a part of my secretly wondered what the big deal was. I mean, he died knowing what he was doing. He knew that he was going to rise up after a couple of days and live forever being worshipped by billions of human beings. How hard could it be to go through a bit of crucifixion just to get to that reward? It hardly compares to the rest of us humans who have to work for a living our whole lives, end up getting old and decrepit, watch our loved ones die off, and then die ourselves from some long drawn out and painful disease. Of course, when I was a Christian I used to worry that God would send me to hell for having such blasphemous thoughts.
You are not arrogant. Arrogance is all about presumption, believing you know when you have not made any effort to know. The reason they accuse us of arrogance is some small part hypocrisy, that it is something they are guilty of but wish to project on others, but the large part of it is that you are rebelling against authority and the only proper attitude that you should have is submission. We are not submissive to their authority, that is the meaning of the Christianese word arrogance.
I agree too. It is frustrating to go over the same old thing everytime you have a conversation with a Christian. For me it is often a matter of going over the basic fundamentals of science. Over and over again one has to explain that evolution is not some fictional “theory” that may or may not be true. Over and over one has to explain that scientific facts are not “just my opinion” but are actually established facts.
And worst of all, if I stick to the facts, I am accused of being arrogant because I am perceived as taking my “opinions” as facts when they are merely facts. If one doesn’t engage at all, then one is accused of being close-minded.
I agree with many of the posts here – the MORE you read the Bible, study its origins, read commentaries, learn about the history at the time of its writing – the LESS likely you are to remain a believer. Why do fundamentalists proclaim the veracity of the Bible so strongly? They haven’t read it. They’ve relied on priests, preachers, and prophets to explain it to them, so they don’t have to think too deeply about it. I’ve been examining similar ideas from a different perspective on my blog americansecularist.com – it’s amazing to me that so many of us from different backgrounds are coming to the same conclusions.
Preach it Bruce! Tell those “Christians” to actually READ the WHOLE Bible and put it into PRACTICE on THEMSELVES FIRST, BEFORE dealing with non-Christians.
Talk about missing the plank over one’s eyes huh?