Christianity has a negative effect on every human being raised under its influence. Christianity posits that every human being is born a sinner. Every human being comes into the world defective and broken.  According to Christianity the only person who can fix the human sin problem, the only person who can fix humankind’s brokenness is Jesus Christ, the virgin born, third person in the Trinity, eternally existing, Son of God.

Christianity teaches that every human comes into the world at variance with God. Humans don’t become sinners, they are sinners. Every human is at variance with God and the enemy of God. (notions that every human is a child of God is wishful thinking NOT supported by the Christian Bible) Unless a person is converted, saved, confirmed,makes a commitment to follow Jesus they are headed for purgatory,hell,the Lake of Fire, or annihilation. (choose one, depending on the flavor of Christianity)

What a way to start life, yes? Children raised in Christian homes are taught early that they are broken and need fixed, that the are empty and need filled. Solution? Jesus. More than a few children have faced great angst over their eternal destination. When they should be playing and enjoy their childhood they are worrying about going to hell. No time for childhood play, you could die today and split hell wide open, children are often told.

Children raised in Christian homes are taught early that most every, if not every, problem is caused by sin. Sin! Sin! Sin! Children learn at an early age that disobeying Mom and Dad is a sin and that Jesus hates sin. Most every act is framed in a good or bad context.

Christian children grow up to be Christian adults. They have a Christian marriage . They become Christian Mom’s and Dad’s. Always lurking in the shadows is the sin monster. Yes, Jesus has saved them from  the eternal punishment of sin and yes Jesus is preparing a home in Heaven for them, but sin is still a big problem. You see, Christians are just like everyone else. They have a flesh and bone human body that is eerily similar to everyone other person on the face of the earth.

The Christian has all the same feelings and passions that non-Christians do. The difference however is that the Christian has been taught that many human feelings and passions are sinful. They are taught that their humanity must be suppressed.(it all goes back to the teaching of original sin, depravity)

The result? Christians who are quite schizophrenic. They are like the Apostle Paul who said in Romans 7:14-25

For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

The Christian, due the teachings of Christianity on sin and humanness, lives in a constant state of conflict. The flesh warring against the spirit. The body warring against the spiritual. Christians are taught that Jesus brings peace but how can there be true peace when there is a constant war going on in their life between the flesh and the spirit?

True human freedom comes when we drop the shackles of religions like Christianity. We are then free to investigate what it really means to be human. No God to worry about, no salvation to strive for, to hell to shun and heaven to gain, our focus can then be on the realities of being human.

Of course this requires us to learn a whole new way of living. Matters of ethics and morality become more complex now that there is no divine text saying, thou shalt or thou shalt not. Many people can’t embrace such a new way of living. They need, they demand rules. They want to be told how to live, how to think. (and therein lies the power of religion)

Since leaving Christianity I have had to learn all over again what it is to be a human being. I have had to become reconnected with my emotional self. The past three years have been a time of finding out who Bruce Gerencser really is. I have had to rethink every moral and ethical belief I have. I have struggled with raging emotions, long buried under a mountain of self-denial and walking in the steps of Jesus.

It hasn’t been easy, but, to quote the old Southern Gospel song, I wouldn’t take nothing now for my journey now