A Crisis of Faith: Conclusion

First of all, I do want to say, once again, thank you to all of my friends who tried to help me through this dilemma. I truly do appreciate all of your prayers, your concerns, blog comments, and private messages. While we still disagree on the matter, I do realize that your efforts proceeded from love and concern for me and not from a prideful desire to be right or what-have-you. I really appreciate that, and won't soon forget it.

With that said, I believe I've reached a conclusion to my soul-searching. I am officially renouncing Christianity. It disagrees with my heart, it disagrees with my conscience, and it disagrees with my intellect. After that, what else is there?

My struggle with the Old Testament which I talked about here in my blog was only the first toppled domino, if you will. I needed an excuse to back away momentarily and ask those questions I'd been afraid to ask most of my life—to objectively scrutinize that which I'd formerly put my trust in unquestioningly—and my squeamishness about the genocides of the Old Testament gave me that excuse.

I suppose, ultimately, I just don't see the point in faith anymore. What reason have I to believe that this book is the infallible truth? Because that's what Mommy and Daddy and Pastor always taught me? Because it says so? Because Christianity is older than most religions, and other intelligent people still believe in it? Because the book itself is relatively consistent? Because we must naturally presume other things without proof, like the laws of logic and reason, so we may as well add the Bible to the list?

None of these answers make any sense to me. That is supposed to be good reason to believe that an elaborate religious text the size of my dictionary is true and infallible? That is supposed to be good reason to hold these principles so strongly that one is willing to live, die, and even kill for them? No. Maybe that works for others, but not for me. With a question so important as this one, I can't simply leave the answer up to blind faith.

To borrow from a response I gave to one of my friends, it seems to me that I, just as everyone else, do not have any real answers to questions about God, the afterlife, the purpose of our existence, or any of these other spiritual matters. The difference between myself and people of religion is that I am willing to simply acknowledge my ignorance, while others seem to be more content to just pick something to believe in, be it Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. And please, Christians, don't get offended by that analogy—remember that your own Bible instructs you to have faith like a child.

This was a difficult decision for me to make, not only because my parents, sister, nephew, and nearly all of my friends are still staunchly Christian, but because I, myself, had a lot of emotional and personal investment in Christianity. It was how I identified myself. It bled into literally every single aspect of my life. Now that that is gone, it's...well, it's an odd feeling. That said, though, I came to this on my own terms, I examined the situation as objectively as I possibly could, and I'm at peace with my decision.

So, at this point, I'm going to ask that you, my friends, respect my decision and just let it be. I understand that you think I'm going to Hell now, and thus, your natural inclination is to desperately try to talk me out of it, but to be frank, I've made my decision, and it's not likely that I'll go back on it at this point. I'll still answer the remaining, unanswered PMs, and I'd be happy to answer any questions you guys have, but until CGR's Apologetics forum opens back up in December, I'm going to just let this rest. Trying to answer everyone's objections in a manner that satisfies all of them is not only practically impossible, but has been a cause of some stress recently, and if I may be so bold, I honestly don't think I have the need to justify this decision to anyone but myself.

I certainly hope you won't view me differently after all of this. I know how I felt when some of my friends before me went to the dark side, but it took me this past week to realize that my identity doesn't lie in what I believe. Regardless of all of this, I'm still my good ol' self. My core moral values haven't changed a lick and I'll still be striving to live my life by them, my personality certainly hasn't been altered...I'm still the same person, and I hope you all can realize that. I have.