Anyone else lost their faith?

[startouchedtrinity]

I've gone through on here often enough why I've lost my Christian faith (in fact it was on here that I tried to keep it going and then finally gave up!). Am much happier on the path I am now on (Eastern religions) but still can't understand how something that was once so real to me just isn't any more. I wondered if anyone else has had a similar experience, and how you explain it to yourself?

I had a massive loss of faith earlier in the year. Months of just not believing it was true. What I found the most difficult was the impact it would have on my children.

It's a bit moot, because I have gradually come back to faith, though.

i was brought up Cof E , and had what i described as a quiet but firm faith, but suddenly last year i just decided it was all rubbish, i didn't believe any of it and really now believe we are here , we live and then we die , end of story. i am bemused as to why htis happened but not worried about it, though miss the peaceful hr on a sunday in church ( go to gym instead now)

I was never a massively huge Christian, but I just accepted the churchgoing way of life until I was old enough to start actively questioning why I was doing this (19 or thereabouts - still went to chapel at university a couple of times in first year).

Then had a very Christian girlfriend for a while in my early 20s and got back into it. After I split up with her, finally decided in mid-90s that I wasn't that bothered. But even got married in church as it was what DW wanted and I didn't mind either way.

These days I am firmly of the Dawkins tendency and unlikely ever to be shaken from it - as people who know me on here will have seen! I think you'd have a hard job getting me to get married "before God" these days!

Weddings and christenings aside, I have set foot in a church twice in the last 5 years - once at the behest of an evangelical friend who wanted me to come to a "healing" ceremony, and once in my mum's village church to stop her having a paddy about it. I stayed silent all the way through - my mere presence was a major compromise, and there was no way I was actually intoning all that stuff!

The one thing I do envy churchgoing people for is their sense of community. Atheists have to find their own, whereas for people who go to a church it is just there - our Christian friends have all sorts of stuff given to them for kids etc, never have trouble finding a babysitter, and were even helped out financially when they had employment troubles. The church is their life - I think we are their only non-church friends.

I am always a bit about that - middle-class Christian people helping "their own". Feels very "you scratch my back..." A bit Masonic or Rotary Club. Surely they should be out there giving money to the poor. Maybe they do that too.

Well, that's just it, UQD, we shouldn't know, because they're not supposed to draw attention to that, lol.

Thank you for your replies. UQD, I'm nearlythree - you may remember we posted a lot about this subject before. IME the 'sense of community' is quite a fair-weather one and with one or two exceptions neither church 'family' was there for us when we had two traumatic birth experiences. I do know people who have had the kind of help that you describe but it doesn't come automatically.

mummydoc, it really bugs me that I can't understand why something was there once and now it's gone. I took my youngest two out for a walk today and we went to the medieval church in our village where the dds were baptised, and I thought about how beautiful and wonderful it had all felt, and all I could think was that if I tried to get it back I'd be living a lie.

suebaroo, I know what you mean in a way about the children. The Anglican church here still hasn't got ots act together on kids but the Baptist church has and the dds used to really enjoy going. And I started a service for the under-fives here (feel really guilty that I've now left my friends lumbered with it) and the very last one I went to was just to support dd1 who was there with her Reception class. She gave me such a rocket for not singing the hymns! I suppose it helps slightly in that I still believe in the concept of a source or whatever that we all come from, so the idea of prayers at bed doesn't feel off. But dd1 likes to read her Bible still and I am as honest with her as I can be, according to my beliefs. In a way this is a help as I no longer have to try and explain why God drowned everyone in the flood, for example.

Don't have experience of this (still have my faith) but just wanted to say it sounds like some people here have experienced religion as opposed to Christianity. Correct me if I'm wrong. In the previous generation it was all about sitting in church - why would anything come from only that?

Startouchedtrinity, I can imagine it must be hard with your kids - mine are at the age where they believe because we do. Your dd won't understand now why you weren't singing the hymns but she will get it later that you didn't want to be hypocritical. My minister does marry people who are not regular attenders because he believes everyone has a spiritual side to them even if they don't understand it. I know this is controversial. I suppose I'm just trying to say it sounds like you're still in the process of something....

Oh...forgot to say, personally I don't think a church that only mixes with its own members is very healthy. A lot of my Christian friends only have Christian friends, but Jesus didn't only mix with the holy people did he?

Absolutely - if Jesus were around in today's society he would be shaking hands with AIDS victims, ASBO kids and other people demonised and marginalised by society.

you may find a lot of churches don't broadcast too loudly about their social-help schemes due to the bible saying about giving (tithing) in private and stuff (basically that bragging is bad... so they rarely do it)

my old church would have a dustbin at the front, people put packs of nappies and unperishable foods that was then picked up by Social Services for the really hard-up families near the church / in the town

It also did a "Noise" weekend every Mayday which was doing social work (cleaning / gardening / painting for local council etc) for absolute free ... most ppl mistook us for community service "employees" !!!

I haven't lost my faith, so much as my faith in church after a horrid experience... I'm sure one day I'll find a church again, hopefully

Hope you do LewisFan. It took me 2 years when I moved to a new city. I went to loads of churches and wouldn't have gone back to most of them. I don't think I was being fussy, I just wanted a church that was very clear about its teaching and where people seemed to be there because they wanted to be rather than fulfilling some kind of social convention.

god is a bit like Santa!!

put in place years ago to manipulate people.

We tell our kids you better behave or Santa wont leave any toys.

We are told believe in god or you wont go to heaven.

I'm really, truly sorry for people who have experienced ack from a church. Last place it should ever happen, and I have been on the receiving end myself.

We stopped going to church after the second of our priests was prosecuted for child abuse. We'd been close to both of them and had no idea.

DH refuses to have DD2 baptised because of it but after a lifetime of regular church attendance (from 3) I feel very uneasy not doing it. Logically I know she won't go to hell, but...

Probably the wrong thread for this but I think I am starting to find faith. I did the alpha course after a few years of wondering but was scared off a little by the hands in the air type worship. Am reading the God Delusion to balance alpha so still at the thinking stage.

evenhope what a shock, how terrible.

Well, my experiences of church, as opposed to faith, are pretty mixed - yes, I did feel let down when we had no support but at the same time I used to enjoy worship and goping to study groups etc. I even got so far as to see the DDO about becoming a priest, but found I was pg with dd1 the same week. And I have often defended the church's social record, even on here - it can't be denied that the churches fill an enormous gap in social provision through holding M&T groups, drop-in centres, clubs for the retired and soup kitchens. But none of that disguises the repellent attitude to gay people or women bishops, or even just the pomposity of the rules and regulations and those who believe it is their job to uphold them. I started to be sick of the church when, as a member of the Deanery Synod, I refused to vote in the elections to the General Synod b/c it was about division and difference, and packing the Synod with the supporters of one faction or another. I left my local church when finally the efforts we'd been making to get better provision for children turned nasty and I got the brunt of it.

But all that only explains why I left church, not why I don't believe Christianity to be true any more. I only attended church for a few yrs, most of my life I haven't gone but my faith always meant a great deal to me and I felt equally close to God in the times when I didn't go to church as when I did.

So what happened?

(sorry, bit self indulgent. )

I agree with you about the social action thing, STT, definitely, I just wish church was a bit better at being a 'family' rather than an 'institution'. Feeding people is great, but we don't live by bread alone and all that.

It sounds to me (and please, tell me if I'm spouting from my arse on this) that you were never convinced by Christianity as such, more by being 'spiritual' in a wider sense. In which case, I would have said you sort of skirted into a distinctively Christian expression of spirituality and are now on a trajectory out of it.

Bloody hell, used some big words there.

No, I was totally, convinced by it all for many years, except I used my own judgement of things like the anti gay stuff and sex before marriage. Then when I decided I had a vocation to test I studied and concluded that some parts of the NT were written solely in order to prove a theological point rather than as a retelling of actual events, but for a long while this was okay b/c I was experiencing everything so vividly. From a very young age I was aware of something in my life, some presence that later I heard Christians call ' the Holy Spirit'. I used to get really vivid prayer experiences, and sometimes would get really powerful visual images. I'd get a tingling when I would pray and 'know' that any response was coming from outside me. I used to write, for the childrens' service and also had a bit published, and it would feel like it wasn't me that was writing, and sometimes I'd be taken aback by what I'd written.

Then, one day, for no reason I can find - there were no personal crises or anything - those experiences just stopped. I was on my own. And then my intellectual doubts grew, and w/out the experiences to ground my faith, it dried up, although it was over two yrs before I finally gave up. I must admit the past 18 mo have been pretty awful and for the time that I was still trying to cling onto my Christianity I got absolutely nothing from it.

I am inclined to believe my anxious thoughts, and what I really like about Eastern religions is that they are all about living in the now, b/c the past and future do not exist. Also I now look within myself to find the source, or spirit, which seems to be a lot more reliable.

Not really sure what you're expecting people to say STT. But, if you want my opinion, it sounds like this is far from done and dusted.

You say your spiritual "experiences" stopped - all I can say to that is I have never experienced half of what you have and yet I feel my faith has always been strong. Why would that be?

TheDuchess - you obviously don't HAVE to do the hands in the air thing. I used to feel pressurised and intimidated by this but if you're only doing it for that reason then it's not real worship. There are plenty of great churches where everyone sits in an orderly fashion!

I think it was just the wrong church for me. But there are other things I am wrestling with after alpha, like the views regarding homosexuality for example.

STT: you might find it comforting to read some stuff on atheism/humanism, which will at least offer you ways of thinking about and living a good, happy meaningful life without imaginary gods or fairies or supernatural beings of any kind. People do live well without religious faiths, after all.

I have come to the conclusion that losing ones faith is often because one puts too much pressure on it.
in the end, it doesnt really matter if you believe that god exists or not, what is sure is that you ignore the concept that we label god at your peril.

KT, I'm not expecting people to say anything, I'm just wondering if anyone has gone through a similar thing or has any explanation for it. For example, I know that some humanists/atheists believe that prayer experiences can be explained psychologically and I am wondering if that may be what happened when I used to pray.

In a way you a right in that I want to have an explanation for what has happened in order to 'close' it. But ATM there is certainly no way I am going back to my old faith. I feel very happy and free for the first time in yrs now I am looking into a Taoist/ Bhuddist path (I never had much peace of mind as a Christian).

Madamez, the thing about Taoism/Buddhism is that belief in a deity is optional. For many people these paths are more about a philosophical way of life. Certainly that is part of the appeal to me, in that I will be reliant more upon my inner being, rather than something external that may or may not appear to be there when you need it. You might be interested in a book by Anthony Freeman who is a Christian Humanist priest, who was chucked out by the church.

Nightynight, I know what you mean about putting pressure on ones faith, very often you expect all kinds of visions and voices, but the thing is, when this happened I was quite happy. I only had the dds then and dd2 was bfeeding which was great, dh and I were getting on okay and I had felt fulfilled by running the kids' service at church. The - pft! - gone. Very odd.

TheDuchess, far be it for me to give you advice but the POV of Alpha is only one of many within Christianity. It has always concerned me that Alpha presents itself as having all the answers and that its way is the only way. Fora more balanced view on the gay issue you might want to check out the works of Jeffrey John, the poor guy hung out to dry by Rowan Williams in order to placate the anti-gay clergy. Also the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, they have a website which you can google, and the Inclusive Church group.

STT, for many years I turned my back on my faith, and walked away from church and God and all that entailed.

A number of things (not least my children, whom I wanted to bring up as Christian, even though I thought I was destined for hell) have made me convinced that there is a God, and that Christianity is the path to him. On one such occasion I "challenged" God to do something specific on a specific day at a specific place, because then I said I knew he wanted me to return to him. TBH I didn't expect anything to happen, was all set for disappointment, only he didn't disappoint... some would say it was coincidence, all I can say it was a bl**dy big one.

Since then I have had "experiences", and periods of time where nothing out of the ordinary happened. I see those as times where I was to grow, to strengthen, to not rely on the extraordinary but to find God in the people around me, and to trust in him. For me, God is a hard taskmaster but a patient teacher.

I'm sorry that you've not felt peace of mind in Christianity. I have to admit, I don't always. The way I look at it, is that if everything is going well for me all the time, what need do I have of God?

Look after yourself

Mary

madamez - couldnt agree more, well said!!