When not believing is a constatation, not a choice (part 1)

Sara is my sister(-in-law). She was raised Christian, but a few years ago she faced the fact that she no longer believed. I asked her to write her story down to see the other side…when the story doesn’t go like you think it will.
I wanted to hear how she had gotten to this point. How she had faced her doubts and what she did with them.

Ex-christian. A terrible word, but that’s what I am. Naomi asked me to write down how I came to this point. It’s turned into a long story. I tried to keep it short, but it stays quite long anyway because I want anybody reading this to be able to follow the whole process. I don’t want to make all too big jumps.

My doubts always situated themselves within the security in which I was raised: always assuming that God exists. Always assuming that this was a personal God, who knew me. How could I go without this, having had it spooned into me from the time I went to kindergarten! God exists, He ?loves you, He knows you.
My best friends were Christians, because I could only truly be myself around Christians. My free time I spent exclusively with those friends, on christian camps and weekends. It was where I felt good, where I found depth that I missed with non-believers. There was a bond there…

Alone in the cityAnd then I went to study. I went to live in Antwerp. In a big city where I knew nobody. And I got to know so many interesting people! People with depth! Convinced and confident unbelievers, convinced?agnostic, passionate in politics, the?solidarity was genuine.

New questions came up: who is good or bad? All at once I saw people that I believed were much better then any?Christians?I knew. That they stood more honestly in life, wanted to get to know the world in which they lived and make it better. They didn’t just sing floaty songs and think about ‘later in heaven’, but people who lived in the here and now. Analyzing this life and these surroundings and wanting to change this by being?politically?and socially engaged. People who, instead of continually assuring each other they were not of this world, loved this world in which they lived, and loved their fellow man! People who believed in this world and wanted to make it a better place. I had never seen it this way in?Christians.

Interesting?questions but no reason to lose my faith.?Because, so I had been told, it is not?because?you doubt?Christians?that you should also doubt God. A good point, to be sure, but on the other hand:?Everything?I knew about God I had heard from these?Christians… The God whom I thought to know, I knew through them.

The existence of sinBut another question rose up, a much more fundamental one. Not only ‘who is good and bad’, but also, ‘what is good or bad’? I started thinking about an important?foundation of the Christian faith: sin. Do I believe in sin? I should be so sinful…
But I can account for everything I do. If I make wrong choices I do not consider them to be wrong by default. I have a reason for doing them, although I might regret them at times. But sin? Failure and faults make us human. They make us humble and beautiful, not bad.

My conclusion was: I don’t believe in sin anymore. Thus, I don’t need forgiveness. I am a human. A human makes mistakes, learns from them, falls down and gets back up. Do I really have to ask for forgiveness my entire life, and be forgiven? Do I have to struggle and drudge on and rub it in for myself how evil I am and how I am so dependent?on God’s grace and goodness? Good and bad are, I think, not two sides that are fighting each other, good and bad are in humanity and keep us in harmony, make us beautiful.
Perfection is not beautiful! That perfect God did not appeal to me. His demands to be holy were so frustrating and discouraging! Humans with their honest struggles, they do appeal to me.

To be continued…come back tomorrow for part 2

This post is part of my 31 days series ‘More like My Father’.