I used to belong to a very controlling church. When I left I wanted nothing to do with religion anymore. But I see you write about the same things that made me want to leave. What is the difference between your faith and the faith I had when I had it? - Andre
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Thanks for writing in, Andre.
So this is a bit of a tough question to answer because, without having details, I don't want to assume too much. But I have noticed some consistencies among folks who leave controlling churches ready to say goodbye to religion behind forever, and I imagine they have something to do with it.
Frankly put, while we worked from the same Bible and used the same names, I don't think we were actually believing in the same God. Now before people get the "No True Scotsman" memes to throw at me, let me explain what I mean.
"Controlling Churches" are usually named such because they seek to control the lives of their members even beyond the walls of the church, forbidding certain types of media, keeping an approved list for reading, and generally insinuating (if not outright declaring) that failure to adhere to these strict models will be reason for a member to be thrown out of the faith community.
Meanwhile, within the churches walls, similar levels of control are maintained. The Bible is read in a highly controlled manner, only approved parts of it, and probing questions are generally discouraged. The pastor or pastors hold the "approved" interpretations of the texts and dole them out as needed, but more often simply "sum up" the Message of God to their congregants, and any questioning of that Message is discouraged, if not outright anathematized.
Finally, God in these churches is declared to be kind, loving, and wholesome, but the actions and warnings do not match the message. People live in fear of judgement, seeing every tragedy and natural disaster as God's will punishing those who deserve it, and generally looking to point out how OTHER people deserve that punishment more than us in hopes that the next punishment will hit them, instead of us.
When faith of this kind falls, it falls hard. We start to wonder why our faith in a supposedly all powerful God is vulnerable to things like movies, tv shows, or the internet, and why a supposedly merciful God would disown us rather than draw us back in. We start to read the Bible and see the interpretations of our teachers as sorely lacking, ignoring large swatches of Scripture in favor for an overly simplistic (and often terribly judgmental) worldview, and then we see a God proclaimed to be one thing, feared to be another, and then just finally say; "Screw it," and walk away from the whole thing.
There is no reason for someone in this situation to assume that the problem is with the church. Many have never had another perspective given on the Divine. Those who are unwilling to abandon spirituality entirely often find faith elsewhere, and many more simply become the most ardent of anti-theists, disregarding any spiritual experience they may have had in those abusive confines just another aspect of brain-washing and control.
So what is different about my faith? Simple... I didn't believe in that God.
My church and family taught me to engage with culture, to watch, listen, and enjoy, to see God wherever I went rather than fear anything that wasn't us. I learned to relish different perspectives on faith, to see them not as challenges to a TRUTH, but rather as new approaches to familiar concepts. There weren't really outsiders in that worldview... even the most broken sinner in the world would have something of merit worth learning.
Inside the church, the Bible was a toy, an amazingly complex document that had provided different answers to different people over thousands of years. With my Parents as coaches, I approached Biblical Interpretation as others approached batting practice in Little League, knowing that I would make mistakes but that those mistakes were as much, if not more, a part of being a faithful person than the "right answers." I learned to respect that I could be wrong about anything, and also to dare to believe that I could be right. So when people presented me with the complexities and contradictions of Scripture I wasn't shocked or appalled... I knew them well, and was ready to talk.
And finally, I was raised to believe in a loving and caring God who actually loved and cared for people. Who hurt as they hurt, who felt their loss, who walked the fine line between making the world a better place and honoring the decisions people made about their own lives. I didn't cower in fear of what God might do next... rather, I looked forward to finding out, and struck out on my own, knowing that mistakes made would be seen, again, as learning experiences.
And when an aspect of that faith no longer made sense, when I grew intellectually, emotionally, as a human being, when a part of my religion was no longer a part of me, there was no need to cast it all aside. It wasn't the collapse of my faith... simply yet another corrected mistake in a long history of them.
I know we use the sames word for Christ and for God, and so why it could be so infuriating for someone of the former religious experience to talk to someone of mine. I do not persist in my faith, while yours failed, because I am a better person. It's also not due to superior brainwashing or weaker intelligence.
We didn't have the same faith... we didn't believe in the same God. The one I suspect you left was absolutely worth leaving.
Mine is constantly calling me to the next adventure... and is, at least so I believe, worth telling others about.
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