Issue date: 1/22/07 Section: Opinion

I used to be like many of the Christians you see on the street. I was a believer, not because I had some magical supernatural experience or enlightenment, but because from the womb society conditioned me to believe. I think this is the case with most Christians .

Their foundations of faith are generally based in one or more of the following: you belong to church X because your parents belong to church X; you go to church X because it is near your house, your friends and neighbors go there, the minister is an inspiring speaker or because they have a lot of fun barbecues and other activities that you want to be a part of.

The actual church doctrine is rarely considered, if at all. And you simply assume that God exists and the church you attend is the right one. With the reasons for belief being so subjective and random, one has to wonder why some individuals go to extremes, killing and dying for faith.

For years I had never taken the time to actually read the Bible that I carried so proudly to church on Sunday. But I believed it was the absolute Word of God. I believed there was a mountain of proof inside and there were prophecies that had and were still coming true. How could it be wrong when so many authors compiled the Bible, fitting every piece together so seamlessly?

I always said that someday I was going to get serious about the Bible and what God really wanted from me. But for the time being I was enjoying all the "sinful" exploits of my youth.

Then the time finally came for me to start taking God seriously. I was going to find out what the right beliefs were, and whom I should be fellowshipping with. I was going to stop being a Sunday morning Christian. I started studying the Bible on my own and with Bible study groups, becoming Bible literate, or at least I thought so.

Had I kept my studies narrowed to evangelical interpretations and listened to only a specific genre of Christians, I doubt that I ever would have changed my mind or questioned things. It was when I opened my mind up to outside ideas, including other Christian groups and atheist thinkers that I began to see things for what they really are.

Ironically, it all began with questions I had heard other Christians discuss. "Why don't the Jews just accept Jesus? Why did they reject their own Messiah? Why did they have him killed? They were intriguing questions and I decided to do some research.

But I didn't only examine these questions from a Christian perspective. The answers I found were not what I expected. I realized the Jews were right in terms of understanding their own Bible. Much of the problem was rooted in subjective interpretation.

Thus began a broader kind of thinking on my part. I found serious problems with the idea of the Bible being an inerrant document. It became painfully clear to me that the Old Testament had been hijacked and reinterpreted to fit a different belief system. I came to the conclusion that God does not exist, at least not in the way that we traditionally think of Him.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools