China Cat Sunflower
Nimrod
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Why I left the SDA church:
My dad is an ordained elder and retired big wheel in the church organization. I guess the truth is that even though I was raised to be a Bible whiz kid and groomed to follow in my dad’s footsteps, I never really believed in it. As a kid I had heard so many stories about conversion experiences that I was just waiting for something like that to happen to me-and it never did. My parents never bothered to prepare us kids for any kind of future beyond the safety of the church’s inner elite. I got to the point where I needed to decide if I believed in it or not. I didn’t want to be a fake believer just because it made my life easier to just go along with the program.
I don’t want to run anyone else’s religion down. I can only speak for myself, and I don’t assume that my experience is, or should be someone else’s. I was born into the inner circle, the patriarchal elite of the SDA church. Things are different when you’re raised on the inside. I found that I could easily play the role that was expected of me as the son of a charismatic, and extremely well thought of Elder and big-wig insider without really having to believe in what I was acting out. . The adoration and respect people felt for my father was automatically extended to me, whether I deserved it or not. It was so easy, and so irresistible to soak up all that attention. The funny thing is, even at the youngest age I felt superior to, and disdainful of the rank and file members. I was royalty, they commoners. How twisted is that? But that’s how it was for me.
I started studying the Bible for myself, trying to make the connections that underpinned the theology and dogma of the church. Some, maybe most people just swallow what the preacher, or church creed says because they can‘t get their mind around the complexity of the foundational aspects of their belief system, so they just accept it and go on, but I couldn’t do that because I HAD the biblical knowledge, and that left me without an excuse. So I embarked on a journey that I hoped would confirm what I was supposed to believe, and in the process make a believer out of me. It didn’t work out quite that way, though. Not only did my study convince me that the biblical underpinnings of Seventh-day Adventism were based on a contorted and purposely twisted misreading of the OT, but I found the entire Jesus as planetary savior/messiah/Logos thing to be a series of deliberate misrepresentations of concepts belonging to other religions.
Chris
My dad is an ordained elder and retired big wheel in the church organization. I guess the truth is that even though I was raised to be a Bible whiz kid and groomed to follow in my dad’s footsteps, I never really believed in it. As a kid I had heard so many stories about conversion experiences that I was just waiting for something like that to happen to me-and it never did. My parents never bothered to prepare us kids for any kind of future beyond the safety of the church’s inner elite. I got to the point where I needed to decide if I believed in it or not. I didn’t want to be a fake believer just because it made my life easier to just go along with the program.
I don’t want to run anyone else’s religion down. I can only speak for myself, and I don’t assume that my experience is, or should be someone else’s. I was born into the inner circle, the patriarchal elite of the SDA church. Things are different when you’re raised on the inside. I found that I could easily play the role that was expected of me as the son of a charismatic, and extremely well thought of Elder and big-wig insider without really having to believe in what I was acting out. . The adoration and respect people felt for my father was automatically extended to me, whether I deserved it or not. It was so easy, and so irresistible to soak up all that attention. The funny thing is, even at the youngest age I felt superior to, and disdainful of the rank and file members. I was royalty, they commoners. How twisted is that? But that’s how it was for me.
I started studying the Bible for myself, trying to make the connections that underpinned the theology and dogma of the church. Some, maybe most people just swallow what the preacher, or church creed says because they can‘t get their mind around the complexity of the foundational aspects of their belief system, so they just accept it and go on, but I couldn’t do that because I HAD the biblical knowledge, and that left me without an excuse. So I embarked on a journey that I hoped would confirm what I was supposed to believe, and in the process make a believer out of me. It didn’t work out quite that way, though. Not only did my study convince me that the biblical underpinnings of Seventh-day Adventism were based on a contorted and purposely twisted misreading of the OT, but I found the entire Jesus as planetary savior/messiah/Logos thing to be a series of deliberate misrepresentations of concepts belonging to other religions.
Chris
) more or less true for you?
