People who abandoned a religion: did you ever have any worries you could be in trouble?

I never shed my religion (I am and always will be Jewish). I just shed my belief in a deity. But if that’s what you mean, I felt relief, frankly, that I didn’t need to try to explain the world by a supernatural phenomenon.

None.

Three things that are supposed to make you feel better that have never worked for me:

1. Crying
2. Back Rubs
3. Accepting Jesus Christ fully into your heart

I have done all three in a fully open and accepting way and none of them worked. I find it far from disheartening. It has shown me that I am fully in control of my own destiny and manifest a great deal of my own reality on a day to day basis.

I was raised in a devout, rabidly Southern Baptist family, and I hate the memory of it. We went to church 3 times each week. I learned early on to fear God and hell and damnation. I learned that I was utterly unworthy of God’s love, and I especially learned that I would never receive God’s love because I’m gay.

I shed my Baptist beliefs in my 20s, but it’s taken another 15 or 20 years to shed all my Christian beliefs. I went through a period of anger and fear when switching from the hateful Baptists to the more accepting Episcopalians. How could God suddenly become so much more loving?

With my recent release of all organized religion, I’ve felt more freedom and happiness. I haven’t gone through a period of fear. I guess I got over it.

However, I haven’t rejected spirituality altogether. I believe in something eternal. I don’t know what it is or exactly how it works, but I believe that it is love in the purest form. I believe in an afterlife and reincarnation. I suppose I’ve merely traded one set of beliefs for another. Still, I feel good about the change.

My mother was a Christian.. she went to Church up until the day she died and I went with her. I have since stopped going (although I make a periodical appearance). Before she died I made her a promise that I wouldn’t become a F*** up and I think if I Have any worries that I am in trouble or might have made the wrong choice about not going to church anymore, It generates from that promise I made to her more then a supernatural fear

Having been indoctrinated by raised in the Catholic church, I was absolutely horrified when I started to doubt my belief in the Catholic way of believing and doing things. It took me years and years and years to be able to wake up on Sunday morning, not go to church, and honestly believe I would not burn in hell for it. I could run down a laundry list of things that I worried would have me frying for eternity…

Nope, never. And I was also raised Catholic.

How did you drop all the indoctrination so cleanly?

@cockswain

Perhaps because my family wasn’t at all dogmatic. My dad wasn’t very religious and my mom, although religious, was very liberal. Plus, I stopped believing at a very early age. I was a doubter by 8 and fully atheist by 16 or so. So I never really got deeply indoctrinated.

Yea, I’d say I was very cautious about it the whole way through. I feel confident now that where I am now is the best place I could be (as does everyone else, of course) and I feel fully beyond doubt that my previous christian faith has any value in the real world. However, I’m also now keenly aware that I can’t help believing whatever makes sense to me. This is to say, that if there is some God out there that I’m simply ignorant of at the moment, he himself knows that I would believe in him if it were possible for me to do so; If only I could be convinced. I’m confident then that the “loving” god of the bible would totally do what he had to do to convince me if he really wanted me to believe in him. :) He knows I’d be down.

No, I haven’t had any questions about being in trouble. It never made any sense to me, I apparently don’t have what-ever they call faith, so there’s no reason to worry.

On the off-chance that there really is anything to this “God” thing, “he” would know exactly why I feel the way I do, and I still don’t have anything to worry about.

I found it to be very empowering. I started to truly have faith in myself as a person instead of some god that may or may not be there.

I didn’t so much abandon my faith, as realise that the version I held was very wrong, so I think that qualifies?

I was a legalistic, strict, rules orientated “Christian” who believed that homosexuals were lost, and that I would reach a state of perfection on this earth. I secretly had a fear that I knew I would never make it. When I realised the true freedom that getting rid of these beliefs brought, and how much more pleasant it made me as a person, it was like losing a huge weight off my shoulders. I had letters and calls from my former associates consigning me to hell, but I have rarely been happier than when I lost that burden.

wow i made a bunch of typos above, so typical: I feel confident that where I am now is the best place I could be and I am presently beyond doubt that my previous Christian faith has no real world value.

No because even though I abandoned religion I never abandoned God my creator.

Not really, because when I shed my religion I did so without caring what a deity would think of me. I drew comfort from the fact that only an evil god would punish someone for exercising their mental faculties, and I was ready to defy such a god if they did exist. I am perfectly comfortable with my atheism, and feel more free than ever before.

When i still believed everything the Christian faith told me, the thought of dropping the religion was scary, because of course i didn’t want to go to hell either. But at that stage i didn’t have thoughts of leaving it. But over the years my mum (who raised us as Christian and was one herself) started questioning things and wondering about all the inconsistencies in the bible etc, and did research about different things and started thinking about these things more logically, and as she told me about these things, i found myself agreeing, so over time the religion just kind of faded out of my life. And all i felt was relief that i didn’t have to worry about going to hell anymore.

When I dropped the Episcopal Church I felt guilty for a couple years on Sundays when I’d go out dressed casually. Now I feel SO much closer to God than I ever did back then when I was attending church. I can envision going back to church someday but it would be non-denominational. Probably. But no; I never felt I’d be “in trouble.”

@Aster Yes I feel alot closer to God and my spiritual self by abandoning the religious dogma of believe or you will burn mentality.

Many of the answers above confirm to me that the teaching of hell is the first thing that has led many to doubt Christianity. I am not saying that there are not a multitude of other reasons that people turn away, but hell is so contradictory to what Christianity teaches about God ie “I love you, but if you don’t obey I’ll torture you forever”. I just wonder how many ex-Christians would have stayed, or at least been less anti-Christianity, if they had understood that hell is an invention of Roman Catholicism, and has nothing to do with Christianity.

@Harold Unfortunately most Evangelicals also teach eternal hellfire.

@Paradox – Yes, I know that to be the case, unfortunately. They have followed Rome like sheep, and don’t seem to be able to see how contradictory to the Christian message it is.