Letters From Leavers

My story is long but i will shorten it - i was brought up in a earnest anglican missionary family where my father was an anglican minister for 30 -40 years. I gravitated towards the Fundamentalist pentacostal side of the christian spectrum and even went on missionary work in my adult years. My doubts started to become a real issue when I came back from one missionary trip in Guatemala - i recieved very little support or encouragement from my church in that period and only my closest friends helped me recover from the experience . AFter that i became less than enthusuiastic about anything to do with the church and it’s activities -this was exacerbated when my Dad decided to divorce my Mother just so he could be comfortable and self -reliant in his retirement leaving my mother with very little but to have to start over again when she should have been enjoying her retirement . I thought a change of scene would help so I changed churches and started going to Hillsong Church for 3 years -even sang in their choir in that time . After a while though i saw that the church was only interested in your ’spiritual growth’ if you were young and beautiful and under 35 and after that they were only interested in how much money you could be milked for while promising you ‘pie-in-the sky ‘ rewards while the money that you were ‘blessing’ them with  was a lot more concrete . I started to realise that they were all the time telling you what to think and feel instead of you doing the thinking for yourself . Anyone who thought for themselves was quickly isolated and branded as ‘unteachable’ or ‘rebellious’ or ‘a troublemaker’. This of course is a crazy way to live in which the people are clapping and cheering while the leadership are taking their money with very little given in exchange and no transparency of conduct.Jesus said that ‘the love of money is the root of all evil’ -and they sure loved the money they enjoyed from ordinary hard-working people to spend on their mansions, cars and all the trappings of wealth while pretending to be acting in your best interests . Also i was thinking about marriage and the opposite sex and realised that the ‘christian ‘ girls in church weren’t interested in me . The thought of going through life without having sex because i couldn’t get married  horrified me so that was the final straw in deciding to leave church and having nothing more to do with organised religeon .Here; 6 years later I am writing this as a much more happy and contented person with no guilt, shame or fear engendered from my ‘christian’ days . I urge others who are in my position as it was then to have the courage to think for yourself and make the change necessary to have a happier , more stable and freer life before it is too late.