I think a lot of religious people (I won't exclude non-Christians) have a moment or a series of moments where they have an epiphany or at least a slow, rising feeling of realization.

Mine came in my early 20s. I had left the RCC when I was maybe 14 or 15. I was extremely angry at God for things that had happened, and my family quit attending Mass.

We went to non-denominational church for a while, and I always considered myself a Christian. But I didn't live like it.

I went off to college, and lived basically like a non-Christian. I didn't think I was a bad person, but I didn't exactly live up to the ideal of Christian charity or chastity.

It wasn't until after I got married (to a Catholic girl thank God!) that I began to take God seriously again. I read everything I could get my hands on. From Thomas aquinas (though I could barely understand) to C.S. Lewis.

I began to realize how deeply intellectual the Catholic faith was, and I fell in love with the Church. I went to confession for the first time in 10+ years and it was the first time I recalled being truly overwhelmed by love.

Anyways. What is your conversion story?

Nm

AstroAg17 said:

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When you went to your non-denominational church, did you still consider yourself catholic?

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Sometimes I did. It would depend on when you asked me.

Maybe some people would say I didn't have a conversion because I never really left, and that I "defaulted" back to Catholicism. But I don't see it that way. It helps that there's more to my story than the readers digest version here.

There's a thought out there by many who seem to think you have to have a defining moment when you recognize Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. I think this is pretty much bunk. I have no cognitive memory of when I DIDN'T believe this, so defining "conversion date" is a non-sequitur to me.

If you have that day in your life, great. I'm just amazed at how many seem to think that I can't declare Christ as my Savior just because I can't put a time frame on it.

Hammerbrau said:

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There's a thought out there by many who seem to think you have to have a defining moment when you recognize Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. I think this is pretty much bunk. I have no cognitive memory of when I DIDN'T believe this, so defining "conversion date" is a non-sequitur to me.

If you have that day in your life, great. I'm just amazed at how many seem to think that I can't declare Christ as my Savior just because I can't put a time frame on it.

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I'm definitely not one that thinks you have to have had an "aha!" moment. If you've been faithful your whole life, good on you.

But many people do have "prodigal son" moments or a period where we had a metanoia. I find these stories inspiring.

Hammerbrau said:

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There's a thought out there by many who seem to think you have to have a defining moment when you recognize Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. I think this is pretty much bunk. I have no cognitive memory of when I DIDN'T believe this, so defining "conversion date" is a non-sequitur to me.

If you have that day in your life, great. I'm just amazed at how many seem to think that I can't declare Christ as my Savior just because I can't put a time frame on it.

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Same here. Thank God there never was a day I didn't know and love Jesus Christ as my Lord. I pray the same for my children. It also shows the ridiculousness of "believer's baptism." What do people like us do? Manufacture a conversion so we can be baptized?

Some people do, some people don't. I specifically remember when I made my decision to become a believer in Christ because I was older. However I will say at that time I had no idea the implications of the decision I just made. I wouldn't say I truly had faith in Christ until a little while later but that decision led to that so who knows?

Paul definitely had an Aha! moment.

Woody2006 said:

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I had a deconversion moment. It was strange, but the only way I can describe it is to say it felt as though everything I had taken for granted as true unraveled and I was left with the realization that neither I nor anyone else has any idea how the universe and life came about.

At first, this caused me a lot of anxiety because I realized I didn't believe in an afterlife anymore. Over time, I guess I just learned to accept it.

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I actually meant to include something saying that this could include the non-religious too. Thanks.

Also, the part about feeling that what you held to be true unraveling; that describes basically how I felt in my late teens, early 20s.

Frok said:

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Some people do, some people don't. I specifically remember when I made my decision to become a believer in Christ because I was older. However I will say at that time I had no idea the implications of the decision I just made. I wouldn't say I truly had faith in Christ until a little while later but that decision led to that so who knows?

Paul definitely had an Aha! moment.

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I agree with the "some people do, some people don't". Although, I do think that it's probably very rare that someone goes their entire life without periods of doubt and renewal.

Hey drum... bumped a thread for ya. You seem new around here, at least to me... if you would like to let us know a bit about ya...

I think Paul would not consider his conversion an "aha" moment of his own any more than a person who gets hit by a bus thinks of their experience as a tackling exercise.

Granted, I believe that the Holy Spirit works faith and the individual can choose to reject that faith. I was baptized as an infant, so I do not remember my conversion.

I will say, that reading Law and Gospel and rereading the Augsburg Confessions and Large Catechism this year has been really really amazing for me and has done a great deal to strengthen my faith and love of theology. I'm reading a book on Christification right now and it has also been very eye opening. My daily Bible study is on Colossians and Daniel right now..that has been very edifying. I'm very very blessed to have amazing resources in my Church to grow in knowledge and faith. When I am not to lazy, my pastor has also written a daily devotional called A Year in the Church Fathers that I try to read. It is lovely.

I'm not saying I've gone through life without some form of doubt or being lazy in faith. I just accept that God never left me, even if I hadn't kept my eyes on the prize, and I don't feel the need to proclaim my "prodigal return" every time it happens.

I never converted to Christianity as I was brought up in it. I do remember vividly, at 6 years old, the very moment I prayed with my mother for Jesus to enter my heart and I confessed him as my lord and savior. As I do remember the times I had friends pray the same with me as they accepted Jesus.

Doubting Jesus, the Bible, or God just wasn't something I could fathom as everything I witnessed in the faith pointed to something real.

My conversion to doubt was in my 20s, when I first started to really get to know and spend considerable time with people of other faiths. As I heard their stories and descriptions of experiences in their faith, I was in disbelief on how similar it was to my own. I then, for the first time really, started to see these people as I had always claimed I did as a true "Christian", that being with true love. Where I had previously believed that these people were essentially worshipping satan through their misguided faith and would end up in eternal damnation, or even just snuffed out of existence while those of us who were born into or chose the right faith got to live happily ever after in eternal peace, I found that I had to categorize the people in my mind in such a way so that I could justify what I thought God would do with them. As a result of seeing them in this new light, I could no longer find any reason to believe in the version of God I previously believed in.

There was no specific moment though. It was a transition. One that becomes more and more solidified as I am able to see my previous faith from outside the prism of never doubting. Once that first pebble fell where I finally could allow myself to question the validity of the Bible, it just has continued to snowball. I tried many books to see if I could slow it down, CS Lewis was the most effective at slowing that snowball down, but eventually it just ran him over.



Out of human habit I still pray to Jesus every night out of a deeply embedded fear that if I die without repenting to him I will end up in the bad place. I can even have a conversation with myself in my head, asking why I still do such a silly ritual while I am still praying. Logically I find no reason to have that fear, but it is there, for no other reason that it was drilled into me my entire first 20 years of existence. Unfortunately, we as humans are limited as far as what we can "relearn" when it comes to how we were raised and what we were taught.

Since others are sharing deconversion moments..
I've always had my doubts and mostly considered myself a Christian, until I watched my Dad die. He was raised by a teetotaler Church of Christ pastor, but he drifted away from that to another denomination before I was born. He did like various alcohols, but I can't remember ever seeing him drunk. The cancer and sickness from it had definitely messed with his brain at this point, but I vividly remember him crying like a baby on his deathbed because he was going to Hell for drinking alcohol.
I realized any organization that could cause that kind of guilt in a good man wasn't worthy of consideration. That cemented my belief that the universe is big enough for a being to exist that has God like qualities. But that no man has ever figured out how to worship that being, or even if it would want to be worshiped.

Quad Dog said:

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Since others are sharing deconversion moments..
I've always had my doubts and mostly considered myself a Christian, until I watched my Dad die. He was raised by a teetotaler Church of Christ pastor, but he drifted away from that to another denomination before I was born. He did like various alcohols, but I can't remember ever seeing him drunk. The cancer and sickness from it had definitely messed with his brain at this point, but I vividly remember him crying like a baby on his deathbed because he was going to Hell for drinking alcohol.
I realized any organization that could cause that kind of guilt in a good man wasn't worthy of consideration. That cemented my belief that the universe is big enough for a being to exist that has God like qualities. But that no man has ever figured out how to worship that being, or even if it would want to be worshiped.

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Wow I'm sorry for what happened to your dad, and I'm sorry you had to watch it.

Hammerbrau said:

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There's a thought out there by many who seem to think you have to have a defining moment when you recognize Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. I think this is pretty much bunk. I have no cognitive memory of when I DIDN'T believe this, so defining "conversion date" is a non-sequitur to me.

If you have that day in your life, great. I'm just amazed at how many seem to think that I can't declare Christ as my Savior just because I can't put a time frame on it.

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I absolutely remember the moment when the Holy Spirit convicted my heart and i was converted. I don't recall the date, but i do recall the moment, where i was, etc

It was not an intellectual decision for me. It was spiritual.

AstroAg17 said:

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I was raised a Christian, and I had a pretty powerful emotional moment when I was a Christian where I decided to devote my life to Jesus. I was baptized a while later. Oops.

Losing my belief was much more gradual. I tried to justify my faith and couldn't, then I pretended/tried to believe for a good while longer. I stopped that eventually. It was a change for sure, but I think it's been for the better.

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Why do you say "oops"?

Please dont take offense, but you cant be "raised a Christian". You can be exposed to the Christian doctrine and God's word as a child, but that doesn't make one a Christian.

God says his will is that not any should perish, but that all come to repentance. The bible also says that no man can come to God unless drawn by his spirit. It's not an intellectual decision that someone makes on his or her own at any given time. God has to "knock" and you must "open the door and recieve". Even though Paul's conversion was dramatic, Paul did not decide when and where and how, God did. Thats the way it works. Its the same with everyone who comes to Christ.

Quad Dog said:

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Since others are sharing deconversion moments..
I've always had my doubts and mostly considered myself a Christian, until I watched my Dad die. He was raised by a teetotaler Church of Christ pastor, but he drifted away from that to another denomination before I was born. He did like various alcohols, but I can't remember ever seeing him drunk. The cancer and sickness from it had definitely messed with his brain at this point, but I vividly remember him crying like a baby on his deathbed because he was going to Hell for drinking alcohol.
I realized any organization that could cause that kind of guilt in a good man wasn't worthy of consideration. That cemented my belief that the universe is big enough for a being to exist that has God like qualities. But that no man has ever figured out how to worship that being, or even if it would want to be worshiped.

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Your dad was lied to and thats sad. But why blame God for that? Men have been given free will.

There are many scheisters out there and false doctrines.

Your dad did not go to hell for drinking alcohol.

supper said:

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Quad Dog said:

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Since others are sharing deconversion moments..
I've always had my doubts and mostly considered myself a Christian, until I watched my Dad die. He was raised by a teetotaler Church of Christ pastor, but he drifted away from that to another denomination before I was born. He did like various alcohols, but I can't remember ever seeing him drunk. The cancer and sickness from it had definitely messed with his brain at this point, but I vividly remember him crying like a baby on his deathbed because he was going to Hell for drinking alcohol.
I realized any organization that could cause that kind of guilt in a good man wasn't worthy of consideration. That cemented my belief that the universe is big enough for a being to exist that has God like qualities. But that no man has ever figured out how to worship that being, or even if it would want to be worshiped.

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Your dad was lied to and thats sad. But why blame God for that? Men have been given free will.

There are many scheisters out there and false doctrines.

Your dad did not go to hell for drinking alcohol.

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So now my Grandfather and uncle who followed in the "family business" are liars and scheisters? Because they definitely did not think they were lying.
We could cover any Christian belief and find extremes on either side: full submersion baptism vs sprinkle; figurative bread and grape juice communion vs literal blood and body; verbatim Bible from KJV vs individual interpretation. And thats just the big stuff. We'd find even more varieties with alcohol, gambling, divorce, saints, abortion, birth control, Sabbath, etc. No matter how good a person we are we could find a Christian group that condemns us for any number of actions.
I don't think I've ever blamed God. I blame all organized religions that find any reason to look down upon others and condemand them, especially for relatively small things.

I did not mean to imply that your ancestors were scheisters.

They were duped and followed false doctrine.

There is nothing in scripture, not one pen stroke, that claims the act of drinking alcohol will condemn one to hell. Men are shackled with burdens and guilt based on false doctrine created by men. I was raised a Baptist, so I can relate. That denomination also has many "rules" that cannot be backed up by scripture.

And if someone is raised in a particular way, its extremely difficult to change.

I was raised Catholic. Never doubted God exists, but definitely had a period of about 8 years in my life when I was just apathetic towards practicing my faith.

I relate being a Catholic to being a college football fan. The more you immerse yourself with it, the more you tend to enjoy it. That is, when you study it and know a lot more about what is going on, when you have a deeper understanding of it, you are drawn more and more to it.

In my high school and college years, I lived a very sinful life--but during that time I still argued for the existence of God and the importance of attending church (even though I probably went to church maybe ten times during my entire time at A&M).


My biggest change was attending an Acts Retreat with my uncle about a year and a half ago. It was a great experience and I recommend it to everyone (Catholic or not). It was great in that you experience a spiritual Joy and it is kind of like jet fuel for your spiritual life. Now I try to immerse myself by staying involved with my Parrish through Acts retreats and This Man is You. I also try pray the rosary more than twice a week.

The great thing that people miss when they dont attend church is the community aspect of Religion.

Quote:

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Matthew 18:20
For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them."

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Hearing other people's testimony is very powerful in realizing that you aren't alone. Also, the big factor to me is seeing how happy people are who are strong in their faith. I am not married yet, but dated a lot over the years (I am in my late 20s now). I have been praying for a wife now for a while and have a good relationship with a lovely girl where we pray together everyday. It's by far the most fulfilling relationship I have ever had.

Biggest example is Johnny Manziel. All the women, success, and worldy pleasures you can imagine, yet he seems miserable. No living like clean living with God. My own example in my life, I was sort of miserable and lost in College--even though I had the same thing going as far as success and worldy pleasures. Now I am much better off even being objective.

Great posts Supper.

Christianity is not about Religion, it's about a relationship with Jesus Christ. To those of you who have been hurt in the past, please don't let what a denomination or individual Church did influence any of your thinking in that regard. The Ultimate Authority is God and the Bible and don't base your opinions on what you've heard or been told by a Church but instead open a Bible, read it for yourself and use that to find and strengthen your relationship with Christ. Most churches are great and vital to a Believer's life but what they say or preach should always be backed up by what the Bible says and the same goes for an individual.

I had a major conversion experience at the age of thirty-one on the first Friday in December of 1977.

There had never been a time when I doubted God's existence, and I grew up in a churchgoing family. A coworker witnessed to me and asked if I was saved and thankfully he was very, very persistent. The question "Are you saved?" was one I'd answer by stating that I went to church and behaved myself as best I could and all the other evasions and excuses I could come up with.

That Friday he and I went to evening prayer services at Church of the Redeemer in Houston (now, sadly, closed down). People were giving testimonies. For the first time I saw people in whose lives Christ was actively working and whatever they had, I wanted.

That night I made Jesus my personal savior and the following February was baptized by Scriptural standards (full immersion, in Jesus' name).

AstroAg17 said:

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If you didn't doubt God exists, how could you be apathetic about your religion? I've never understood that, and it's a pretty common tale. Did you just not think about it often?

Also, how is booboo doing? I haven't seen him around in a while.

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I guess I knew God existed, but didn't think that what I was doing was that bad. The issue is that when you are around others that are into the same sinful stuff, you get a little apathetic.

You are a product of your society and when no one is asking you to go to church and instead the rage is drinking too much on the weekends and chasing skirt--well I'll just say it is a slippery slope. Not that my life was circling the drain in any way, but as an adult now, I look back and think "man I am lucky that it didnt get worse".

I grew up in medium size Baptist churches. Always hated having to go to church. Started back to the Methodist church after I got married. Eight years and two children later, my wife died of cancer at age 36. . A year before that, my father died at the age of 58 from cancer. They were both very good people. Many said they were in a better place. Hogwash. They are not in a better place. That is just mental gymnastics to make the speaker feel better about their own illogical views and their fear of death. One of those friends was told today that she has breast cancer. Should I tell her to just go on to that better place now? Why fight if you are going to a better place? I know her children and grandchildren will be comforted by the fact that she will not be here with them.
I finally discovered Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and others, and came to realize what I had been missing and why I disliked church. Religion makes no logical sense. I do not like science fiction nor do I believe in the supernatural and the suspension of the laws of nature. Religion is simply man made nonsense.

Been a part-time lurker for a long time (used to post a lot over here years ago), but this is an interesting topic for me. I am one of the "deconversion" stories, although looking back I was always a little skeptical. However, my dad was a minister and I come from a large family of devout Christians.

I never doubted my faith until college. I met a girl and she was great, except she was Mormon. For her sake, I met with the missionaries. At the first meeting, they asked me to pray about their faith, and if I felt a burning in my heart, I would know it's true. So later I did, and I felt it. I knew though that the feeling was just an emotional response. I decided not to convert after serious contemplation. Needless to say, the girl and I inevitably split up due in large part to pressure from her family and community. I've got some funny/odd memories from that time.

The serious contemplation made me really question my own faith and what I really believed. And what it led to was me trying to find a faith that I felt good about and that also made sense to me logically. I have yet to find such a thing.

Quad Dog said:

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So now my Grandfather and uncle who followed in the "family business" are liars and scheisters? Because they definitely did not think they were lying.
We could cover any Christian belief and find extremes on either side: full submersion baptism vs sprinkle; figurative bread and grape juice communion vs literal blood and body; verbatim Bible from KJV vs individual interpretation. And thats just the big stuff. We'd find even more varieties with alcohol, gambling, divorce, saints, abortion, birth control, Sabbath, etc. No matter how good a person we are we could find a Christian group that condemns us for any number of actions.
I don't think I've ever blamed God. I blame all organized religions that find any reason to look down upon others and condemand them, especially for relatively small things.

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If you think that is the big stuff when it comes to Christianity, I think you missed the point. Faith, mercy, justice, love.... these are the real message.

Quad Dog said:

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Since others are sharing deconversion moments..
I've always had my doubts and mostly considered myself a Christian, until I watched my Dad die. He was raised by a teetotaler Church of Christ pastor, but he drifted away from that to another denomination before I was born. He did like various alcohols, but I can't remember ever seeing him drunk. The cancer and sickness from it had definitely messed with his brain at this point, but I vividly remember him crying like a baby on his deathbed because he was going to Hell for drinking alcohol.
I realized any organization that could cause that kind of guilt in a good man wasn't worthy of consideration. That cemented my belief that the universe is big enough for a being to exist that has God like qualities. But that no man has ever figured out how to worship that being, or even if it would want to be worshiped.

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This is heartbreaking.
One thing that is so hard for man to do is to forgive himself.
A second one is to not judge others.

Very sorry. Very sad.

Ok, I will share my conversion story / testimony. Too many de-conversion stories bringing down the joy.

I was raised Church of Christ. My father is an elder at a CoC. My father's father was an oilman that the people in the business called "Preacher," but must have been well liked, as he was a successful salesman.

I can recall a number of paranormal events that occurred to me before high school that convinced me 100% that science cannot explain everything. There are just some connections and events that are too weird to explain. It's not that I think that there is something more than nature at work, I just think that man's understanding of nature is much more limited than we think, and a lot of very, very strange things we chalk up to coincidence have a rational explanation.

Back to religion, I was a leader in youth group growing up. We had a group of 10 or so male/female friends in my class that went to church together, even though only me and one other guy had parents that went to that church.

On my senior year at wilderness trek in the mountains in Colorado, we have 4 hours of quite time at base camp just below the treeline. I am communing with nature, and see a bald eagle, lots of cool chipmonks, a deer or elk of some sort rambling through the bushes, a hummingbird about 20 yards away hitting different flowers, and my feet are dangling in snowmelt stream. I am thinking that at that time, at that place in my life, and in that environment, I could never be closer to God.

Suddenly, the hummingbird makes a direct B-line for my face, and hovers right in front of my eyes for what must have been 2 very long seconds. He twists his head like a curious dog, I can feel the wind of his wings flapping on my cheeks, and he darts off, around me and out of my vision. I was destroyed, and inconsolable for almost an hour. This was such an amazing experience, that I am embarrassed to talk about it. At that point in my life, I believed that God was personally calling me to do something special.

Fast forward into college, I started to very seriously question the Judaeo Christian God. The science stuff gave me some problems, and I had to come to terms with the reality that there was likely no such thing as a man who lived over 900 years, or a global flood, etc. Those were not nearly as difficult to square as the horrific stuff in the OT, the seemingly ordered genocides, and other morality topics that are frequently brought up here. I went to my CoC minister about this, and he challenged me to read the gospels four times, all the way through, and get to know Jesus.

So, I did this, and was struck by how much Jesus's philosophy rang true. When you focus in on what he had to say, I believe that the philosophy is self validating. I concluded that only someone sent from God could have had such revolutionary and world changing knowledge. If this guy claimed to be God, I wanted to believe him.

But, I was still in kind of spiritual limbo. Weighing the negative stuff and the positive stuff wasn't the path to knowing the truth. I started making very un-christian life decisions due to my doubt (example: "I don't really believe for sure that this is wrong anyway") while still leading Bible studies on the weekend. It didn't take very long for me to get completely disgusted with myself doing that, so I decided to commit down one road or another.

In the end, I chose to live as a believer, partly because the people in my life who really understood joy, and love, were all believers. I thought that I could get the most out of life living like that regardless. I consider this my conversion moment. I did a very deep analysis, and I chose to trust God, even though my belief was weak. Fast forward, and most of the things in my life have done nothing but solidify my faith.

Throughout life's ups and downs, when things have been the worst, I realized later is it was because I was not living as Christ has taught me to. Muscling more love and caring into my personal relationships, marriage, fatherhood, friendships and business relationships always made me happier and my situation better.