Losing my religion

DANGER! Following text might cause you to think, read it at your own responsibility.

Little background. I’ve been a christian for about 5 years, I was converted in Oct 2001. These have been good years, sometimes challenging, sometimes frustrating, but still very good. Before I became christian I read all kinds of religious and metaphysical stuff that I could get my hands on and whatever stroke my fancy at the time, including yoga, eastern philosophy, astral projection and such stuff. When I became christian it was only for one reason – I believed Bible to be true Word of God, inerrant and absolute guide for living, changing my life, and Jesus to be my personal saviour who forgives my sins, because he died for then on cross. All in all, I trusted that Bible is true and God is good.

I did have some doubts at ’studying’ time, prior my baptism, but they were answered and I didn’t see the need to do more research on that. Mostly my doubts were kind of “I heard that someone said that…” and so on, not something specific.

Now I think I’ve come to some kind of turning point in my faith, I’m on the crossroad and I don’t know the answers anymore, life doesn’t seem that black-and-white like it was pictured to me and the beginning of my christian road.

Christians, including myself, picture God from Bible as all-loving, neverchanging, allknowing Supreme Being. And yes, there are many-many places that support that view. But what about God from Old Testament? From there I just can’t see that love… Why would God want to wipe out entire nations, including women and even infants and livestock? Because maybe these pagans turn israelites away from true God? How is that defined as good? Or how about when few guys look inside arc He kills everyone surrounding (50000 men)? Or when God ordered israelites to kill entire nation, who did something bad to them 450 years ago? Taking this analogy, then our little Estonia should right away nuke Germany, Sweden, Russia and more surrounding countries who have invaded us and killed our people. Not that I want to do that, I just use amplified analogy to get the point across.

Another dilemma. What about people who are not christians? Bible says very simply that whoever doesn’t meet the requirements to be saved goes to hell for eternity, additional to that, Christ says that “many try, but few actually do get saved”. So, according to that maybe 5% of whole population gets saved, where is love in that? To get eternal pain and punishment for non-eternal sins we’ve done here on Earth. Now counter-argument might be, that actually we don’t know who really gets saved, this is Gods decision, but then this is against Bible. Bible doesn’t leave such gray areas to speculate. My way or the highway, no other choice.

How about contradictions in the Bible? There are many places which contradict, which I just can’t logically explain away. If I do admit that there are errors in Bible, then what? How do I know what to trust and what not? If I know there are humanly errors, additions and removals in the Bible, how in the world can I trust it as inerrant Word of God?

Bible tells that I can understand it only when I have faith. It means I must have blind faith in a book that I know contains errors. It seems that faith begins where logic and reason ends…

Like in Old Testament people let God to give them signs to recognize that He was the True God. I’ve done same thing, I’ve requested a ’sign’, I’ll see what comes of it.

Actually there are many more thoughts circling in my mind, maybe I’ll write them down at some later date.