Hi, to counteract all the memes here, I want to start a discussion. Maybe answer the question I asked and tell why you “lost faith”.
Lets start with myself. I went to a catholic church as a child, my mothers parents are devout christians, my father is atheist as long as I know. After the elder in the community bullied a very nice priest away when i was around 10, I stopped going to church. I never joined the church as full member as you have to do a confirmation as a late teen and left the church when I was around 20. And now even my mother left the church, so she does not have to pay taxes to them. My Grandparents don’t know this, I think my Grandpa would die of an hearth attack, if he ever found out.
So I would say I never had “faith”, it was just routine that you went to church.
My family was (is, for the most part) Christians, though last I heard my dad is thinking of converting to Judaism. I went to church every Sunday, and Awana (kids bible program thing) every Wednesday, I earned a free trip to bible camp through my church multiple years running, cuz I wanted to go that badly… All that to say, I tried, okay? I really tried. I WANTED to believe in God, and Jesus, and all of it. I just … Didn’t.
I never felt the euphoria that other people claimed to feel, I never felt anything but fear, cuz everyone said God and heaven and hell were real, and I did NOT want to end up in hell, but I didn’t feel shit. I was convinced for a long time that the lack of feeling was because I wasn’t really “saved”, that’s I’d messed it up some how, or lost it. And I really did not want to go to hell, so that was pretty upsetting.
But ultimately I never really believed deep down. I thought the flood story was dumb, I thought praying was dumb(I still tried it, trying to feel the damned feelings), I did not have a “relationship with Jesus”. I was confused on a lot of points, especially where the love of Jesus conflicted with my republican families political opinions.
When I was in my early teens my grandpa died, and at the funeral some relative or other assured me I’d see him again in heaven, and I remember thinking, “Now that’s a weird thing to actually believe.” …That thought came out of no where. I was still trying to believe at the time, and I think that was the beginning of the end. It was a slow end, with a couple more tries at various churches, but I really just used church for socializing from then on. Socializing and hedging my Pascal’s Wager, you know, cuz I really (and I can’t stress this enough) did not want to go to hell. I wanted to at least be able to tell god I tried. Just in case.
So yeah, god, and random internet people, I tried. But there wasn’t much faith to lose.