Originally posted by josephw
Of course you are. But you are unaware of the truth of it.
I was taken in by it for the better part of three decades, josephw, and held fast to the supposed truth of it all with great sincerity during that time. But I ended up liberated from - what I came to realize were - its numbing and curiosity-truncating psychological seductions.
Those Christian years were very nice - and certainly very positive - in many ways, but the religion's seeming vitalization - I gradually came to realize - owed more to my own growing spiritual core functioning with increasing acuteness and awareness, rather than to ancient mythology, elaborate doctrines, and the extraordinarily convoluted Christian cult of personality that grew out of it.
And it's been empowering to have gradually shaken myself free from its intellectual and spiritual clutches.
To be frank, in retrospect, it does seem like a very restricted and stylized prism through which to view our human condition, and I see evidence of those restrictions and seductions in the demeanour and intellectual behaviour of many of the Christians on this forum day after day.
I may be accused of many things, josephw, [the insufferable arrogance in how I am testifying in this way, for one, perhaps!], but being "unaware" of what being a Christian means and entails, is certainly not one of them. It wasn't as if I tried it out for just a few years.
Because of my experience, I am of course able to empathize with you when you extol the virtues and benefits of your faith, even if I no longer share it. 🙂