How DARE you?

I am often asked, if you consider yourself an ex-Christian why do you get offended when people tell you, you were never a true Christian?

This is my reply.

It is the principle of the matter. I was a genuine bible believing Christian, who followed Jesus consistently for over 30 years of my life. I have been involved in ministries and leadership throughout most of it. For you to just flag away those 30 years as nothing, is highly offensive. How dare you just fob me off by claiming that I was never a true Christian, especially if you have only been a Christian for a short time.

How DARE you?

The audacity! You can go drop dead!

What also annoys me is that many Christians seem to ignore the many many scriptures in the bible that claim it is possible to become an ex-Christian and grasp hold of one or two scriptures which they interpret as being not possible. They don’t seem to realize that Paul himself considered that he too could fall. Why are you so desperate to paint me as not having been a true Christian? Is it because deep down you are insecure in your own faith and you don’t want to face the possibility you could end up losing your faith too?

So yes, I will take offence if people say I was never a true Christian. That is not because deep down I still believe, it is because I despise the arrogance of that claim. It shows me that certain Christians have a lack of empathy and understanding. They don’t realize just how huge a deal it was for someone like me to go from Christian to Ex-Christian. It was a long painful journey which I never wanted. That’s right, I never wanted to be an Ex-Christian and would rather not be, but there is no choice for me in the matter. I say to you, once you have been a Christian for 30 years or more and gone through trials and tribulations that long and still kept your faith, then you can come back and judge me then, but until then don’t try to tell me what I was or wasn’t especially considering you have no idea of the road I have walked.

My final comments are this: If you are really serious about evangelizing and gaining converts. If you really want to draw an ex-Christian back into Christianity, stop being so arrogant and insulting. All you are doing by claiming that an ex-Christian was never a true Christian is putting up a wall between you and them. All you are doing is showing that you are nothing more special than any other Christian. You are showing that you do not have any desire or ability to understand why someone would fall from the faith. And let’s be realistic here. Do you really think that a person who had spent 20-30 years believing himself to be a Christian when really he wasn’t, would even consider going back to a system that had failed him so drastically? Especially with people who look down their noses at them and see them as somehow inferior? (which is what you are doing when you say “you were not a true Christian”)

If someone can go for so long, deceived and have church leaders believing they are a true Christian and no one telling them otherwise, then something seriously doesn’t add up when it comes claims made by Christians AND the bible.