Ex-Church of Christ Support Board

1) Worry
2) Doubt
3) Fear
4) Human reasoning/logic

IMHO, faith takes a back seat to all four of these in the CofC...resulting in much of the anxiety and emotional distress suffered by those who leave it. 1) You worry about your salvation all the time..... 2) at times throughout your life, you doubt whether you accomplished one or more of the five steps correctly at the time you accomplished them.... 3) you fear the vengefulness of God against you, for something you did or might do..... 4) and you depend on your own reasoning/logic in relating to God....

All this cuts against a spiritual comprehension of God and a spiritual relationship with Him....in short, something exactly meant for faith.....and the trust and dependence on God it calls for and always has from Genesis on.....

I don't disagree with the posted list but I would add and/or acknowledge the following:

Education
History
Logic- as noted in the original list
Reason-as noted in the original lost
Common sense
Science
Critical analysis of religions claims
Critical analysis of the Biblical text
Exploring the wisdom of allowing something to totally control a person's life without any supporting evidence that validates it claims.

I agree with the OP, any or all of these could cause a person to question their faith.

Least anyone think I was mocking the original post, I want to make it clear I was not. The OP was correct & I am simply affirming that post.

The c of C strongly encouraged members not to read or listen to anything that did not come from a member of the c of C because that kind of material could confuse them. And a confused person will inevitably begin to question established beliefs & doctrines. And questions lead to doubt and doubt often leads to exploring other ideas & beliefs, and that can, and often does, lead to apostasy or at least false teaching. And false teaching often leads to change agents and they lead people to apostasy.

The c of C was simply trying to protect their members from being deceived & falling into the hands of Satan as a result of their confusion. So their intentions were honorable.

SolaDude wrote:1) Worry
2) Doubt
3) Fear
4) Human reasoning/logic

IMHO, faith takes a back seat to all four of these in the CofC...resulting in much of the anxiety and emotional distress suffered by those who leave it. 1) You worry about your salvation all the time..... 2) at times throughout your life, you doubt whether you accomplished one or more of the five steps correctly at the time you accomplished them.... 3) you fear the vengefulness of God against you, for something you did or might do..... 4) and you depend on your own reasoning/logic in relating to God....

All this cuts against a spiritual comprehension of God and a spiritual relationship with Him....in short, something exactly meant for faith.....and the trust and dependence on God it calls for and always has from Genesis on.....

That seems reasonable. I personally never had any worry, doubt, or fear, but I always thought my belief was justified and reasonable based on evidence. That's fundamentalist teaching: "The Bible is 100% consistent and 100% true." The book was my evidence.

That morning I was reading Genesis 3 and realized that it was just a snake talking to Eve, and that nothing in the text allows the reader to infer that Satan is in the story, logic and reasoning made me start to question what I believed. I now do not think that I ever had faith. I was a believer, and had no doubts until that day, but my belief and lack of doubt was not due to faith.

Lerk wrote:

SolaDude wrote:1) Worry
2) Doubt
3) Fear
4) Human reasoning/logic

IMHO, faith takes a back seat to all four of these in the CofC...resulting in much of the anxiety and emotional distress suffered by those who leave it. 1) You worry about your salvation all the time..... 2) at times throughout your life, you doubt whether you accomplished one or more of the five steps correctly at the time you accomplished them.... 3) you fear the vengefulness of God against you, for something you did or might do..... 4) and you depend on your own reasoning/logic in relating to God....

All this cuts against a spiritual comprehension of God and a spiritual relationship with Him....in short, something exactly meant for faith.....and the trust and dependence on God it calls for and always has from Genesis on.....

That seems reasonable. I personally never had any worry, doubt, or fear, but I always thought my belief was justified and reasonable based on evidence. That's fundamentalist teaching: "The Bible is 100% consistent and 100% true." The book was my evidence.

That morning I was reading Genesis 3 and realized that it was just a snake talking to Eve, and that nothing in the text allows the reader to infer that Satan is in the story, logic and reasoning made me start to question what I believed. I now do not think that I ever had faith. I was a believer, and had no doubts until that day, but my belief and lack of doubt was not due to faith.

I eventually realized the same thing Lerk. I don't believe now that I ever had faith. I believed, like you and a multitude of other people, that the Bible was literally true and historically accurate. I believed Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were real people that knew Jesus personally and were writing about things they had personally witnessed. When I discovered that is not the case my "faith" simply vanished.

Lerk wrote:I now do not think that I ever had faith. I was a believer, and had no doubts until that day, but my belief and lack of doubt was not due to faith.

I think this is the point of the opening post. In the hardline CoC, folks tend not to have faith (that is, trust) in God. They see God as waiting to pounce on them, rather than as a loving, patient Father. They focus on pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and doing all the right things in order to be acceptable to God.

Cootie wrote:I don't believe now that I ever had faith.

That's the point of the opening post, I think. Soladude is saying that the hardline CoC did not provide a theological or doctrinal basis that would allow an individual to develop a close, trusting relationship with God as their Father.

The worry, doubt and fear were experienced by the humble who believed hardline CoC doctrine. Those who felt safe because they were in the right church, baptized the right way, and so on, were not humble. I was like that after two years in the CoC. I was actually upset at first when I learned about God's grace, because it made me feel less safe. It made me realize how much I had come to trust in being right rather than in trusting in God's kindness and patience.