Backwards

A lot of people raised in Christian homes reach adolescence and young adulthood and simply find they've lost their belief in Christ and God, if they ever really believed in the first place.
  They will tell you "I have so many fond, happy memories of growing up in that kind of environment.  I think it's really good for kids, you know, to learn about morality, and how to treat other people.  But you know?  I just don't have that faith.  I'm sure they find it comforting, which is great, and I wish them all the best, but it's just not for me."  They don't feel like they've "lost" it, though.  They feel they've seen through and outgrown it.

  As usual, I have done things backwards.  I reached adolescence and found I'd lost my belief in other Christians, and in being raised in an insular church setting, if I ever really believed in the first place.

  I will tell you "I have many horrible, upsetting memories of what can go on in those kinds of environments.  (Child molestation, money laundering, addictions, spousal abuse, suicides, murders and the like.  All of which it isn't viewed as Christian or "constructive" to mention or try to work through emotionally.  They so need to be anomalies, and not symptoms.)
  All human communities have those things going on in them, of course.  It's how rigorously Christians seem to unthinkingly deny that these problems are serious ones in Christian communities too (and how much less fairly, dependably and effectively they are dealt with there) that I can't drop.
    I think it's not safe for kids to learn (in the unspoken lessons that daily go on) that they, as Christians, are just better than nonChristians and that the people in their group are better taught than people in other Christian groups, and that they can go ahead and just ignore others unless one is "helping" them by preaching at them.  I think it's not safe for them to learn that they are never to say what they feel, nor feel what they feel unless the feelings are good, Christian ones.  I think it isn't safe them them to be taught not to be who they are, for that matter.  I think it isn't safe to teach children "Don't be who God made you, be who others need you to be.  Right now I need you to be more cheerful and to not talk about That Thing and how it bothers you."  But you know?  I still have, and have always had a relationship (often stormy) with God.  I generally find it challenging and troubling, and I'm stuck with it.  It's real, whether I want it or believe in it or not."

  But I don't think I believe in Christians anymore.  Or church.  And I don't mean "the Church" (ecclesia) as a concept put forth in the bible, of course.  I mean what the average person on the street means by the word.

  I grew up believing that I needed the church community to keep me from sinning, to keep me believing in God and the bible, to keep me from substance abuse, to give me a social community in which I actually belonged, to provide me with social interaction (right from Friday night activities, up to and including a spouse), to teach me what God wanted, to tell me what the bible said, to keep me reading the bible and praying.  The community was supposedly essential, I was told, to make sure I was ok and protect me from spiritual attack, to comfort me in times of trouble, to be healthy for me in terms of my emotional health, to help out with money, to help me find work, to keep me away from other Christian groups who had inferior understandings about religious matters, and host of other unstated things.

  What I found was this:
The community didn't keep people from sinning so much as it defined the precise shape and manner of sinning in which they indulged.  And they indulged.  I feel I believe in God and the bible very much despite the church community, and not because of it.  The church expected complete abstinence from all recreational substances as the only real way to ensure there were no substance abuse problems.  That's overkill in my case.  Drinking a beer with friends is something valuable and worthwhile to me.  In some cases, substance abuse happened with pharmaceuticals in churches.  Or people just took in ridiculous amounts of sugar and caffeine.
    The church community was completely ill-equipped to provide me with any social interaction with creative people, with thinkers, with artists.  (I didn't ask to be born with a streak of that through me, but I was).  I found I had to increasingly ignore what I was being told in the church community in order to learn anything God might be wanting to say to me, particularly if it was something which in any way involved the church community.  Because it was contradictory.
   I found that the church community was so determined to argue that the bible clearly meant they should just keep on doing what they did, that they were unwilling to discuss openly or deal with what it straight out said, much of the time.
   I read the bible and prayed despite, and about, the church community.  As a threat to my being who God created me to be, oftentimes, as that was simply a fact.  The church community proved itself completely inept at dealing with spiritual vulnerabilities they had, and was not safe from malicious, backstabbing, bigoted, anti-thinking, anti-feeling contemptuous spirits of arrogant malice.  In fact, they routinely ran everything.  It was troubling, maddening and downright bad in there, rather than a comfort.
   When I needed money, no one gave me any, despite there being many rich folk and many people who ran businesses and owned a lot of property.  It didn't generally help me find work.  Living the Christian life and attending all the stuff and giving it lip service made me want to be dead.  My connecting to other Christian groups, much against the wishes of the community, taught me that people from other groups were a striking mixture of valuable alternative perspectives on things, and having all the exact same problems, equally not dealt with.

In my life sometimes individuals, Christian or otherwise, have eventually let me down.  Communities of all kinds (Christian and otherwise) have though, and that quite early on, consistently screwed me over, sidelined me, shut me, ostracised or sanctioned me and otherwise generally proved themselves to be about some theoretical collective, and not actually about any person who formed a part of it who wasn't "in a position of leadership."  Communities are for "people managing."  For herding sheep.  I have a Manager, and a Shepherd already.

So I believe in God and I believe in people.  Two or three at a time.  And I do not believe in the modern approach to Christian community and consciously make a decision to wilfully avoid it.