The Clergy Project has up this morning a striking interview with a pastor who no longer believes. The entire thing is worth reading, but this particular passage really got my attention.
3. What caused the doubts to start becoming stronger than your beliefs?
I think my doubts became undeniable again last year once I had attained everything I set out to accomplish: education, full ordination in a liberal mainline denomination, job security and a retirement plan. Once I reached those goals, I found myself terribly unhappy and unable to stay with my choice to act as if I believed.
I got older, lonelier, and more tired, and have grown rather intolerant of bullshit. I have come to the place where I don’t want to waste my remaining years saying things I don’t believe and propping up the failing institution we call the church.
And one more thing: If there really is a God, I no longer want to serve him. If he is as awful as he is depicted in the Old Testament, then I will oppose him. In the New Testament, Jesus said God is loving, kind, and forgiving. He said that his Holy Spirit resides in us and guides us. I have loved that idea but I have never seen it or felt it and I’ve waited long enough. Time to move on.
Good for him. Seriously: If your daughter had a boyfriend who treated her as Our Heavenly Father Who Loves Us treats humanity, you’d go after him with a baseball bat and submit to the prison time with a smile.
Why should we expect less of a figure that is to be worshipped, and with whom one hopes to spend eternity, than we’d expect of some low-life dumbass boyfriend?