{"id":104,"date":"2015-03-09T09:50:42","date_gmt":"2015-03-09T13:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=104"},"modified":"2015-03-09T09:51:25","modified_gmt":"2015-03-09T13:51:25","slug":"leaving-piety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=104","title":{"rendered":"Leaving Piety"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Clergy Project has up this morning a striking interview<\/a> with a pastor who no longer believes. The entire thing is worth reading, but this particular passage really got my attention.<\/p>\n

\n

3. What caused the doubts to start becoming stronger than your beliefs?<\/b><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I got older, lonelier, and more tired, and have grown rather intolerant of bullshit<\/span>. I have come to the place where I don\u2019t want to waste my remaining years saying things I don\u2019t believe and propping up the failing institution<\/span> we call the church.<\/p>\n

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<\/span>. 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\u2019ve waited long enough. Time to move on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Why should we expect less of a figure that is to be worshipped<\/i>, and with whom one hopes to spend eternity, than we’d expect of some low-life dumbass boyfriend?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions\/107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}