Followup to: Crisis of Faith
I thought this comment from "Jo" deserved a bump to the front page:
"So here I am having been raised in the Christian faith and trying not to freak out over the past few weeks because I've finally begun to wonder whether I believe things just because I was raised with them. Our family is surrounded by genuinely wonderful people who have poured their talents into us since we were teenagers, and our social structure and business rests on the tenets of what we believe. I've been trying to work out how I can 'clear the decks' and then rebuild with whatever is worth keeping, yet it's so foundational that it will affect my marriage (to a pretty special man) and my daughters who, of course, have also been raised to walk the Christian path.
Is there anyone who's been in this position - really, really invested in a faith and then walked away?"
I was raised in a pretty fundamentalist Christian household. I would now describe myself as a 'Christian agnostic'; I don't know if God exists and doubt there is any way to know, but I still follow parts of the faith because I believe they make me a better person. It's just a long road you have to slog down. There's no good way to throw out everything all at once.
I would suggest you start by picking the single most important aspect of your faith, one that both says something about the divine (if it exists) and about what you're meant to do -- for me, it was "love your enemy". And then evaluate other parts of your faith based on that. You don't need to believe in the virgin birth to believe in the transforming power of grace. There's evidence for that aplenty.