Pros & Cons of becoming ex-Christian

By Amanda, a.k.a. newly not

It was a weird feeling the day I shifted my beliefs and discovered there wasn’t a God. For those of you who are also recently confirmed in the Almighty’s nonexistence, I offer some pros and cons to the new lifestyle in light of the slight mourning you may be feeling in the dissolved hope of eternal life:

Pros:


1.) You’re no longer required to force the following things into your daily schedule:
  • Read the often confusing, boring, contradictory, and vile text that is the Bible.
  • Have a sincere chat with God (a.k.a. the ceiling), asking for anything to do with yourself last, mind you.
  • Live for GOD and obey God’s Word, which, if taken literally, would include dozens of absurd laws.
  • Serve God in your work (even if you work at McDonald’s) and love strangers (even if you innately don’t like people).
You know, the things a “good” Christian should be doing, but many of us ex-Christians weren’t doing regularly, anyway.

2.) You’re no longer obligated to attend church services and related activities once a week (or more!). Assuming the typical worship runs an hour-and-a-half and you attend one sixty-minute Bible study a week, that’s 130 hours saved a year. Automatically forfeiting sleeping in on one out of two of your weekend days will be a thing of the past.

3.) You can now choose to give your money in the amount you want, when you want, to where you want, rather than immediately writing out a check for a full ten percent to the church.

4.) Feel free to enjoy “worldly” things without guilt: you can now watch the shows you want, spend money on the things you want, do harmless but un-Christian things (read your horoscope, celebrate Halloween), and all in all, conduct your life without the pressure of God controlling it.

5.) God’s morals are no longer your morals. You can now think for yourself and stop pretending that you think homosexuality is wrong, that women are to submit to their husbands, or whatever else you secretly disagreed with the whole time you believed in God.

6.) You might be prompted to take better care of yourself and really live your life because you know that any day now it will be gone.

7.) You’ll lose your rep as the annoying/judgmental/close-minded “witness” for Christ.

Cons:

1.) You can no longer pray and expect a god to help you out, or thank him when things happen to go your way.

2.) When you’re dead, you’re dead. This is less of a con when you put into play that you really wouldn’t want to stick around Earth forever; what happens if we use up all of our resources, for example. Reality has the potential to be worse than being dead. If you get to be old and falling apart you may be more at peace with the idea. Also, you’ve already not existed for an infinite amount of time before your birth; each night when you go to sleep or when you are “put to sleep” you are in a state similar to death because you are unconscious. Most people don’t fear going to sleep because they trust in eight or so hours they’ll be awake again to start another day. Death still sucks, of course, but nobody can control it and you won’t be able to think about it sucking once it happens, so appreciate the gift that is life!

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