I was born and raised Roman Catholic, baptized and confirmed, but I am not a practicing Catholic. I do not go to church every week, pray every night or turn to prayer in times of strife. I believe in a God and in Jesus, but not the version that some modern Christians manifest.
There have always been groups of people my age, historically, who are raised Christian and then turn away from Christianity and all established religion, to then become atheist or convert religions entirely. The reason why young adults are turning away from Christianity is more complex than it may seem. The same holds true for me and my beliefs.
In addition to the increase of knowledge about gender, sexuality, race, language and equal rights movements, there has often been backlash by some Christians who use the Bible as a tool to spread hate and ignorance. They are not what Christians are supposed to be, they do not uphold the core commandment, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," but they continually use Bible verses to ostracize and discriminate what they do not understand. Whether this is a gay person, a pansexual person or a transgender person. I’m not just talking about groups such as the Westboro Baptist
Church or the extreme Evangelical Christians. I’ve seen these types of responses from otherwise logical Roman Catholics and Christians, but it's simply more subtle. They say these peoples' identities are not what God intended.
No. Your verbal abuse is not what God intended.
And the commandments are supposedly from God directly, spoken by Jesus. Is the Bible? No, the Bible is written by the disciples. Ordinary humans prone to humanity's flaws. They could have easily put their own agendas in there to inadvertently, or purposefully, make "exceptions" to the commandments. Also, meaning could have been lost in translation, through time, anything. The Bible is hundreds of years old.
Looking at the Bible as a guide on how to respect others and love them and yourself, using the support and the community, and taking comfort in prayer is not a bad thing. If religion is important in your life, more power to you. However, following it word for word or picking out certain verses to spread hate and claiming it's the word of the God you worship is something I do not think was intended. Also, one should not love and respect themselves and others simply to get into heaven. It should be because you want to be respectful and loving.
The Bible needs to be looked at as a book from the time it was written, and not as ultimate law no matter how much the modern world has changed. The world in Jesus' time was a very different place. The Bible has to be adaptable and Christianity has to adapt as well if it is to survive. Otherwise, it will continue to shrink in followers, especially from my age group. If it stubbornly upholds misinterpretations and tries to shut out all this progress in sexuality, gender and race, all these fights for equality, then it will face consequences.
I believe Christians should actually be behind these movements for equality because the ones leading and participating in these movements are simply people who do not feel loved, who feel attacked, and are trying to feel loved, validated and accepted. Instead, I have seen many Christians trying to shut them down or worse, contributing to the problem. This is all combined with the fact that many young adults raised Christian no longer find the peace and solace in it that it is supposed to bring. So they search elsewhere for it.
