![]() ![]() In the meantime, countless things went wrong for them as novice hikers. If he was contending for the Christian faith, it wasn’t the Christianity that she once knew. ![]() At first she was confused at the direction Lewis was going. Three days into her hike, Claire began reading the book. Little did she know it was written by a former atheist, CS Lewis, who was making compelling arguments for God. She thought the book was making fun of Christianity, sticking it in her backpack for reading along the trail. By then she was a self-proclaimed “full-blown atheist”. On her way out of campus, she randomly picked up a free book called Mere Christianity to read along the trail. In her mind, she “was trying to run away from everything and do something that was in my control”. The end of her first year, she left university to hike the Pacific Crest Trail in California with a friend. Dismissing God altogether gave her the permission to “ do whatever I want to do, completely let go of any kind of moral direction”. It wasn’t long before she moved from agnosticism to atheism. I could never be the person you want me to be.’ And so at that point, I just said goodbye to God, basically, and ventured into being agnostic.”Īt university, Claire left God behind and found the freedom she had long craved. I said, ‘God, I’m sorry, but what you ask of me, I just can’t do it. I’m giving up right now.’ And I said this prayer, and it was the last time I prayed for three years. I just always thought, ‘No, I could never be good enough for him. And if he would, I still wouldn’t have anything to do with him.” By the time she was 16, she wanted nothing to do with religion, a “ lost cause”, thinking she could never be or do enough for God. This painful experience caused her to think, “If there is a God, why would he ever let me or a person suffer like this? He wouldn’t do that. She would never be pleasing to God, slipping into anxiety, depression and self-harm. As much as she tried to be the perfect Christian, she felt that she never lived up to their high standards of performance. Obedient to strict religious rules, she constantly felt like an outsider, unwelcomed among her peers. From a young age, her mother took them door-to-door telling others about God, a common practice among Jehovah’s Witnesses. Not worth taking another look, until perhaps it is.Ĭlaire Dooley was raised in Mississippi as one of six children in a religious home. Religion becomes the counterfeit, worthless and empty, discarded along with other childhood stories and superstitions. ![]() What once seemed hopeful and good turns bad and even repulsive, easy to reject. Many people reject God because they had a bad experience with religion or religious people. ![]()
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