Hi, let me start off by saying it’s good you questioned. Questioning is the healthy decision
What you’re experiencing is the leftover indoctrination giving you anxiety. That sort of mind brainwashing of fear is what they use to make you go back into it. Don’t give into the fear, and don’t rejoin religion because of it. You already know the answer, but there is more to it than that. Because of the imprint of your indoctrination, you still think that without a God you have nothing, and that life isn’t capable of living in its own way and having its own soul without needing a god. Yes people can be pretty bad out there, but teaching about awareness and the what the world needs to get healthier to others, is better than rambling on nonsense verses that don’t help anyone. For example, the Athiest Humanitarism movement is really good about this. You start to learn the world doesn’t need a god to do good, you were just taught that. If anything the centries of religion have caused all of this chaos, and we are just now learning how to get passed it and fix it. All because of a book, people fought over it and usually now if the practice doesn’t agree with a page in the book they will remove it and call it the same thing when it was tailored to get with the new ways of society.
When it comes to death, you start to focus less on what there is in life. If you focus more on life, maybe you’ll find that the answer for death actually doesn’t matter. Again, you believe you have no purpose because you were brainwashed to beleive you need a god to have purpose when you do not. All you need is yourself, self love, and finding meaning in the things around you. Discovering more about yourself and the inner mind may help, there’s alot more to life than just the physical.
You don’t have to go back into Christianity, you don’t even have to go back into religion for that matter. You already answered your own question here “Decide for myself what I beleive is true” decide for you. Not for your fear, not for other peoples persuasion and indoctrination, do it for you. This is literally all you need, you don’t need religion and you don’t need a book that answers all your questions with half assed replies and hatred and lies. Choose your own path, study philosophy. Most religious groups do not even bother teaching their followers about philosophy, which is the main interaction with their whole religion. You shouldn’t ever enter something without prior study, everything requires questioning and skepticism. That’s how we develop and evolve as humans.
Used to be afraid of “what if I go to hell for not beleiving in god” and really, that is the traumatic experience of brainwashing in a religion no one wants to admit. Religion is meant only for specific personal beleifs for control, fear, hatred sexism, phobias, there is nothing good to come of it, it is not even a healthy movement. I talked about this earlier today but they do alot of harm without realizing it. Religious people like to go all over the world saying they’re “saving people” but really you’re tainting innocent lives who don’t know what the world is like yet, all for your own gain of “spreading the word of God” which creates confusion, and anger, and these people start tearing their societies apart because someone said “you can’t do X or Y or you’ll burn” and foreign countries like this don’t know anything else, so they throw these people into pits and bury them, and with teaching about acts of s*x, instead of teaching the nature of dangerous diseases, they just say it’s “impure” and these people get curious from that and explore it instead. They’re not helping anyone. It’s the same throught the course of religious history. Their path has never helped others but themselves and their own personal beleifs. It’s a practice made only to people who want to conform. And if you want to confirm from fear, then take that path, but it’s not healthy for you either. The point is you have subconsciously been put through this fear mongering for years, and now you fear death because you think that if a god exists its going to narrsassistically throw you in hell because it wants you to worship it. Does that make any sense to you?
You can defiently beleive in a God, alot of people nowadays are beleiving god to not be some humanity tied being, but a unknown entity that lives within us all. We are all capable of being our own God. Because we are all connected. You could see it that way to if you want, but in the end. You need to know that you create your own reality, and not to let someone create it for you because your doubt is letting your gaurd down. Do what makes you feel fuffiled and don’t be scared by a sick white lie that was made to unconsciously eat away at you unless you follow it. Break free from that way of thought and let yourself be free. You are capable of your own freedom, your own peace, your own power, and you own will, and you don’t need a god or a book to do any of those things for yourself. Leaving religion is like learning to be an independent adult. Learning to live by your own rules, but also to live responsibly for the sake of yourself and others. We all have to become independent someday.
In the end the answers to your questions are only going to be answered by yourself, and that’s okay. Death comes eventually, no matter how scary it might seem, but some people believe death never comes, that death is only a physical thing, you continue to live on in soul and move to a next step, death is only tied to the physical, so it is not something to be feared. The key is to just live your life to it’s fullest, and you will fear death less. Maybe the fear of death is tied to your art? There are two of you on this forum who sculpts masks, I think yours is the one where you have been worried about how good it is? How about changing it a bit, giving life in your art a go? Maybe the twist into life will help? Though I get it may be a bit more boring lol, but maybe it describes those fears you have. I have another idea as well, do you go to art therapy? If you do, I’d suggest bringing it up with them, draw out life, and draw out death, ask them their ideas, and pick in the end which you decide would be a healthier decision.
I hope you know what you’re experiencing is simply fear, from a place that was made soley to make you afraid so they can control you, and you shouldn’t be afraid of a higher power, because it was the people who wanted to control you humans like that are dumb, and that’s how you see in between the lines. Stand up to those deeply indoctrinated fears and fight them. You’re your own human now, you’re free, and you don’t have to be afraid anymore.
-X
