Well, I grew up mainstream Protestant in a family that went to church, but didn't talk about the truly important things in life. I guess it was too scary, never have really figured it out. We didn't about personal faith, sex, and such. Faith was somewhat impersonal, and more about social interaction and today. I saw, in my youthful teenage zeal, what I thought was hypocrisy within my church. As I went into college years I tilting towards a Bible church, since they obviously were trying to be more right with god.
That worked for a while. However, I had never really figured out how to make some of the OT grand miracles fit with reality, but I really didn't' know that much ancient history, so I could let it slide. The rest of the problems with xianity, were covered over with the typical blinders of belief in the guiding hand of god. One time at a small study group we watched a video/"documentary" that tried to explain Noah's Flood, and how it could have worked. It's funny how this movie probably did more to destroy my faith in the long run then anything else. This made me want to understand it better, being the analytical type that I am. For now I thought I had concrete evidence of a viable explanation. So I started looking at some of the ideas presented, and wanted to find detailed work about it. Alas, the reality was it was mostly straw men with nary a shred of actual scientific evidence. But this now left me with questions about intellectual honesty of Xian's. I guess I ignored it for a while, but the little snippets at church that even touched upon ancient times, or the characters of the grand miracles, would force me to think about it. So I finally decided I needed to figure it out for myself. And I started reading the apologetics for the OT, specifically the history 1,000 BC and later. And I started reading archeology of the mideast. The more I read, the more questions of faith I had. This was going the wrong direction, and was greatly bothering me. So I read more, prayed more. It just got worse. This progression took around 1-1.5 years, since I was trying to still have a life. Finally I was at my wits end, and went to the preacher and talked to him about my crisis of faith. I also talked allot with a professor at a Bible college. So I read some of their suggested reading. Damn it felt like I was in college again, I had more books than I'd ever imagined. But it was weird, I could no longer read the apologetics without questioning their intellectual honesty, nor without comparing it to the well articulated counter arguments that they wouldn't mention. Arguments like "Lier, lunatic, or Lord" became laughable. At this point I had read the liberal mainstream attempts to keep it together, archeology, agnostic and atheistic arguments. The preacher was kind of worthless (but nice), he had to admit that I already knew more history than he did, and it was obvious he couldn't keep up on the apologetic arguments. The Bible professor was interesting, but it was just better intellectual spins, not reality. Though he was a literalist/inerrantist, he agreed that the Flood had to be further back in time to not be a lie. So he had it out 20k-30k years. Unfortunately, we went different directions, because I would have liked to have heard him try to explain how that could work.
Anyway, with ideas of an inerrant canon in the trash can, I was still trying to figure out if I could find a faith in Xian modernism. It sure felt like god had abandoned me in my quest. One thing that came to mind several times, was the verse that says god will keep you from being tested beyond what you can bear. Right. With reading Joseph Flavious, Eusebius, Gnostic texts, Augustine, and specifically the history circa 200 BCE - 400 AD, I found I could not except the stories of a savior taking on flesh and dying for our sins to be a reality, nor did I find it validated by OT prophecy. And the trinity is so damn convoluted. There were too many contradictions from the magical birth to the magical resurrection. There were to many things that didn't make sense regarding the Gospels and history. It began to make more sense that this was based on a heretical Jewish sage that was probably killed by the Pharoses. C.S. Lewis found a way to admit the grand miracles to be fabulous, and have the bible start becoming real around the time of King Solomon. I found the same type of problems through out the canon, and no reason to assume it clearer by the time of the NT. It seamed to much like wishful thinking.
