I used to love Jesus

I was once a Christian; I believed in God and I believed that God had sent his son Jesus as a sacrifice to pay for the sins of the whole of humanity. I was exposed to Christian teaching at school and my mother was a Christian, so she took us to Church with her most Sundays. The teaching didn't mean much to me until I was about fifteen and going to the Church Youth Club. I remember talking ("testifying") about it later as a step of faith - I stepped towards God and He took me in - but now I think it was a more gradual process and actually more to do with the fellowship I found with other people at the Church; my steps were towards my peers who were already Christians.

It was when I started university in London that I found myself in an environment that didn't encourage my faith as much as the rural town I'd grown up in; I was expected to think independently on my course (an Art degree with plenty of time to philosophise for myself) and my Christian faith didn't stand up so well once I started to analyse it from a different point of view. My faith had not been tested much before then and in retrospect there was a good chance that it might not stand up under pressure. I met other Christians at university and went to and enjoyed church with them; I particularly remember a black Pentecostal church that was lively and featured impassioned sermons by snappily dressed preachers. I said I think what drew me originally was the fellowship. That wasn't backed up by a deep faith, or at least under serious examination it didn't last very long, perhaps indeed because I hadn't seriously examined it before.

I came to understand that I didn't know what my faith was based on, and that's when it fell apart. Modern Christianity puts a lot of emphasis on the believer's personal faith; this is, I imagine very different from hundreds of years ago when people believed what they were told, or even today among those the Bible calls "the meek". I felt a responsibility to have my own experience of Jesus and when I realised I didn't feel that, there was nothing to fall back on. I asked myself what my faith was grounded in and couldn't come up with anything concrete. I asked my friends and the answers seemed to be circular, based on nothing fixed. It may be that I was applying the wrong kind of tests to my faith; believers don't expect to convince non-believers using reasoned argument, so why should they lose their faith after a bit of the same? However, I didn't have any other means of investigation and once I'd stepped outside, I didn't think about going back in.

I must admit I haven't often since had the same exhilirating sense of trust and affection that I got from my fellow Christians; it can be very uplifting to submerse yourself in a group as supportive as they were. I remember feeling free to be very open with them and feeling able to encourage them in turn, so being without faith can be a cold kind of freedom, but I believe in it.