Walking away from church

Today, I finally did something I had been pondering for five years or so.

I filed my resignation papers from church today (handily done via online-form. Thanks modern age!) and started thinking about the repercussions. Nothing too serious, but let me walk you through;

The things that have mostly kept me in this long were (1.) the idea that I believed in something, (2.) that church did Samaritan work both in Finland and abroad and (3.) that I wanted to upkeep the church buildings themselves as historical artefacts.

In turn, the biggest reason why I filed the papers was the (1.) sobering realization that I don't need outside-confirmation for my beliefs. I can read comics without belonging to Comics Society (but I belong anyway, because I enjoy the company and the perks); similarly I can choose to believe in things without belonging to Believing Society. I'm not using the perks and services that come with the membership, so why should I pay for them? Particularly as the membership is something 15 times more than in Comics Society.
Other reasons (less important) include the fact that (2.) while church does Samaritan work, this work consists of only 10,6% of the yearly budget. For every ten euros I pour in, only one goes to help other people. I could better use my money to give it to some other organisation(s), that only have one objective instead of several dozen.
I'm also not comfortable with the fact that (3.) while some of the the priests are very comfortable with the society we live in (as I have doubtlessly mentioned in the past) some are not. This particularly goes for the higher hierarchies and the northern provinces of the country.
Every time I hear about a priest refusing to work in the same church as another priest - because the another priest happens to be a she - I get a bit uneasy.
The final reason was missionary work. Thinking that I pay for something that sends people to Amazon, Africa etc. to talk about God and thus is a direct reason for vanishing nature religions tens of thousands of years old is just wrong. Even though I know it isn't what it was a century or or (perish the thought) millenium ago.


But here I am. Now I have to think where to give money - Red Cross? Some organisation that works against mental illnesses? It used to be so easy, just giving church money.. of course, explaining my belonging to church just because of its convenient nature (and with 90% of my money going to somewhere else) is not morally right either.

Shame about the buildings thought.

The picture is taken from Wikipedia, attributed to Creative Commons and can be found here.