Skip to main content

Out of the darkness and into the light

By ExPenty --

Hello, everyone. I've been a lurker here for some time, and only really started posting comments quite recently. When I first started reading this site regularly I was still a Christian. I just wanted to see what things looked like from the perspective of ex-Christians, and to understand why they had made the leap from faith to non-faith. As time went on, however, I found myself agreeing more and more with the things that were written here.

I was raised in a nominal Christian family and society (in the UK, so it was more "nominal" than many of you on the other side of the Atlantic are used to). My family, though not churchgoers, believed strongly in God and sent me off to Sunday School at the local Pentecostal church every week from a very young age.

I had a conversion experience in the late eighties at the age of sixteen, and it didn't take long for me to become really "on fire" for God. I couldn't get enough of the Bible, I went to all the church services and events I could, I devoured every Christian book I could lay my hands on... basically, I was hooked. I'm the kind of person who thinks that if something is worth doing then it's worth throwing your whole self into it, and Christianity was no exception.

I miss the certainty, albeit false certainty, that came from being a believer, and I miss the "knowledge" that I would survive my body's death and live for eternity in heaven, even though I know this was never a reality but only wishful thinking. My mother was "saved" before me, and within a year of my own conversion I led my sister to the Lord. I had people prophesying over me that God would use me for great things, and I really believed it, so much so that it became a self-fulfilling prophesy. I spent two years as a volunteer Christian worker, spending my time on evangelism and study. I went on to study theology at the largest evangelical theological seminary in Western Europe, and emerged not only with a degree in theology but also a practical diploma in evangelism. (These days I tend not to tell people about that last part when applying for jobs!) I taught, preached, evangelised, wrote articles, prayed in tongues, exhorted, led worship, went on missionary trips, led people to the Lord, and goodness knows what else. If I wasn't a True Christian™, nobody ever has been.

I've always been a deep-thinking introvert with a high IQ, so there had always been some issues with Christianity that didn't quite match up, but I was able to sweep them under the metaphorical carpet when I had the "support" of my fellow-believers to keep me on the straight and narrow. The more I thought about things, though, the more I realised that some of it just didn't stand up to scrutiny. I rapidly rejected creationism because it is contradicted by all the available evidence that I was aware of from studying geology in school. Soon afterwards, speaking in tongues, interpretation of tongues and the like went the same way. I was still a believer with a strong faith at this point though, albeit somewhat more liberal in my views than I had been previously.

About 4 years ago, my wife and I left the church. I won't go into the reasons, but it had more to do with a clash of personalities and the anti-intellectualism of the church than with any loss of faith. We originally intended to find another church, but as time went by and we didn't find one we liked, we ended up not bothering.

At this point my faith was still strong. I got my teaching from books and from blogs and other online discussions, but I still believed strongly in God. Later on, though, doubts began to surface. Why were my prayers seemingly never answered? Why was my wife, who has had a chronic illness for years and who has been prayed for by literally hundreds of Christians in a number of churches, still ill? Why did bad things happen to good people? Why did seemingly random natural disasters kill so many and reduce so many others to poverty if there was a loving God looking after us? I could find no satisfactory answers to these questions, nor to the many others that occurred to me.

Christians will tell you that being apart from the church, a "lost sheep" out on your own, is a bad thing because it can lead to you losing your faith. They are right about that in my case. Being apart from the indoctrination and peer pressure that came from well-meaning but misguided fellow-Christians, I was at last free to think for myself. That has led, via a long process that I won't bore you with here, to my current belief that there is probably no God. Certainly there is no evidence for God, which places him in the same category as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

It's only over the past month or so that I have reached this position. Before that I spent a long time thinking of myself as a Christian agnostic, holding the belief that although it was impossible to find proof one way or the other, God probably existed and I would live my life as though he did. Now I've gone one stage further and decided that if he did exist there would be evidence, thus he cannot exist.

I miss the certainty, albeit false certainty, that came from being a believer, and I miss the "knowledge" that I would survive my body's death and live for eternity in heaven, even though I know this was never a reality but only wishful thinking. I also still find myself automatically lapsing into my old patterns of thinking and behaviour now and then, as religion has been ingrained into me all my life and it's hard to switch of the patterns of behaviour even though I no longer believe in the God and the religion that led to those behaviour patterns in the first place. I suppose it's going to take a while for me to get the last of the indoctrination and conditioning out of my system.

I have not "come out" as an unbeliever to my friends and family yet. My wife is aware that I have doubted the existence of God at times, but as yet I have not told her I no longer believe God is real. Any tips on how best to break the news to her would be appreciated. We have a strong marriage, and her long illness has brought us much closer together, so I don't think it would threaten our marriage, but I don't want to hurt her either. She is currently still a believer, albeit one with no illusions about the toxicity of some other believers and their churches.

That aside, I've moved from the darkness of religion into the light of reason, and I'm much happier for it.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

On Living Virtuously

By Webmdave ~  A s a Christian, living virtuously meant living in a manner that pleased God. Pleasing god (or living virtuously) was explained as: Praying for forgiveness for sins  Accepting Christ as Savior  Frequently reading the Bible  Memorizing Bible verses Being baptized (subject to church rules)  Attending church services  Partaking of the Lord’s Supper  Tithing  Resisting temptations to lie, steal, smoke, drink, party, have lustful thoughts, have sex (outside of marriage) masturbate, etc.  Boldly sharing the Gospel of Salvation with unbelievers The list of virtuous values and expectations grew over time. Once the initial foundational values were safely under the belt, “more virtues'' were introduced. Newer introductions included (among others) harsh condemnation of “worldly” music, homosexuality and abortion Eventually the list of values grew ponderous, and these ideals were not just personal for us Christians. These virtues were used to condemn and disrespect fro

I can fix ignorance; I can't fix stupid!

By Bob O ~ I 'm an atheist and a 52-year veteran of public education. I need not tell anyone the problems associated with having to "duck" the "Which church do you belong to?" with my students and their parents. Once told by a parent that they would rather have a queer for their sons' teacher than an atheist! Spent HOURS going to the restroom right when prayers were performed: before assemblies, sports banquets, "Christmas Programs", awards assemblies, etc... Told everyone that I had a bladder problem. And "yes" it was a copout to many of you, but the old adage (yes, it's religious) accept what you can't change, change that which you can and accept the strength to know the difference! No need arguing that which you will never change. Enough of that. What I'd like to impart is my simple family chemistry. My wife is a Baptist - raised in a Baptist Orphanage (whole stories there) and is a believer. She did not know my religi