Skip to main content

From Street Preacher to Atheist

By austinrohm ~

This will be my first time posting here. As a matter of fact, this will be my first time in a long time that I will be able to be completely honest with people regarding my true beliefs.


I grew up in a particularly zealous denomination of Christianity known as Independent Fundamental Baptists. This denomination is very black and white in its thinking, and demonizes anyone on the "out" group, and people on the "in" group constantly reinforce just how happy they are to have the TRUTH. As anyone else who is brainwashed into this type of cult-like thinking as a child, I fully believed Christianity and the (King James) Bible with all my heart! I was constantly so happy that I just happened to be born into the one, true religion; and was very happy that I was born to parents who went to the "right" denomination of Christian church.

But I always had a difficult time with how quiet God seemed to be, and a VERY difficult time with a "relationship with God." Why is God so real to everyone else? How come the pastor was always saying things like, "God told me this, and God told me that." He got to have God communicate so clearly to him, but God and the Devil were always just dead silent with me. From the time of my childhood up until my eventual departure from Christianity, I always had a very challenging time with the concept of faith. I was told to "love God more than anyone, even your spouse." It just felt like this relationship with Jesus was simply me performing false emotions every day; I just couldn't muster that level of love for someone I had never seen, heard or touched. It is similar to when your mother had some distant relative on the phone and told you, "Tell Aunt Gertrude you love her!" No. I don't love Aunt Gertrude; I have never met her.

The one day, I heard a message on why God can feel so distant and unreal at times; it was because we were not SHOWING God how much we loved him. The more evangelizing actions we did as a Christian, and the more you took a leap of faith, the more God will become real to you every day. So I decided to take that leap of faith and move from a conservative Christian town in Idaho to Portland, Oregon so I could help with my Father-in-Law's Church.

In Portland I was VERY active in the church. I was the youth group leader, song leader, and was downtown Portland many Saturdays street preaching and trying to convert "the lost" so they wouldn't burn in Hell for ever. Even after all this, God was still dead silent. I spent many days, weeks, and months pouring over Christian apologetics hoping to increase my faith. However, Christian apologetics really shook my faith to its core! I thought to myself, "Is this really the best evidence for Christianity?? Is this really all we have?"

Then around 2 years ago, I decided to preach a message against atheism at my church. I didn't want to straw-man the atheist position, so I watched a few episodes of the Atheist Experience with Matt Dillahunty. I also read up several atheist articles.

As I explored atheism, I felt a huge lump in my throat as the anxiety mounted; why was this all making so much damn sense??. Then I thought about the question I had asked myself whenever I doubted: What reasons can I find to support why Christianity is true? WHY is Christianity true?

I realized then that I should be asking the question: IS Christianity true?But I realized then that I should be asking the question: IS Christianity true? After all, every one else in other religions finds facts which confirm their beliefs, and ignore glaring falsehoods in order to cling to their false religion; it never occurred to them that their religion might actually be false. I realized I was doing the same thing.

After a few months of reading the Bible through a couple times, and honestly asking myself during my research "Is Christianity true?", I came to the unwelcome realization: Christianity is not true. I am an atheist and no longer believe the Bible is God's word. I really, REALLY did not want to be an atheist because all my family, as well as my wife are very fervent Christians.

However, I have a much clearer picture of reality, and am no longer confused about life. As a Christian, I was always wondering how to obtain the ever-elusive "relationship with God." I was always trying to find God's will for my life, and what direction he wanted me to go. I was always trying to sort out the hundreds of different biblical interpretations on the End Times. I was constantly in a state of shame because I knew I wasn't witnessing or reading my Bible enough.

But now, I see that the reason I had such a hard time finding a relationship with God is because there is just no God to have a relationship with! I am no longer trying to find little hints, clues, and "open doors" which would show me what God wanted for my life; I know that I am in control of my own life. I no longer have to reconcile why God would let children die of cancer at the hospital I work at, but miraculously cured the eczema of Betty at church: life happens to all of us, and there is no God or Demons to blame for any of it. Although I wish it wasn't so hard being a closeted atheist (I know for certain my wife will never leave Christianity), it is much more refreshing having a personal relationship with reality, instead of playing pretend with an invisible God.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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

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

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

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

Why I left the Canadian Reformed Church

By Chuck Eelhart ~ I was born into a believing family. The denomination is called Canadian Reformed Church . It is a Dutch Calvinistic Christian Church. My parents were Dutch immigrants to Canada in 1951. They had come from two slightly differing factions of the same Reformed faith in the Netherlands . Arriving unmarried in Canada they joined the slightly more conservative of the factions. It was a small group at first. Being far from Holland and strangers in a new country these young families found a strong bonding point in their church. Deutsch: Heidelberger Katechismus, Druck 1563 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I was born in 1955 the third of eventually 9 children. We lived in a small southern Ontario farming community of Fergus. Being young conservative and industrious the community of immigrants prospered. While they did mix and work in the community almost all of the social bonding was within the church group. Being of the first generation born here we had a foot in two

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not