De-Conversion: Done Online, Done Anonymously

The church, broadly speaking, has lots of practice and ideas for how to bring the unchurched or seekers to the Lord, among them: Alpha classes, seeker services, Bible studies, tracts, traditional evangelism, apologetics books.

These approaches, by and large, focus on sharing the basics of the faith – who God is, who Jesus is, what the Bible says, what we must do to believe. What the church seems to have less comfort, willingness, or ability to engage seriously, are believers who know these answers but have one foot out the door because their doubts or disappointments are starting to outweigh their faith.

The predominant response, at least in my experience, seems to be some version of (1) you’re overthinking things – faith can’t be proven and you just need to trust the Lord with your questions, (2) you have either already sinned badly and are becoming hardened to the Lord or you want to sin and are looking for justification; or (3) your doubts mean you were probably never a Christian in the first place, and thus what you really need is to have a real conversion to the Lord.

It’s funny: the church can be great at extending grace and mercy to unbelievers, but rotten at doing so for those who may be falling away.

When I was a solid believer, and heard of people backsliding (nice pejorative term) or leaving the church, I was horrified and saddened for them – and fearful for myself. What did my faith mean if someone else who had had a genuine conversion experience to Jesus could later leave Him? Was it really the Truth if people who had known and experienced God could completely walk away? In those moments, I was thus driven to find ways to invalidate their faith experience – through their sin, their pride, or by virtue of them never having had a relationship with Jesus to begin with. Otherwise it meant that I could fall away, and/or that God would let me.

I imagine this is a similar thought pattern among other Christians when confronted with serious doubters from within their ranks, and explains why those of us who doubt are so often marginalized, ignored, or made to feel like we are the devil incarnate for asking the questions that we do. It also explains why most of us go through this upsetting de-conversion process silently, and why Christians only hear about it when we have made a final decision to leave Christianity behind.

This is not how it should be. Several Christians I have known espouse the idea that God can handle our questions – that nothing is too tough for Him. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and the door will be opened unto you. Etc. I want to believe that, myself. A God who could not suffer people asking Him questions or who requires blind allegiance isn’t really a God I want to worship or be in relationship with.

And yet, God has so far not responded to this desperately seeking child of his. Over the last several years, I have wet a lot of pillow cases with my tears, trying to figure out God's Truth as between Protestant and Catholic teachings; trying to understand God's lack of intervention in this world to lift up the poorest, sickest, and most downtrodden among us; trying to make sense of why so many of my prayers have gone so silently unanswered. I begged God to answer me. I scoured my soul to confess any unconfessed sin in case that was blocking God's response. Still, nothing.

And so I blog about it, anonymously. I blog to try to figure out some answers that I can live with. I blog so I can avoid dealing with Christians in real life who are not willing to come alongside me, to take my questions seriously, to refrain from judging me (as though that is their job). I blog so I do not cause other Christians to stumble in their own faith. I blog so that I don't upset my mom, who would spend the rest of her days wracked with worry about my spiritual health and eternal destination. I blog so I can explore these questions freely with others who are wondering similar things.

Agnosticism / Atheism: Destination, or Point on a Journey?

This question came to mind after reading this:

http://byzantium.wordpress.com/2007/06/30/why-i-am-not-an-atheist/

For readers who have de-converted, do you think you have arrived at your spiritual/religious "destination"? Or do you think where you are today is part of a broader ebb-and-flow arc of spirituality/belief?

I wonder whether I am: in an angry backlash phase (and will eventually settle back into the faith of my upbringing), making a permanent exodus from belief in god, or am simply at a waypoint along the way to a different kind of spirituality.

It's All Falling Down

I felt confused a year ago, when I started this blog. But man, things are really falling apart now. I think I am experiencing a deconversion from Christianity, though I hesitate to even tap that out because I am not sure I am ready to admit it.

In the last week I have gone poking around the internet looking for others who have gone through something similar. I have been surprised, and surprisingly comforted, to have stumbled across so many blogs of people whose stories and struggles are eerily similar to my own.

In the coming days I will try to add links to some of these' folks blogs. I'm at a point where I need to hash out some of my thoughts with the input and reactions of a few other like-minded people.

Easter Lies and Old Boyfriends

I told a lie on Easter, of all days. I might as well have poked the risen triumphant Jesus in the eye. I was in a foreign country for work. Friends living there invited me to go to church with them. I am a Christian and therefore of course I wanted to go. It is what Christians do on Easter Sunday: we go to church and we celebrate Jesus. I have been a Christian for almost thirty years. That is saying a lot because I am only 32.

The 100-minute Easter service featured a 30-minute CCM-inspired musical tribute to the passion of Christ, clips from the “Jesus Film” in which our Savior was, naturally, white (did I mention I was in east Asia at the time?), and a 20-minute altar call during which an unfortunately timed movement of my head made the pastor think I had just accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I hardly breathed for the rest of the altar call for fear that the pastor would invite me onstage to share my newfound joy in the Lord.

It was when my friend asked what I thought of the white-Jesus Easter service in Asia that the lie spilled across my lips: “I liked it,” I said brightly. “Just like at home.”

Obviously I hated it (and on reflection, she probably knew that). Every pore of my body was screaming to get out of that oversize auditorium with oversize banners and oversize preacher personalities making oversize statements about the boundless joy, everlasting hope, and unquenchable life that Jesus rising from the dead gives us.

It’s not just that this was a supremely cheesy Easter service (though it was). This is the deal: I don't have boundless joy or everlasting hope; I am tired and disappointed and unsure of who the Alpha and Omega is. For me this is a very unsettling thing to say because until about two years ago, I had problems, sure, but God himself was never really in question. And now he/she/it is. And we know God is really in question because I just now went back and added the “slash-she-slash-it” to the pronoun he in that last sentence and I used to be very traditional and comfortable just calling God “he”.

But you can’t really say any of this serious doubting stuff to people, or at least not the people in my church/faith/religion community. If you do, you immediately set off marathon prayer sessions, friends ask if they can lay hands on you, people suggest seeing a Christian counselor (God forbid you should go see a secular counselor) and above all, they gaze at you with concern in their eyes and wonder what you’ve done (read: sin) to create distance between yourself and God. I am reminded here of a joke that goes like this: an old married couple is driving down the road in an old truck with one of those bench seats that extends all the way across the cab. The wife looks at her husband and says: “Earl, how come we sit so far apart in the truck these days? We didn’t used to. We used to cuddle up!” Earl responds: “I don’t know, Edith…but I’m not the one who moved.” This is how most (conservative) Christians view other Christians who are having a hard time with God: it’s always the Christian’s fault because, as we all know, God doesn’t change.

In my younger, more zealous and certain Christian days I prayed fervently that I would never become what I think I am becoming: a doubting, unsure, frustrated, person who is disillusioned with what life handed her and is blaming God for it. Apparently I have changed.

I know I sound like a bad after-school special, or just very cliché. But I have been carrying around a load, a burden, about the size of a house on my back for some time now. I’d like to thank my ex-ex-heartbreaker-boyfriend (not the gay one – a later one) for helping me notice it. We dated for 7 months before he unexpectedly dumped me, and I have finally found the perfect way to describe our relationship: he was like Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility. Willoughby courts Maryann like mad and it’s magical and happy and the chemistry is palpable and nobody sees it coming when Willoughby breaks things off. Maryann almost dies of heartache. In Jane Austin’s story it of course comes to light that Willoughby is a shallow bastard who knocked up some other girl and marries rich in order to pay child support. I am still waiting for confirmation that my ex-ex-boyfriend has done the same thing, but I draw a certain comfort from the otherwise strong parallel to my relationship.

Anyhoo: Heartbreaker helped me notice the house on my back because for a long time after we broke up I prayed that we would get back together. And I swear that God himself was telling me to pray for that, and he was sending all these weird signs to confirm that that’s what he wanted me to pray for. And, duh, we didn’t get back together. The guy never spoke to me again, in fact. So I got all disillusioned with my prayer life, and how I must have only imagined that God wanted me to pray all that stuff, but then I thought that that doesn’t make any sense because it felt exactly like other times when I’ve been convinced God wanted me to pray a certain way (and that the things came to pass afterward that I had prayed for) and so how could I retroactively say that God must not have been leading me in that way, and how could I tell the difference anyway, and what kind of God would be so cruel as to make one of his Children all hopeful and then crush the hope in a big fell swoop? And what’s with this God that had His Old Testament People smite all their enemies, killing women and children and basically committing genocide, when now good Christians say that’s wrong and terrible and we should stop Rwanda and Sudan? Who the crap is this God?

And this is the load I've been carrying around: I've been assuming that, by following the "rules" (oh, but we're not legalistic around here, are we?) and being an exceptional example of the (Accomplished) Good Girl, that God would do his part and give me what I want. Probably, this is very obviously not true to most readers, and it even sounds ridiculous when I say it because theologically of course it's not true, we're not promised anything like that in any version of Conservative Christianity except for the Prosperity Gospel people who have that whole "name it and claim it" idea, which almost everybody else within Conservative Christianity recognizes as a load of hooey.

But there you have it: that idea has been wired into my subconscious for many, many years, and only now am I pulling it out of its dark little place in my brain to turn it around, play with it, figure out how it got there, and decide what to do with it now.

I've never lived a slapdash (adj.: careless, haphazard) life

My mom praised me the other day for being the easiest child in the world to raise: I never caused trouble or seriously crossed any lines. I didn’t need a pesky curfew like my sisters did – mom and dad knew I’d never go out drinking or go necking with a strange boy. I was allowed to watch TV while I did my homework because I brought home straight A’s. I could have friends over when M&D were gone because my friends were trustworthy, wholesome, from church. My worst offense as a kid seems to have been that my bedroom was always a mess. I didn’t drink before I was 21. I didn’t have a real boyfriend until I was 26. And we didn’t have sex. Partly because he was gay.

But still. I was a major Good Girl. And where has it gotten me? Things haven’t quite panned out as I thought they would (more on that to come). I need to sort some stuff out. Do a little self-examination, if you will. Comments and questions are most welcome.

It will probably get ugly, in part because there’s a lot of Conservative Christianity in the story. Although what’s kooky about that is that I’m not going to be bashing it, exactly. But I’m not going to be praising Focus on the Family either, which is going to make at least one good friend of mine unhappy since she used to work for them and still harbors a fantasy that I’m going to marry this evangelical state senator she knows, move back to the Midwest where we grew up, and raise babies with her.

My blog experiment is probably going to be a time-delimited thing. As in, once I figure stuff out, I might stop writing. But who knows. Like every single other blogger I know, I have a secret dream of being published someday.

I hope my mom doesn’t find my blog.