Walking Away From Faith
People ask me why I left the faith I grew up in. It’s a long story, but I will try to condense it down as much as I can.
I guess it’s important for you to know two things about me first: 1. I really believed in the Christian god, the literal interpretation of the Bible, all of that. It was never an act. That’s why it was so intensely painful to leave my faith; because I believed very strongly in it. And 2. I have always valued truth over the comfort an idea gave me. Some people say, “So what if god exists? The idea gives me comfort.” That never worked for me. When I was a Christian, I believed I knew the truth: the Bible was the literal word of God, God intervened in human affairs, cared about us in a personal way, and wanted us to believe and call upon the name of Christ. I thought there was sufficient evidence to believe these things, and I spent a lot of time learning apologetics (theological arguments) in order to prove this to others. I think I’m a lot like my Dad in that way-I care about what is true, what can be proved, what makes sense and comports with evidence.
There were two reasons that I left my faith and ultimately became an atheist. The first was that Erik came out as gay. Erik was my best friend since we were in the 4th grade and him coming out really rocked me world. I was taught the standard conservative Christian stuff gay people-that they are deluding themselves, that gay love is unnatural, that gay partnerships contribute to the breakdown of society, that acting on being gay is a sin-- even really hateful things like that gay people prey on children or were preyed on as children. But talking to my friend…none of this was true. I saw how much he hated himself because people had been telling him stuff like that his whole life. It broke my heart, because I knew I was one of them. *I* had told him his love was wrong, and immoral and sinful. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, “No. This isn’t right. This isn’t just.” Because I could look at my friend and see that he wasn’t immoral. He wasn’t sinful. He was just gay. That’s what he was, and it was unfair for any god to make him that way and then ask him to never be sexual with anyone. A god that would do that to someone was hateful and childish. I just couldn’t believe that god could be good and could make Erik that way and then condemn him for it. So I thought, “Well, my idea of who god is must be wrong.”
And so I started to try to figure out who god must be. If I believed in a loving god, but the Bible said that being gay was a sin, then how could I reconcile those things? It took a lot of study and soul-searching, but in the end I began to believe that maybe god was bigger than the Bible-that the Bible was written by people who maybe put their own opinion into it, and that perhaps it wasn’t right about everything. If god was loving, then being gay had to be okay, because Erik was a good and loving person who wasn’t hurting anyone. If god was loving, then there couldn’t be a hell, because the very idea that a loving god would burn people for eternity was cruel and horrible.
This wasn’t easy for me. It was terrifying. To think that maybe I had been wrong about some things…it was horrible. I had build my whole life around the idea that the Bible was literally true. Without that, understanding who god was and what he wanted was very difficult. But on the other hand, I saw more and more evidence that it had to be true-from archeological evidence, to textural evidence, to scientific evidence. All the evidence that I found led to the same conclusion-there’s no way that the Bible can be literally true about everything that it says. It comforted be to believe that I had all the answers in a neat black book. But it just wasn’t true.
The second thing was that I became involved with an online community of people who had left (or, like me, were in the process of leaving) fundamentalism (fundamentalism=the belief that the Bible is literally true). Some of the people there retained their faith. Like me, they were still searching for god and found him in different faiths (some people were still Christians, a lot of them were pantheists or simply spiritual) but there was a contingent of atheists there, too. At this time (2001), I still thought atheists were bad people. Like, how could a person be good without god? Where did their morality come from? So, I challenged these people, and asked a lot of questions and got into a lot of arguments. And they challenged me right back, and answered my questions, and really made me think. The more I thought about their arguments, the more I just couldn’t defend my belief in the Christian god anymore.
I remember asking god, “If you are there, give me some sign. Anything! Let me know you’re out there.”
Nothing happened.
This was the hardest, scariest thing I ever did. I thought, “Okay. Okay *deep breath* Maybe the Christian god doesn’t really exist.” (wait to get hit by lightning) “Oh my word, what if he doesn’t exist??? What does that mean?! How can I be a good person without god? What can I believe in?!” That went on for months. It was horrible. It broke my heart to leave my faith. I wanted so much to just believe it all again, and to have the assurance that I’d had before. But I just couldn’t. I couldn’t put the genie back in the bottle. I couldn’t talk myself into believing something that I didn’t think was true.
For a while I embraced other faith traditions. It wasn’t until 2004 that I said to myself, “You know Jenae, it might be comforting to believe that there’s some distant Big Thing out there, but do you really think it’s true?” And no. I really didn’t. So I put on the atheist label. I think I was probably an atheist back in 2002, but I just didn’t want to wear that label because it seemed so negative. It felt like saying that life was hopeless. It took me a while to accept that I was me who was attaching that meaning to atheism, and that it could simply mean, “I haven’t seen enough evidence to convince me that a god exists.” I’m open to evidence that there is such a thing as a supernatural being that cares about the affairs of human persons, but I don’t think it exists (and if it does, it has a lot of explaining to do because the world is a pretty awful place sometimes!)
I’m okay with there not being a god. I don’t wish for my faith back, and I don’t envy those that have it (though I don’t feel the contempt that some atheists feel for people of faith either, those who call believers “delusion” or “stupid,” because I’ve been a believer and I know that’s mostly not true.) Because I don’t believe in an afterlife where bad people are punished and good people are rewarded, I have to try to create a just world here, right now. I have a moral duty to do what I can to create a better world. That’s the code I live my life by, and I don’t really need a god for that-I just need to have empathy and compassion for other people.
So yeah…that’s a condensed version of my walking away from faith story. Feel free to ask me what you want. I’m open to talking about it.
I guess it’s important for you to know two things about me first: 1. I really believed in the Christian god, the literal interpretation of the Bible, all of that. It was never an act. That’s why it was so intensely painful to leave my faith; because I believed very strongly in it. And 2. I have always valued truth over the comfort an idea gave me. Some people say, “So what if god exists? The idea gives me comfort.” That never worked for me. When I was a Christian, I believed I knew the truth: the Bible was the literal word of God, God intervened in human affairs, cared about us in a personal way, and wanted us to believe and call upon the name of Christ. I thought there was sufficient evidence to believe these things, and I spent a lot of time learning apologetics (theological arguments) in order to prove this to others. I think I’m a lot like my Dad in that way-I care about what is true, what can be proved, what makes sense and comports with evidence.
There were two reasons that I left my faith and ultimately became an atheist. The first was that Erik came out as gay. Erik was my best friend since we were in the 4th grade and him coming out really rocked me world. I was taught the standard conservative Christian stuff gay people-that they are deluding themselves, that gay love is unnatural, that gay partnerships contribute to the breakdown of society, that acting on being gay is a sin-- even really hateful things like that gay people prey on children or were preyed on as children. But talking to my friend…none of this was true. I saw how much he hated himself because people had been telling him stuff like that his whole life. It broke my heart, because I knew I was one of them. *I* had told him his love was wrong, and immoral and sinful. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, “No. This isn’t right. This isn’t just.” Because I could look at my friend and see that he wasn’t immoral. He wasn’t sinful. He was just gay. That’s what he was, and it was unfair for any god to make him that way and then ask him to never be sexual with anyone. A god that would do that to someone was hateful and childish. I just couldn’t believe that god could be good and could make Erik that way and then condemn him for it. So I thought, “Well, my idea of who god is must be wrong.”
And so I started to try to figure out who god must be. If I believed in a loving god, but the Bible said that being gay was a sin, then how could I reconcile those things? It took a lot of study and soul-searching, but in the end I began to believe that maybe god was bigger than the Bible-that the Bible was written by people who maybe put their own opinion into it, and that perhaps it wasn’t right about everything. If god was loving, then being gay had to be okay, because Erik was a good and loving person who wasn’t hurting anyone. If god was loving, then there couldn’t be a hell, because the very idea that a loving god would burn people for eternity was cruel and horrible.
This wasn’t easy for me. It was terrifying. To think that maybe I had been wrong about some things…it was horrible. I had build my whole life around the idea that the Bible was literally true. Without that, understanding who god was and what he wanted was very difficult. But on the other hand, I saw more and more evidence that it had to be true-from archeological evidence, to textural evidence, to scientific evidence. All the evidence that I found led to the same conclusion-there’s no way that the Bible can be literally true about everything that it says. It comforted be to believe that I had all the answers in a neat black book. But it just wasn’t true.
The second thing was that I became involved with an online community of people who had left (or, like me, were in the process of leaving) fundamentalism (fundamentalism=the belief that the Bible is literally true). Some of the people there retained their faith. Like me, they were still searching for god and found him in different faiths (some people were still Christians, a lot of them were pantheists or simply spiritual) but there was a contingent of atheists there, too. At this time (2001), I still thought atheists were bad people. Like, how could a person be good without god? Where did their morality come from? So, I challenged these people, and asked a lot of questions and got into a lot of arguments. And they challenged me right back, and answered my questions, and really made me think. The more I thought about their arguments, the more I just couldn’t defend my belief in the Christian god anymore.
I remember asking god, “If you are there, give me some sign. Anything! Let me know you’re out there.”
Nothing happened.
This was the hardest, scariest thing I ever did. I thought, “Okay. Okay *deep breath* Maybe the Christian god doesn’t really exist.” (wait to get hit by lightning) “Oh my word, what if he doesn’t exist??? What does that mean?! How can I be a good person without god? What can I believe in?!” That went on for months. It was horrible. It broke my heart to leave my faith. I wanted so much to just believe it all again, and to have the assurance that I’d had before. But I just couldn’t. I couldn’t put the genie back in the bottle. I couldn’t talk myself into believing something that I didn’t think was true.
For a while I embraced other faith traditions. It wasn’t until 2004 that I said to myself, “You know Jenae, it might be comforting to believe that there’s some distant Big Thing out there, but do you really think it’s true?” And no. I really didn’t. So I put on the atheist label. I think I was probably an atheist back in 2002, but I just didn’t want to wear that label because it seemed so negative. It felt like saying that life was hopeless. It took me a while to accept that I was me who was attaching that meaning to atheism, and that it could simply mean, “I haven’t seen enough evidence to convince me that a god exists.” I’m open to evidence that there is such a thing as a supernatural being that cares about the affairs of human persons, but I don’t think it exists (and if it does, it has a lot of explaining to do because the world is a pretty awful place sometimes!)
I’m okay with there not being a god. I don’t wish for my faith back, and I don’t envy those that have it (though I don’t feel the contempt that some atheists feel for people of faith either, those who call believers “delusion” or “stupid,” because I’ve been a believer and I know that’s mostly not true.) Because I don’t believe in an afterlife where bad people are punished and good people are rewarded, I have to try to create a just world here, right now. I have a moral duty to do what I can to create a better world. That’s the code I live my life by, and I don’t really need a god for that-I just need to have empathy and compassion for other people.
So yeah…that’s a condensed version of my walking away from faith story. Feel free to ask me what you want. I’m open to talking about it.