Leaving Faith Behind

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I consider myself an apostate from the Christian faith. However, I am not angry at “religion” nor do I treat people of faith with contempt or disrespect unless someone is a jerk. But, I was asked by a new acquaintance of mine, how do I cope? I realize that several people are questioning, deconverting, and not sure of what to believe or what to do. I left the Christian world over twenty years ago, so I can provide some perspective.

A Loving Family

Photo by Zach Reiner on Unsplash

One of the reasons that I was able to cope was because I had a loving family that was there for me. My family is a Christian family, sure, but they loved me unconditionally. I realize that not everyone has this option available. Even though my family loves me and has prayed for my return to the family, at least they were consistent in their values of love. There is a mutual respect among us. My parents, for instance, accept that I am a nonbeliever and I accept that they are people of faith and we get along very well.

Do we sometimes talk about the Christian faith and the Bible? Yes. We have very respectful discussions and I will even ask them questions from time to time, but it is mostly about their opinions. As long as I keep it respectful, all is well. I would encourage people questioning, leaving, or having left their faith to try their best to keep conversations with believers, especially believing family members as respectful as possible. No matter how much you come to hate Christianity, hate the church, hate the Bible, or what-not, please remember that you can always be the better person by treating them with respect.

A Support Network

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I also joined a support network. I joined a website called “Ex-Christians.Net” which was founded by an apostate Dave Van Allen. I met some wonderful people there. I met a couple of people from this website in person. I joined because I thought that an author and religious skeptic, Ed Babinski was part of this website; he wasn’t and I eventually befriended Ed. After joining this website, I even met a single young atheist named Melissa and we both developed a strong crush on each other. I got to talk to her on the phone a couple of times and I thought I was going to marry her.

It didn’t happen and she married someone else. I met a few other women that I had some romantic interest in. However, I eventually decided to take a break from this website because I realized that I was becoming addicted to it and I decided, instead, to try to focus on school and getting my B.A. degree. But it helped in the sense that I had a strong sense of community and belonging. There was one negative aspect of it: I absorbed some of the negative emotions that some people there had. It made me somewhat angry and taking a break was the first step towards healing from the negative emotions that I was beginning to feel.

A Journey of Discovery

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I embarked on a journey of discovery. This meant thinking through every argument that I encountered, whether it was an argument in favor of Christianity or an argument against it. I realized that many Christian authors such as Josh McDowell and Lee Strobel had awful arguments in defense of the faith but many secular authors did as well. I came to view the arguments of skeptics such as Robert M Price and Richard Carrier as being just as bad as their Evangelical counterparts.

It was reading a publication titled The Skeptical Review that got me to reject the divine inspiration of the Bible. It was written by a former preacher who became a skeptic of the Bible, the late Farrell Till. Looking back at Till’s work, I realized while he got some arguments right, he got several arguments quite wrong. His work is a mixed bag. Till wasn’t a Bible scholar. I realized that I had to seek out the works of other Bible scholars to get better information.

But in the process of discovery, I have learned that there is a world out there that I never explored. A world of ideas. I learned what is it like to be a true freethinker. I am allowed to consider hypotheses that were off-limit to me as a young believer. I am allowed to think for myself. I have learned to fact-check sources and call out propaganda for what it is. I have also discovered that I am allowed to be myself. I am an introvert. I am extremely cerebral. I am neither shy nor especially confident. I am a kind person but I won’t allow myself to be taken advantage of by shady characters.

I have discovered that I am hypersexual. I am also bisexual, being mostly attracted to women but some men as well. I identify as being nonbinary, and nongendered. I don’t identify as being male or female but I used male pronouns for simplicity. I am not in a rush to find descriptive labels anymore. I try to relax and take each day at a time.

One more thing: I have learned a valuable lesson. I have learned that I am too flawed to take myself too seriously and life is too absurd to take too seriously. If I laugh at myself and laugh at life, it becomes a lot more bearable.

Life After Faith

(Templeton’s Memoir on Amazon.com)

Life goes on after faith. I recall reading a memoir written by the late agnostic Charles Templeton. I wanted to get a sense of what life was like after faith and what I should do with mine. As I read his memoir, I realized that he had a somewhat exciting life. He had several careers. He was a newspaper editor, an aspiring politician, an inventor, an author, and cohosted a radio show. It made me realize that there is so much that we can do with our lives. We just have to find our passions.

I realized that sometimes one has to rebuild one’s life. It’s not easy for a lot of people. If you’re a young apostate, it means that you have to start all over and do something other than what you have. For Farrell Till, it meant leaving the ministry and so he went back to college and became an English instructor. He loved this and did this for years until he retired. Templeton left the ministry and did numerous things.

The end of faith doesn’t necessarily mean the end of life. My reading of Christian literature and my discussions with conservative Christians made it sound as though, outside of a life centered around Christ and the Church, there is no greater meaning, no greater hope, and nothing except a black hole of meaningless and nihilism. Once you leave the faith and church, you get sucked into it and only Christ can pull you out. Bullshit!

Life is what you make of it. Yes, it would seem more pleasant if life was created by a divine being who deeply loved us and assigned a very loving purpose to our lives. I know how attractive this view is. I embraced it myself. But life will go on if you let it. Your job will still be there the next day and the Starbucks where you go to get your guilty pleasure will still be in existence. So will the supermarket where you buy your soap, shampoo, and other household items.