De-conversion
I was raised in a Christian home and I was reading Bible verses and listening to sermons ever since I was two. I thought I knew this faith pretty well, inside and out. I met with my tutor Dick Keyes at the Southborough branch of L’abri several times before I realized I had been dishonest with myself for a while. There were parts of the Faith I liked, a lot of parts actually, and parts I didn’t like. I would take the parts I thought made sense and leave the rest. The problem with picking and choosing different doctrines in a faith you will adhere to, as I was told in so many words from a dear friend months before, is the religion cannot stand without those doctrines you would rather not believe in. The problem is obvious though I was altogether ignorant of the fact that I was not equipped with the knowledge to pick and choose aspects of a faith that has been around for two thousand years. I had the right to deny it altogether but I did not have the right to recreate the Faith in my own image. Once I realized that I didn’t accept the Faith and instead only parts I decided to embrace my agnosticism.
The world looked different altogether after I realized I wasn’t what I thought and believed I was for so many years. I felt healthy and honest after my de-conversion. I didn’t know what would come next but at least, if nothing else, I was being honest with myself.
The next few days were filled with keeping myself busy. I started to feel overwhelmed. I now knew that I really had no faith at all, but that isn’t an ending, that just suggests another question: what is it that you think and believe? My philosophy was crunched into pieces after I realized I was supporting my thinking by the faith I was raised with.
Apart from Genesis one I could no longer believe that people, all people, were created in the image of a God making them equal in value. I no longer even had a reason to believe the world I lived was meant to be “Good”. I could no longer claim something was right or wrong. Love, goodness, truth, all these words were void of meaning tossed up for me to decide what I deemed. I was thinking, is God really dead?
Solitude, elitism, and one day the end, death. These were my new companions. At first I welcomed them, after all, why not?
‘A’ ‘in Latin translates to without; ‘Gnostic’ translates to knowledge. This was indeed the perfect way of describing my current state of mind. I didn’t know what to think any more; the world started to look like a really bad joke, it still does most days.
I had read the Cosmological and Ontological arguments for the existence of a god. Kant had made them both look like jokes too in his Critique of Pure Reason. He said both could be used to hold the idea of a god but neither proved any deity’s existence. That made sense to me. I was looking for a formula, a reason, a line I could use at dinner parties just incase the question of “faith” came up. I didn’t want God to know me I wanted to know God so I could use him as I pleased. I was confused why I didn’t know what to think. The only funnier thing than the world around us is the ideas behind our eyes.
If there is a God the hope isn’t found in people making their way to God but God making his way to people. I had everything backwards, upside down.
Life isn’t clear, simple, or comfortable so why did I expect this to be any different? The stories the Bible tell about people aren’t unrealistic, they’re just as messy and gruesome as the world I see around me today; the arguments made for the God the Bible is about are the unrealistic stories.
Once I understood that the mists started to clear up a little bit. I was in a horrible world, a messy and disorganized wreck drenched with corruption that had soaked to the heart of things. Yet there was a line of something that made sense in people, in me, something that was beautiful and true. Every time I was about to put my finger on it it would disappear. I knew I wasn’t who I wanted to be. Doing things I knew I shouldn’t, not being able to do what I wanted to do. Then the four books chosen by men just like me were right in front of my nose telling stories, narratives about this man who lived two thousand years ago. He claimed strange things, he did crazier things, talked about a knew way to understand our world, established a new kingdom, and despite what people might tell you, changed the entire world.
I remember going to school when I was younger and hearing arguments for whether or not your salvation is pre-determined. I mostly thought they were a waste of time, I still do, but those arguments came back to my thoughts. Did I have a choice in all of this? I don’t know why the hope the Christian faith offers is spoken of so rarely. The Christian hope makes the most beautiful Utopia’s pale in comparison. How could I say no to an offer of that magnitude? If the Christian faith is true then Mankind was not a mistake and there is a future for all people, especially “the least of these.”
This is no argument for the Christian faith; if it were it would be a weak one. This is about a choice to trust the words of a man who may have made way to the first tangible hope mankind has seen since the dawn of time. In the end the man Jesus Christ was either divine or he was not. We may have a future bought for us by the sacrificial, loving heart of the Father; or we may just spend the rest of our time on this planet until at last we all pass away in blazing, or freezing dismal glory, probably laughing and eating until then. I place my lot with the rabbi.
