To the Life!

This gave me quite a bit more insight into Sylvia Plath’s mind than simply reading her books and poems. I’d say she really loved life, perhaps too much. Sometimes I see myself doing that when contemplating the depth and breadth of life. Like Plath, I too would say my “other” profession would have been as a doctor. Also like Plath, I’m not so sure I’d actually love it. There is more to life than healing and preservation. There is a latent art in the ‘deathly’ taboos, and that’s where I get my rise.

“You’re the most brutally honest person I know.” This comment made to me by my coworker today might not have been a compliment, but I am not sure how to take it as anything else.

I met Zach just a month ago at our company holiday party. He is that one guy who gets drunk when no one else does. Yep, the one meandering about conversations and games, participating through boisterous speech, eyes glazed. I knew then that he would be fun. A bro through-and-through, still fun.

He gchatted me shortly after he started working at my company, and we got to bantering. I quickly discovered he’s headed to law school and wants to make lots and lots of money. “I’ve done the poor thing already. It’s romantic for a couple of years, but I don’t really want to experience that anymore.” He wants security. I get that.

Just this morning, he came from around the corner and shot me with his mega Nerf gun until he had to come over and pick the little Nerf darts off of me and reload for his next victim.

This afternoon, I went to Taco Mac with my sister. I saw him and a couple of other coworkers crossing the street. He’s the only one who caught my eye through the restaurant front glass window. He gave me his typical glare and smirk, suggesting an accusation that I’m “too good” to eat lunch with my coworkers.

An hour later I got news that his family’s house burned to the ground. His dog was trapped in the house when this happened and died. I saw him again a few hours later in total shock. All I know about him is that he wants a sense of security, and he wants to work hard to have that just like his parents did. But blunders happen. Plans are interrupted. Life goes to shit, and I missed his glare. I never wanted to see that look of utter disbelief and devastation on his face.

I hope he pulls out stronger from this. I’m not sure whether things happen for a reason or if chance just kind of fucks you over from time-to-time. Either way, I think he’ll be okay.

Countless are they who insist on telling me that they are praying for me. At first, it understandably felt rather condescending, and it upset me. I thought how arrogant it was for Christians to be so dismissive of everything I believe by leaving me with a quick and decisive, “I’ll pray for you,” like they’re so right and I’m so wrong.

But in truly understanding that prayer is love, it’s not fair for me to be offended. I know I’ve touched on this matter of perspective thing a lot, but I’m really trying to drive it home. A lot of people are praying for me, and some of them feel the need to tell me this. Now, I thank them, and I really mean it.

My hometown church loves them some Jonathan Edwards. They’re more than happy to focus on God’s wrath and judgement every once in a while, because my old church is deeply concerned about portraying the entire biblical character of God. I have a lot of respect for this approach, because it doesn’t try to mince words and pretend like the ugly stuff isn’t there. I’ve met a lot of Christians who either ignore the hell doctrine or water it down when I bring it up with them. I prefer the ones that will be honest about what they believe hell to be–a fiery pit where I will suffer eternally because I do not have faith in Christ Jesus as my Savior from an affliction that the Church defined for me (sin).

What has been most surprising to me as I’ve formed relationships with people in the ex-Christian community is the number of people who are suffering PTSD from having been so deeply ingrained with a fear of hell that they find they can’t shake it. As well as they have come to the conclusion that hell most likely does not exist and was invented by the church, some still have “what if?” thoughts and others can’t sleep most nights because of hellfire nightmares. Is this really what the church was hoping to do? Is this the scare tactic that “proves” God? I can hear a fundamentalist now.

“Well, since you continue to be highly affected by that fear, have you considered that the consequence of hell is probably real?”

This is like trying to positively justify the trauma a rape victim has experienced. See how sick that is? This is just one example of the poor associations Christians often make. Even when I confessed that I hadn’t filled in some of the holes in my thinking after leaving Christianity (in an effort to be honest), my dad took advantage of that and said, “Well, maybe that means the claims of Scripture are true.” No, a hole does not automatically get filled with one unproven explanation just because another hasn’t been found yet. Just because I had been out of my indoctrination for approximately three months and hadn’t found any sufficient answers does not mean that none exist. It also doesn’t mean that the hole needs to be filled at all.

It really bothers me how much Christians hate on my “intellectual rebellion” when the ways they dismiss every religion but their own are often on an intellectual level. The Christians I know (even the more emotional type) will almost always use logical reasoning to refute other religions, but they get upset when I use logical reasoning to refute their beliefs. This is a huge inconsistency that is frankly not fair at all. I am tired of being demonized just because I have put up a level method of scrutiny across all faiths, not just all faiths but my own.

I don’t think I’m better or smarter than those people, but I would like a little more respect for my honest pursuits. I’m not in cahoots with Satan. I am not in love with my own mind. I am just trying to be fair.

I’ve been cutting my own hair. No matter how I cut it, I’ve noticed it always comes out looking better than any haircut I’ve received from anyone in the past. The way my hair looks is not incredibly important to me, but there is something satisfying about controlling and bettering it all by myself. No money out of my pocket and lots of (potentially fake) compliments from southern ladies who wish they had curls.

You might see the analogy coming. I started cutting my own hair around the time that I confessed to myself that I am not a Christian. Like, at all. And just like my hair, my life got so much better. With each haircut I become more proficient, and with each passing day I find something more that makes this life so much more raw and beautiful than I ever dreamed it could be. Freedom from Christ is nothing I could have ever fathomed before. My life is an inverse reflection of so many others around me. And so, many simply want to know, “What happened?”

I usually start with saying, “I’m still not really even sure.” It’s true. I don’t know, but I have an idea. Some of it involved stepping outside of my own perceptions. Seeing churches and evangelism and reading the Bible, even the words of Jesus, all seemed so conflicted with how I was starting to see the world. I saw Muslims living with as much conviction as my church leaders. I thought about how wrong all of them are, every single one of them severely misled. I thought, “No wonder we Christians feel so convicted to spread the Gospel. Look at how many have been deceived! What a broken world!” I thought those things that Christians think. I believed them. I was concerned for our spiritually rotting world.

It was really one little nagging question that set it off, though very gradually and not at all noticeably. It was a simple question.

“What if I’ve been misled?”

What justification do I have that my God is the one true God if I look outside of the Bible and the Church? Can I really look at creation and know that it is the work of the triune God? Not really… Can I trust these feelings inside me that affirm my convictions in the Lord? Maybe… but don’t people of other religions feel these same convictions? I asked myself question after question, trying to find some indication that I can have full confidence in my faith by looking beyond its holy book. Surely God would be evident still today, beyond what he did 2,000 years ago. But I couldn’t find any evidence. I didn’t know how to trust my book when millions of other people were trusting other books the same way. I had nothing to prove that mine is the real deal.

Sure, there are a lot of scholars who claim to have proven to some degree the validity of the events in Scripture, but then there are some who have proven to some degree the invalidity. Who do I trust? Why am I having to scrounge truth up from something that happened thousands of years ago anyway? What an odd thing God would do to have his truth written down in one language that was bound to get mistranslated and manipulated down the line by fallible humans. What will the Bible say in another 2,000 years? I can’t even imagine… No wonder Jesus believed the end was near. He must have suspected this message wouldn’t hold very well in a couple thousand years.

Approximately 66% of the world today doesn’t buy in at least.

Is 66% of the world misled? Are you a Christian who feels a deep conviction to spread the love of Jesus? I challenge every Christian to stop a second and think about why that 66% doesn’t believe. So many of them aren’t angry at BibleGod. They’ve merely been honestly led in a different direction. They live by conviction that what they know is true. They’re not living in strict opposition to God. That is the lie the Bible feeds–that everyone outside has a hard heart, rebellious to the Lord. I am surely not rebelling. I want nothing more than to know Truth in whatever form I encounter it. Consider that we 66% aren’t rebellious or hard of heart. Consider that we might be kinda right, or at the very least, that you might be kinda wrong, too?

I made a great realization about how I want to “deal” with all this belief stuff. Now that I have a slightly firmer grip on the inevitability of uncertainty, I’ve lost any sort of desire to talk at others as if my knowledge is authority over theirs–or even my source of knowledge. Yeah, I believe stuff, but the only time my beliefs become dangerous or threatening is when I feel compelled to push them onto other people. I’ve wondered how I’m supposed to handle some conversations without doing this, but I think I’ve figured it out.

Talking to people who have different ideas doesn’t have to be an argument or debate. It can be a laying out of perspectives. Noticing how different minds reach different rationales is the most valuable part of such conversations–it’s these different perspectives that speak volumes more than the actual topic at hand. What does it mean that we can both reason our way to different conclusions? What does it mean that we are both pretty convinced of our own positions? Does it mean they are both right? One is right and the other is misled? I’d rather say that rightness might not be what matters. What we see instead is uncertainty, and that is the consensus it often makes most sense to reach. It is what makes expressing my beliefs very difficult, because sometimes I believe things without really understanding why. I don’t always feel compelled to understand why. I don’t always want to defend my beliefs, and I don’t necessarily think there is a God judging me for having that sort of attitude. It has been easier for me to understand other perspectives now that I’ve stopped being a Christian, but that’s just me. Maybe being a Christian is what helps another person understand other perspectives. It’s also harder for me to embrace uncertainty when I insist that there is a God. Uncertainty is much more real to me than God. It’s the truest thing I think I’ve found in a long time. Probably I should start worshiping it.

A family member sent me a link to an article (that she herself did not read–just to clarify that reference in my response) explaining that we can’t have reason without Christian faith. This is the response I sent her. Adding it here as a marking point of sorts along my journey of muddling through ideas:

Thanks for sharing this. I read over it and it makes a really good epistemological point about reason being grounded in faith. (Just letting you know what it says so you don’t have to read it ;) I agree with this argument. In order to make arguments according to reason, we must trust that our faculties of reason are reliable for bringing us to an understanding of truth. We can’t justify this trust in reason apart from having faith that what seems to be a natural process for us is a means for understanding truth. The article assumes this must be a Christian faith, though, and that is not something as easily justified. Faith is a virtue when it motivates people toward love and compassion, but it is a weapon when it motivates people toward hate and crime. Reason follows this same pattern. We can have faith in a lot of things apart from God, and having faith in those things can bring about good in our lives as well.

I don’t discredit the value of faith, but I don’t see how faith in the God of the Bible proves to be superior to any other form of faith that motivates people toward love. Muslims justify their beliefs according to faith as well. Even in Mein Kampf, Hitler explains that he is doing the Lord’s work, and he was referring to the Lord of Scripture. Today’s Christians might say he severely misunderstood God, but how can you know? He read the holy wars of Israel and saw a God who mandated genocide. Perhaps he was mistaken, but he pulled his understanding of truth from what was clearly written in Scripture. He believed he was helping to purify the world. He believed his faithful intentions were honorable.

When it comes to biblical interpretation, I see Christianity as a bunch of Christianities. Different denominations understand the Bible differently, and sometimes their understandings stand in stark contradiction. If it is true that they are all united by their faith that Jesus is Lord, then how do we justify the rest of Scripture? Does it matter that Christians have completely opposing views of what much of the Old Testament means and what Paul’s letters mean? Can we really say Hitler was wrong in his understanding of Scripture, just because we claim that Jesus came to preach love? Jesus also said that till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Could Jesus possibly preach against the statutes of Old Testament God, seeing as he is God? It seems he would have no choice but to find all acts of “holy” genocide justifiable, just as his Father had done.

I simply don’t see faith as a virtue, and I don’t necessarily see reason as a virtue either. There’s a lot of gray area within these concepts. I am aware that I use both faith and reason to understand the world, but I don’t know that I can say those came from God. It’s possible that they did, but I don’t know that. As long as I’m not sure how to know that, I won’t believe it. I don’t think I can use either faith or reason to arrive at the conclusion that God is Truth. In my experience, learning more about faith and reason leads me to more questions, not answers.

I wrote previously about why I don’t think that I need Jesus on some sort of spiritual/redemptive level, but I didn’t really touch on the actual root of my problem with that story. The collapse of my faith was gradual and, in a sort of opening sequence fashion, it started zoomed in on salvation through Jesus and spanned all the way out until I got to the presuppositions for the whole event. Jesus had to come to save us from sin and death. That was his ultimate purpose here. But when I finally realized sin is just an idea, my faith took a serious nosedive. I started asking myself questions like this:

“Well, what if the stuff that we call evil isn’t actually an ultimate Evil or Sin? What if we just call it that?”
“Why does my destiny rely so much on me believing something? Why did that become the all-important criteria?”
“If I can peg all of these answers to God’s mysteries, how is that different from a Muslim person ascribing answers to Allah’s mysteries? Aren’t those justifications equal?”
“Am I really supposed to feel shame from Adam’s sin? I am not Adam.”
“It seems a little odd that the only way God could accept us was to kill himself in the form of his son…”

In January 2011, I wrote this to a good friend who I felt safe confiding in:
“What is the point? Why would God create a bunch of people and then only really expect a few of them to care about him? It already doesn’t make much sense that God would create people. God glorifies himself with everything he does–just by being God basically. So he decided to make a bunch of little people and then sin happens and they’re all effed up until Jesus comes and hoorays them on up to heaven? It really does sound ridiculous when I think of it that way. It’s quite the preposterous story, really. The only way I’m truly convinced is because evil is very evident to me. The Bible presents the only way I’ve found above evil. The idea of being stuck in this evil world, trying to get by and succeed as much as possible, and then die off doesn’t make much sense to me given the capacity of understanding we have as humans. With the idea that we can imagine more than that gives me the real hope that there is more. Again, this might be a coping mechanism, but it’s another one that is preserving my sanity. I’ve tried going without it, and I simply can’t.”

What’s interesting is how I knew that story sounded preposterous, but I didn’t know how not to believe it. I had a mental block forcing me to believe it simply because I didn’t know how to believe anything else.

All I can say to that is–how fascinating!

I think the whole salvation story is beautiful in a way. The sentimentality and the ideas of suffering and sacrificing bringing everyone to glory is truly moving. What fails me is the logic behind it. What ultimately fails me is the complete lack of actual sacrifice in the story. There is no sacrifice. God, being omniscient, knew that Jesus would redeem his people. Jesus knew he would redeem his people. It was the plan from the very beginning, and there was never a threat for God. He could have just as easily told the people, “I am having compassion on you because I love you. You are all forgiven,” without slaying himself. We put so much meaning into this act of sacrifice that doesn’t really mean anything at all on a logistical level. If I were presented with the option to kill my child, knowing my child would come back to life and save all believers in the process, I’d do it. It would be hard to see my child suffer, but I would know the end goal. There’d be no doubt in my mind that this would be the right thing to do, and I would not see it as a sacrifice. I’d see it as beneficial for everyone. True sacrifices are not beneficial for everyone. This idea that God laid down the life of his son for all who believe is an illusion that does not hold up to scrutiny. If anything, it’s just a little sick and morbid and very indicative of the ideals of that age. What would you say if such an event happened today? Would you not find it absolutely insane if a king told everyone he was going to kill his son so that he could show compassion to those in his kingdom?

I imagine I wasn’t the only Christian who found this whole story a little far-fetched despite how often it had been portrayed as the ultimate story of love to me since I was a toddler. Chances are some Christians who are reading my blog agree with me on some level. This story just doesn’t actually make sense, but just like I did, you feel compelled to believe it for some reason or another, perhaps even because you don’t know how to believe anything else. If that’s the case, I can fully empathize. I get that. Finally accepting this failed logic caused me a lot of pain, and I won’t deny that. But if anyone reading this might be nearing that place, know that you have a comrade in me. I am here for you, and I will encourage you in the ways that I had no one to encourage me when I finally broke out.

Sorry to post Richard Dawkins if you find him off-putting, but this conversation between him and Howard Conder hits well on this topic. Howard is so precious in it!

On an added note, why is Satan still prowling around pretending like he can win? Hasn’t he read the Bible yet and seen the part where he gets destroyed? Is he illiterate?

This is where I [finally] give faith its due credit and write about the reasons why I love and respect it. Despite its misconception, faith isn’t really something through which honest believers claim full knowledge about the world. In the way that Christians know God is there, I think the most honest ones recognize that they can’t ever portray that knowledge to another person. I was aware of this as a Christian, and many of my closest friends were as well. In a way, it adds to the romance of faith in God. It’s special and intimate, and it can’t reach beyond you and God, not in the heart&mind-deep ways you experience it. Other believers have this faithful dependence on God, and they get it. You fellowship with one another, uniting in the beauty and wonder of your unique journeys with God through faith. It is deeply captivating, and it facilitates deep, spiritual, meaningful relationships with other believers. Being among the blissfully faithful is absolutely wonderful, and I will freely admit that I love that journey. I miss that fellowship, and I miss the form of love experienced through faith.

My biggest concern upon losing my faith was entering a world without that sort of romance and adventure. As far as I knew before, the purpose of life was to experience those things through glorifying God. I had an entity beyond me guiding my heart and my very life. It was mysterious and terrifying and awesome all in its own right, but when I realized I couldn’t honestly continue on that journey I feared all of the magic and mystery in my life would be gone forever. I’d be stuck in the stale stalls of science, wielding a metallic microscope rather than the delicately ruffled pages of a rich love story.

In some ways, my life did start heading down that route. It was all microscopes and mirrors for a time there. I kept trying to find hope and peace in looking further into myself and looking more closely at the natural world, not allowing myself to break the “natural” boundaries I believed our understanding is restrained to. I’d have thought these were acts of futility as a Christian. “Nothing new under the sun” and all the business. I recall being fed this idea that I had to look no further than Christ to find fulfillment and meaning. What I’ve discovered is that allowing myself the opportunity to look other places and not concern myself with where my focus was, on God or not on God, I have been able to find hope and peace. I’ve even regained a sense of wonder in the mystery of life again. My journey is still my journey, whether or not I have faith in a God as my guide. I’ve found that all the romance and adventure found in faith can be found outside of faith as well. Life can still be a deeply spiritual thing without God, and this can happen in an intellectually honest way. I can recognize the many flaws and contradictions in holy books and the objective messages of hope folks construe in individual ways through these books, and I can say those might not be what it’s really all about for me. I can suppose there is more depth or a different depth than what I see there. Life might not come from God, and it might not point to God. Is life, then, not precious and sacred? Must there be some God-given inherent value in things for me to see the value myself?

No, this is unnecessary. The mystery of God is deep and rich and exciting. The mystery of life is all that and more. I’ve taken more steps back. My canvas is bigger and broader, available for wider strokes of thoughts and feelings. The God-box does have boundaries, despite what I hear more lenient, liberal Christians say. The life box is the one that’s big enough for me. I’ve yet to find its restrictive boundaries, but when I do I’ll tear those down, too. I will always be in want of more, and I can’t imagine a peace in settling for anything less. There is no faith required in this journey. Only the reality of mystery and the courage to explore.

Since deconverting, I’ve learned about tons of different beliefs that I was pretty oblivious to before. One is the number of people who claim not to believe in God, per se, but they do believe in Jesus. This statement thoroughly confuses me. What does it mean to believe in Jesus? Like believing that he existed? Believing he was really cool? A good teacher? Spoke some sort of ultimate truth without the authority of an all-powerful being?

**EDIT**

Also, I’d like to know what you all think about this:

I think the writer of Hebrews caused the confusion between faith and knowledge by defining faith as a form of certainty, suggesting that we must actually know the truth that we are called to wholly invest our faith in, which puts faith-based belief beyond the requisite for proof. And then Christians can exploit that to no bounds.