I have been thinking a lot lately about de-converting, atheism, liberal and conservative Protestantism, to church or not to church, heaven and hell, what to do with Jesus, etc. and I will attempt to summarize the journey as best as I can, from early on till now.
I was a full time minister, both as pastor and associate pastor, for 7 years. Before that, I had done some youth ministry work with my home church and worked at a Christian summer camp for two summers. I really enjoyed being with people who were like me. It was easy. No major differences to speak of. As I got older and more responsibility was given to me, I thought, “This is it. I’ve arrived. I am where God wants me.” Life was…predictable.
It has been said that most people have a crisis of belief at some point in their lives. For most, it happens at early adulthood, for or some, early adolescence and for others later in life. I fall in the latter, later in life. I think that I can now pinpoint the time when it happened.
I had resigned pastoring my first church and had gotten a job as a cable TV installer. My family and I started attending another church and instantly fell in love with it. When you have pastored a church for awhile and then have little to no responsibilities at a new church, it is euphoric. What’s not to love? We weren’t members of the church very long when I was approached to teach an adult class for Sunday School. I was excited to take on a leadership role at this new church, so I accepted. Not long after that, I was offered the associate pastor/ youth minister’s position, a paying position, so I gladly accepted. I quit work with the cable company and planned to complete college. There is a “liberal arts” college near my home, so I enrolled. This is where the defining moment occurred. I was given special permission to take two religion classes, Religion 101 Old Testament and Religion 102 New Testament, and I even added in Religion and the Arts, World Civ., and a required orientation class. I get to my religion classes with a pretty well established Christian worldview, based solely on my experiences up to that point in my life. I had never gone to school to be a pastor but I had been one, and was one at this time. I found out in the first couple of classes that I attended, I was…misinformed about a great many things. To this point, I had always believed the bible was without error, God’s own words. I believed that the stories in the bible were not just stories but actual accounts of history. I believed that Christianity was THE road to God, the afterlife and its rewards. I believed anybody that had not had a “salvation” experience was lost and destined for hell. I believed that the bible writers were all taking dictation from their “God” phone and simply writing what he said down. I believed that the bible was some how one book that was stretched out over several thousand years. What I learned in that one semester of college literally blew my mind!
It would take up too much of your time to go into all the changes. Let’s just say that most of what I believed was…erroneous. At first, naturally, I thought, “These professors are heretics! How can this be a conservative Baptist college and teach this kind of stuff?” I put this new information on a shelf in the back of my mind and decided to take seminary classes by extension. There was a program offered by New Orleans Theological Seminary close enough by my house that I enrolled there instead the next semester. The way the extension classes worked, I stayed there most of Monday afternoon into the evening, but was able to get three classes in one day, nine hours. I did this for about two and half years. The classes were more of what I expected when I first started my secondary school work. Everyone there shared the same Christian worldview I was accustomed to it and it was more…comfortable. I wasn’t really challenged at all at these classes, but I was getting some hours under my belt and I felt pretty good about that. The extension classes work in a cycle. You can get in on any part of the cycle and get enough credits for an associate degree. From that point on, I would have to go to the NOBTS campus in New Orleans to complete my bachelor’s degree. I couldn’t uproot my family, so I tried finding ways to complete my degree online, without any luck. Since there was no other way for me to complete my degree, I just settled in my mind that that was as far as I was going to go.
During my time at seminary, I was working full time with the church. I liked going to school and getting some fodder for teaching the youth or adults in Sunday School. I felt really empowered. Life was pretty good and that is proverbially when the bottom falls out.
I started to have some difficulties with the senior pastor. We no longer saw eye to eye on some things and I felt constantly frustrated with the situation. I began to see that his ideas on how to minister where very different from my own and there was nothing I could do or say that would change that. But I stuck it out for a few more years. But like any untreated wound, things festered. Long story short, I resigned when things were at there quietest so that there would not be any harm to the church, and slipped quietly away.
At the time, I thought I was leaving that church for another church. My family and I took a week or so off and started looking for other churches. I quickly discovered that I didn’t like any of them. I was extremely cynical and disillusioned. I still had some ideas about how church and ministry should be done and ended up running into a friend of mine from several years before. He was starting a home based church ministry and I was immediately interested. We talked a lot over a few months and tried to come up with a model for church that worked. We met together with a few others, in homes, and tried to make things happen. Unfortunately, we began to see a very big problem. In order to have a home church, you have to have potential members, people in your “circle of influence” to invite to come and join in. My friend, Lyndon, and I have the same occupation, marketing/advertising in the health care field. We travel around the state mostly and have no co-workers. It’s pretty much a solo mission. So that limited our “circle”. Another thing that limited our “circle” was all our friendships were with church people. We discovered we didn’t know non-Christians or non-church people. With a depleted “circle” of people we could minister to, we sort of disbanded. We had an idea of going to churches and trying to work with them to change what they were doing to match what we thought would work, but that didn’t work either. We finally decided it was time to give up on the church/ministry we were trying to do. What I discovered next was that I didn’t leave one church for another, I actually had left ministry period.
For the next few months, I tried going to church with my family. My wife was open to try some new things, so we did, but nothing appealed to me, I was still way too cynical. I started to believe that I was now agnostic or maybe even an atheist. It’s really amazing how fast the “fall” was for me. One day, minister, next day cynic, next day agnostic, where was the bottom going to come?
Influenced by my friend and authors such as Brennan Manning, Henri Nouwen, some Philip Yancey and Brian McLaren, Leonard Sweet, Mike Yaconelli, Gordon Atkinson (Real Live Preacher, especially his early stuff), and more recently Marcus Borg, Karen Armstrong, and Donald Miller, I started to come to terms with the fact that I had completely left religion, the church, and all it had to offer. I couldn’t, however, leave God. Something keeps me from leaving the journey to find God. I can’t explain it but it is undeniable. Cynical as I am, I can’t let go of God. I have let go of the romanticized version of God and I think that is where I am right now.
I read a lot. Books and blogs, I listen to audiobooks when I am driving. I seem to have an insatiable need for knowledge. The difference between my life before “The Great Awakening” (what I call my moment of crisis of belief) and now is that I don’t limit myself to hearing only one voice, ie conservative Christian. I am more open to all kinds of things and so the vast sea of knowledge is even more vast. I have learned a great deal from this openess to all things. I have found that I am not alone in my thoughts. I owe a lot of the beginning of this journey to my good friend Lyndon. Without me having someone to talk to about what I was going through and them completely understand, I would have gone nuts. There is no doubt in my mind. Nuts.
Now you know where the next few statements are coming from, the context from which they flow.
I am not a Christian as most would define Christianity. I don’t want to be associated with, in my humble opinion, this dilluted version of religion. I define religion as the method by which we seek “God”. I agree with Margaret Cho’s statement, “I wish Jesus would come back and say, ‘THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT!!” I really believe that Jesus would really be appalled at what has happened and is happening in his name.
I am not an atheist. I define atheist here to mean the “belief” that there is no God. I have not come to that conclusion in my journey thus far. Even though I may not view God as I once did, I haven’t rejected the idea of something bigger than myself in the center of it all.
I am somewhere in the middle of these two. Maybe agnostic thiest is the appropriate term if it is defined as one who views that the true value of certain claims, in particular the existance of “God” is unknown or inherently unknowable but chooses to believe in God in spite of this. Is this dillusionable? Probably in most’s opinions. Can I help it? Not right now and maybe ever. I tried explaining this to Lyndon just the other day as a stain. No matter how much I have tried to rub out God from my mind and heart, it ain’t coming out.
It would take a great deal of work to correctly define “God” as I understand him/her, but I would like to put down a few thoughts.
I believe “God” is not described very accurately in the bible, especially the Old Testament. I think it is more accurate to say that the authors of the biblical books were defining “God” as they saw him/her, much like I am doing here. In the world that we live in now, I don’t need to Wow you with amazing stories of “God”’s works and deeds. Its just not necessary. Because of our current world’s fascination with high energy entertainment, we already get a steady dose of this without my having to awe you with the amazing feats of “God”. So I won’t. “God” is “God”, how can I add to that without seeming like a complete idiot?
I believe I have a duty to love others unconditionally. This is not an easy task and may never be made manifest in my life during my lifetime but I will try.
I believe I am responsible to my wife and two boys to love them, nurture them, protect them, teach and learn from them, support them, acknowledge them, guide them based on my life experiences, and just be there for them in all their needs. They are mine and I am their’s.
I believe mankind has an innate desire to be with one another. I believe the statement, “No man is an island”. There is something about community, in all it’s forms, that is a very good thing. We are not meant to walk alone.
I believe somewhere in time, my questions will be answered. No matter what, I will get to the bottom of it all. No matter if the Christians are right or the atheist is, I will one day know and until then, I must journey on.
I had an epiphany. It seems that I am the most still in my mind right before the dawn. It is in these moments that things seem to make the most sense, seem the most real. This morning was one of those mornings.
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