On The Journey, Pt 2: Question Everything

Meeting people who fell outside of the narrow view of the Christian Bubble™ I had grown up in played a major role in my deconversion.

One of the principal tenets of conservative Christianity is that Christians are strangers in this world. Christians believe they are on this world for a time but not meant to be part of it. My hindsight clarity of this clever defense mechanism is both humorous and a bit sinister. If you isolate people from differing views of course they are usually not going to leave the view that has been instilled in them since birth. If you surround yourself with only those who have the same ideology as you, your ideology is never truly challenged and you go along happily believing in whatever it is you believe. This is why isolation is so often a tactic of cults. I grew up simultaneously not having my faith challenged and being told that all challenges to my faith were specious. Given this clever first defense against challenges(if you don't ever get exposed to differing views how can you adopt that view?) attending a secular college and being exposed to views that differed from the very conservative, fundamentalist view I was raised in was definitely a huge factor in my rejection of Christianity. Meeting and becoming friends with people who had personal systems of belief on the complete opposite end of the spectrum as myself and those who I had grown up with and around was eye-opening, frightening and ultimately liberating. I began participating in the college's musical theater program, having a long held dream to sing and act on stage, but not having had the opportunity since I was a young child participating in a Christian-run theater program. I began making friends there almost immediately, and the theater class was one of the only classes I didn't flunk that semester. It was a place where I was happy, accepted, and free. I was cast in the ensemble, and I spent 2 or 3 months that summer with people who were the kindest, oddest, rowdiest, funniest, most accepting people I have ever met. My father began to worry when I began spending time in particular with several of the gay young men who were cast in the ensemble with me.

I had never met any out homosexuals before then, that I can remember, and definitely none who were as open and free as these young men, who were, like me, figuring out their places in the world. I fell in love with them, with their hilarity, with their bluntness, and with their utter acceptance of me. They understood what it was like to be on uncertain footing within yourself, and they were the first ones who taught me that it is 100% okay to trust yourself. I had one of the first major arguments I can ever remember having with my father over my friendship with those young men. It was the first time I can remember truly standing up for something against my father. He wanted to know why I was spending time with “those people.” I remember that phrase, “those people,” the most clearly. He was upset that I was devoting time to people he felt were living actively in sin. I remember lashing out against that phrase, so dehumanizing and categorical. All I could think was that my father was labeling these young men, who had begun to show me how to love myself again, without even having met them. And I raged against that.

It was the first argument with my father that ever remember winning.

It was the first argument with my father that I ever remember doing anything other than sitting silently and being lectured at.

My father was afraid. He saw me moving farther out “into the world” that holds such danger for those of conservative fundamental Christian faith, and his first reaction, as it was usually, was to contain me. To try to force me back into the mold of Good Christian Girl, to make sure that I didn’t make any mistakes that would endanger my soul. I had spent so long allowing him to hedge me in, protect me from “sin,” that it was a revelation of power that I didn't have to. He couldn't put me back in the box and keep me away from my friends. He couldn't make me believe that something was wrong if I didn't believe it was. This was a huge step up the deconversion ladder. Suddenly I was a rung above my father, looking at his belief that my friends were some kind of contaminant, something that could dirty me, and rejecting it.
Shortly after this I struck up a friendship with an atheist in another music class. I kept this friendship secret for quite awhile, since I knew atheism was even more verboten than homosexuality. If my father knew I was friends with an atheist, there would be all kinds of hell to pay, particularly since this atheist was male. Neil(name changed) was the first person to ever tell me “question everything.” This concept blew my mind. I had long heard the much touted “be like the Bereans,” the Christian version of this phrase; but “be like the Bereans” didn’t mean to apply skepticism to everything, it meant read the bible thoroughly, and compare it to other parts of the bible. I had never been told that I should analyze my own religion in the same way I analyzed all the other world religions. The idea that it was okay to ask questions set me free. I had felt for so long that questioning and doubting were flat out sinful and therefore to be avoided, that the freedom – the permission – to ask about those doubts was mind-boggling.
My relationship with Neil culminated in a short-lived romance, which led to another argument with my father, where I again put a foot down and demanded the freedom to make my own choices. At the time I was required (at about age 21) to ask permission and introduce any possible suitors to my father before I went out on any dates with them. In a scenario that I am sure is familiar with anyone raised in a conservative fundamentalist christian sect, my father needed to have a conversation with any possible suitors to be sure of their intentions. When my father found out that I wanted to go out on a date with an atheist he was again afraid. This time his fear was that something horrible, along the lines of rape, would happen to me. Since – of course – atheists have no morals what would prevent Neil from taking my virginity if he wanted to? Why would I even want to spend my time with someone secular, since being “unequally yoked” was such a terrible danger?
I had already begun to question the idea that had been drilled into me since I was a child, that atheists were unhappy, angry, angst ridden people who really did believe in god, but just wanted to sin. In Neil I didn't see any of that. I saw an honest man who was open, intelligent, sarcastically humorous, and who wanted me to learn as much as I could about as much as I could. So again, I stood up to my father, demanding to know how he could assume that someone he had never met had intentions to harm me, and demanding the right to act like an adult and make my own decisions.

I don't remember much of that argument except that I got to go on my date with Neil. I was shortly triumphant and then deeply terrified; I had defied my father in terms of my future and I had no idea what the repercussions would be. I was still a theist at the time, and I had no idea how to navigate a relationship with a non-believer, particularly under the scrutiny of my father. I stopped messaging Neil or responding to his flirtations shortly after that. The relationship ended amiably with Neil saying understandingly that he thought perhaps I wasn't ready to be in a relationship. Though he didn’t state it explicitly I think he understood my fears and distress about defying my father.

Though I didn't end up in any lasting romantic relationship with Neil, his friendship was an important part of beginning to question my faith. He was the first person to tell me that asking questions was neither sinful nor pointless, but an important part of sussing out the truth in my life. That encouragement to analyze what I believed objectively, to try on the lens of those who didn’t believe and weigh the evidence for and against Christianity for myself, instead of blindly accepting dogma, ultimately led to the realization that the faith that I had held nearly my whole life, just didn't have any support.

I started this series saying that the path to atheism was far from easy or instantaneous. The next several years would be full of fear, doubt, self-loathing, anger, an emotional agony. But I don't regret for one moment the pain of walking that road, and I am so thankful to every person who had a hand, big or small, in leading me along it.

On the Journey, Pt. 1: Culture Shock

My journey and transformation from conservative, fundamental Christian to Agnostic Atheist was not a fast or easy one. 

I know that for many members of my immediate family, it was as though I went from Good Christian Girl to Apostate – seemingly overnight. The reality is; that eventual outcome was the result of about seven years of doubt, fear, searching, researching and emotional turmoil. The biggest turmoil, of course, came near the end of the transformation, when I came out to my family as a non-believer, but that’s a post for another day. Over my next series of posts, titled "On the Journey" with various subtitles, I hope to give a glimpse into that those years and to present my Ex-timony, or the story of my deconversion from Christianity.

As I mentioned in a previous post, when I was in my mid-teens I began to experience bouts of depression that were (to me) inexplicable and confusing. I cried out to a god who I desperately wished would acknowledge my pleas, but to no avail. I remember telling my parents that I was so sad, but I didn’t understand why, because I had been taught for so long that when anything was bad or sad in my life, it meant that I simply needed to focus more on God because God was trying to teach me something or was reprimanding me for not being focused on him. If I refocused hard enough he would fix it (or not) depending on his ultimate plan. When I graduated from (a private, Christian) high school I had neither the grades nor the ambition to attend a university and I transitioned directly into community college without knowing who I really was, what I wanted to do, or how to handle my spiraling depression. I spent about 7 years at that community college, shifting from major to major, and flunking out of numerous classes because I just didn't care. I had sunken deep into apathy, and I still couldn't understand why.

As is the case with many religious kids who grew up in The Christian Bubble™ (the protective, exclusive environment that keeps kids from “secular” influences) attending a public community college was a serious culture shock. I grew up in Southern California, which is fairly liberal in its political leanings, and is fairly diverse in its demographics. I had grown up in a racially and ethnically diverse environment, but for the most part I had only ever been surrounded by theists of some flavor or another. Suddenly being in an environment where I couldn't be certain that everyone believed in God was both disconcerting and liberating. I was suddenly forced to acknowledge that much of what I had assumed everyone just KNEW, because I had been taught that way, was not known by the majority of the people I was now surrounded by on a daily basis. 

I had spent the whole of my formative years growing up in a world and religion that told me what and who to be. Rather than feel encouraged to take pride and joy in my achievements and talents, I was taught that pride was a sin and all my talents were god given and that I should “give that glory back to god.” I’m sure this is a mantra that many ex-fundies are familiar with; the almost constant grating down of the self. I had no idea how to BE without religion, and no concept that such being was even possible. I thought that everyone, deep down inside, knew that God was real and that he was the god of the bible. I wholeheartedly swallowed the  religious defense mechanism that non-Christians were all unhappy, immoral deviants who were deluded about their beliefs. With that belief that came belief in the follow up defense mechanism; That atheists in particular were miserable, sin-soaked people who God had "given over unto disbelief."

So, to be suddenly entrenched in a world where there were people who were out atheist, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, as well as many of sects of Christianity that I had never really had any exposure to, was stunning. I started hearing different points of views, not just knowing that there were differing views, but hearing them, and understanding the basis for them. I took a philosophy class for the first time, and started learning how to think instead of what to think. I began to allow myself to have questions about my faith and system of faith, instead of assuming that such questions were human doubt that needed to be squashed by prayer. 

One of the big Christian-faith warnings is: Beware being friends with "The World." This is another of those defense mechanisms: When you are exposed to many differing worldviews, when you start exploring and questioning your own worldview with the same logic and criticisms that you use on others, when  you step OUTSIDE of that Bubble and honestly question and evaluate your beliefs, the supernatural world starts to fall apart. 

In the end, I am so glad that I ended up in the community college, because it afforded me the freedom and friendships that eventually led to my freedom from religion.