Stages of deconversion, Part 2 July 16, 2010

The 5th stage is Anger – I long ago adopted the phrase, “Nothing is wasted” for my life. I believed it before my deconversion, and I believe it about 30 years spent primarily studying one book, and spending hours every day talking to an invisible person and listening to air. There must be a reason for it, even though I don’t yet know what it is. I am able to say that now, but a few months ago I was infuriated when I thought about how I’d spent my whole life:

• believing creationism and knowing nothing about evolution
• studying the Bible to the exclusion of classic literature, art, the natural world
• accepting only those who fit into a narrow definition of gender and sexuality
• missing out on opportunities for relationships with the majority of the population because I thought they would pull me away from God
• spending tens of thousands of dollars on Bible-based education
• being shaped by the male, Eurocentric, heteronormative way of thinking of church leaders
• not taking care of my body and shunning ambition because I thought eternal life was all that mattered

Acceptance – Although every once in awhile a poignant leftover from my religious life comes back to bite me in the butt, on the whole I think I’m hanging out in this stage. I still love my Christian friends and family. To those who choose the safety of delusion and denial over heart-wrenching, mind-blowing self evaluation, I say live and let live. I was there too, for a long time, and a bitter ex-Christian expounding the follies of faith would only have evoked pity and stubbornness. Also, I still have blind spots all over the place, even if I don’t have as many in the religion department.

Paul wrote in Romans about not being able to do the good he wanted to do. Ironically, now that I am not a Christian, I am able to be as good as I want without worrying about being prideful, and can be as immoral as I want without guilt. In other words, I do what I think is best, and in doing so, I get a lot more done. I always longed for this feeling of freedom as a Christian, and found it by making peace with (out) god.

Here are more post-faith accounts.

Stages of Deconversion July 14, 2010

When someone starts therapy, they tell their story over and over in a myriad of creative ways until they feel they are heard. When someone deconverts, they do the same thing. These phases of deconversion are another way to tell my story. (Go here for a complete description of the stages.)

Pre-deconversion – I do not remember a time when I wasn’t a Christian. For all the emphasis in evangelical Christianity on the individual decision (ie, saying the magic prayer), there was no difference between my pre-Christian and post-magic prayer life. Instead, being a Christian was more of an on-again, off-again experience that at the time I would have called ‘falling away.’  The difference between those times and now is that when the falling away happened, I believed that I’d moved away from God and that he was displeased with me. Now I don’t believe that God exists in the way I knew him, or even if he exists at all, so it’s inconsequential how close he is to me or whether I’ve hurt his feelings. This is my decision for my mental, emotional and spiritual health, and God has nothing to do with it. NB: I capitalize God not out of reverence for a divine being but because I knew him/her/it as a divine being at this stage in my life.

Even when I was a Christian, my faith wasn’t ”characterized by the complete lack of questioning about my faith”. This part of the description doesn’t fit for me because since I can remember I’ve been asking what pastors called ‘good questions’. Apparently it is admirable to critically examine your faith until you get too determined to finding an answer. There are just no answers for questions about the schizophrenic God who emerges from the tyranny of the Old Testament into the gentle meekness of the New.

Curiosity Killed the Cat – This is the questioning phase, “when the walls around your faith that protected it from introspection yield”. It’s hard to know when this started. Abusive church experiences and a soul-killing 4 years at Bible college definitely planted seeds, so that when I re-connected with God and church about 10 years ago, I had more questions than ever, which church leaders still couldn’t answer. Then further discrimination (not involving my family this time, but a good friend who was kicked out of the church), a therapy supervisor who taught me how to ask questions about all my most cherished beliefs (not just about God, but about gender, illness, institutions, etc), and further Bible school education added to the toxicity I was coming to associate with Christianity. I went from a conservative evangelical church, to a ‘church for the unchurched’, to a liberal Anglican congregation, to nothing. I didn’t know I was on the way out, but now the progression makes sense to me.

The quest for answers – I stopped reading the Bible 5 years ago, but still called myself a Christian. The time for seeking was over. Cracking the spine made me feel like I was at the bottom of a pile of boulders. I started looking for God outside of Christianity – in nature, in people’s interactions, in media, in anything beautiful. I was content to not know because the freedom just felt so good.

Do I believe? – I didn’t realize the answer was no until someone asked me 9 months ago. My answer then and now is, “I don’t believe in the Christian God.” And I don’t know enough about any other gods to believe in them. I was swept away by the goddess religion described in The Mists of Avalon, but the goddess is a being I can’t believe in because there’s no way to know her, and I have had enough of making gods out of my head.

There are more stages, but this is getting lengthy and I want to comment on Ronna Detrick’s heart-rending post about homesickness. It is hard for non-believers to understand how completely a dedication to religion consumes your life. It is hard to distinguish between myself and Christianity, between my thoughts and god’s. Missing the sense of belonging, trust, safety, purpose and common understanding that I lived with for 30  years is something I’ve kept quiet about, so I’m thankful to know I’m not alone:

“This wilderness experience sets up a real dilemma for some of us, since we know how much we owe to the traditions that shaped us. We would not be who we are without them, and we continue to draw real sustenance from them, but insofar as those same traditions discourage us from being with one another, we cannot go home again.”