This is my story of my faith and how I left it. It includes how I was introduced to faith, some details on my level of involvement in practicing the faith, and finally the scriptural, theological, and emotional issues that caused me to leave the faith.
My Beginnings
I was raised in the Lutheran church - ELCA to be exact. Both my parents were believers all their lives. I was baptized at just a few weeks old as initiation into the faith and to save my soul from the sins I was born with. My dad was my role model for devoutness. Not only did he go to church on Sundays but he had also attended a Bible study every week for all of his adult life. I remember when I was 5 or 6 years old I was finally old enough to volunteer with my dad as an usher on Sundays. We would each stand outside an entrance and hand out the itinerary booklet for the day. I loved the responsibility and how everyone smiled at me as they walked in for the morning sermon. I also remember every night during my childhood my dad would come to my bedside and we would recite the children's prayer….
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
And if I die before I wake
I pray the lord my soul to take.
It might seem morbid to talk about death so young but I felt comfort that God would take care of me no matter what. Over time this changed to the Lord's prayer when I was old enough to remember it, which I continued to pray before going to sleep well into my teenage years.
My dad inspired me outside the church as well. He was a physics teacher during the day and he loved to feed my never ending curiosity. I remember one of my first toys my dad gave me was a triangular light prism that could take any white light and generate a rainbow by diverting the different wavelengths. My dad taught me that the rainbow was a reminder of God's promise to never flood the earth again. I was glad that God had changed his ways. On the door in my bedroom I had a poster of all the bones in the human body and I would read it while getting dressed in the morning. A reminder of the incredible complexity of human design. My desire for learning was so strong that I would even take the dictionary from the family library and read through it just to discover new words. I remember going into my dad's office and interrupting his work to tell him the latest verb or noun I had come across.
Once a year, my dad brought me to school with him for take-a-kid-to-work-day and I would watch the physics experiments he did with the high school kids in class. I was fascinated by how he could predict the outcome of events before they happened. It was like a superpower to me! The more he taught me about the world the more I wanted to know. It was this very same curiosity and wonder that would lead me to question my faith.
When I was 12 my parents gave me my first personal Bible so that I could use it in my weekly confirmation classes. I remember being so intimidated by the weight of it, because it wasn't just any ordinary Bible. It was a NRSV study Bible with just as much commentary as scripture. For those unfamiliar with Lutheran rituals, confirmation is a public statement of faith that follows after a period of instruction in scripture and the works of Martin Luther. Lutherans believe that this is the time when you finally receive the Holy Spirit, and it is a reaffirmation of baptism since previously it was merely the choice of the parents for you to be baptized. The public statement is required because in Acts it's said that baptism of new members isn't enough and the apostles needed to provide the holy spirit to complete initiation into the church (8:14-17). The study of scripture is required because Paul wrote to the Corinthians that if they partook in Eucharist before understanding it's meaning they would be inviting judgement on themselves (1 Corinthians 11:28). I’m honestly grateful for the practice, as I think that everyone should be familiar with their faith before committing themselves to it.
Questions and Confirmation
I remember the first time I had questions about the Bible. It was during my first confirmation class when we were asked to introduce ourselves by saying our names and our favorite Bible story. I had been reading my Bible in preparation of my first day and I was excited to impress the class with a story they probably hadn't heard before. After some said Noah's Ark, Adam and Eve, Jonah's whale, etc, it was my turn. I turned them to Judges 7:19-23 and read them the story of how Gideon and his army blew trumpets and smashed glass jars and the Lord caused the Midianites to attack each other with their own swords in the valley below. I thought it was so cool! It showed the power of God to destroy his enemies. But my teacher interrupted me in the middle of the story. "I'm not sure that's the best story to share right now" She said, "Do you have a different favorite"? I was caught off-guard. Why would any story of God’s power in the Bible not be worth sharing? I felt strange, but I thought perhaps that I was just too far ahead of the class schedule. But as we read through selected passages of the Old Testament, we skipped over the section I tried to share on the first day. I grew suspicious of their reasons for hiding it from me and began looking more into the Bible, especially in the areas that weren’t covered in class.
During my reading I found other troubling passages that didn't make sense to me. When God said he would kill the first-born of every Egyptian during Passover, why did he include the first-born of Egypt’s slaves (Exodus 11:5) or prisoners (12:29)? Sure the Egyptians were evil, but how were their slaves or prisoners to blame? I mean the Jews were slaves, that’s why God needed to help them in the first place, right? My teacher promised me that it must have been necessary for God's plan and that the people killed probably went to heaven anyway. Wait, God’s plan included the death of slave babies? I just couldn't grasp it. "God works in mysterious ways" she responded. "It's not possible for us to understand the workings of his mind."
Okay, I guess I could accept that God' morals were beyond our comprehension. For example, perhaps there are good reasons to kill people but we could never understand them, that's why he gives us the commandment not to kill. However, I just couldn't shake the idea of God as a child-murderer from my head. In the end, I reasoned with myself that this was the Old Testament anyway. If God regretted flooding the earth, then I’m sure there were other things he regretted as well. Maybe this was one of them.
Then I came across stories that were just plain contradictory, like the two different accounts of creation in the first two chapters of Genesis. Were the birds created before or after mankind? Why did God say we could eat every living thing (Genesis 9:3), but they we couldn't eat certain animals later (Leviticus 11:9)? "Well, this isn't an exact record of events", my teacher said. "These are just tribal stories of early mankind, but they are important for us to know nonetheless, because they are parables."
"But how do we know which stories in the Bible are just parables and which stories are real?" I asked.
"What really matters is that Jesus is the son of God and that he died and was resurrected for our sins." She replied.
But that didn’t help answer my question. I still couldn't differentiate parables from history. I wanted to discuss it more, but I could tell my teacher was tired of me interrupting the class with my questions, so I held my tongue. Slowly the pile of doubts began to accumulate.
In parallel to my confirmation classes, I also began attending a Christian summer camp, where we did Bible readings and volunteering in the mornings followed by a fun activity in the evenings. This participation grew my faith and attachment to the church because while the texts were confusing, at least I knew clearly that things like volunteering were good and right and helping the poor was a central teaching of Jesus. But I started to notice how my fellow attendees understood the Bible differently than I did. They seemed to have so much confidence in the words and how it applied to their life, whereas I still felt unsure how to fit the Bible into mine. To me it was still just a collection of stories that seemed to mislead people just as easily as they could inspire others. How could I say with conviction that I was a Christian without confidence in scripture?
As time went by, every confirmation class session brought more questions without clear answers. How are Jesus and God separate but still one? If Jesus prays to God then isn’t he talking to himself then? What happens if you died before you had a chance to hear about Jesus? Where did the Native Americans or Chinese go when they died before Christianity spread to them? The majority of the world isn’t Christian so does that mean the majority of the world goes to hell? And how can Hell be a fair punishment if it’s for eternity when this life is temporary?
Luckily for me there was a break in my classes. My family had gotten tired of driving so far to church every weekend and tried to find something closer to home. We ended up attending a Baptist church that was just down the road from our neighborhood. This was the first time I really understood that different types of Christians existed. Sure I had heard of others, but I always assumed that our differences were just tiny things like the style of building we had or the types of songs we sang. But the differences I found out were larger than I had thought. For example, I found out that the baptists at our new church thought that my baptism as an infant didn’t count because I was too young to understand it. That wasn’t a small accusation! How could there be so much disagreement over how to worship God? What was the cause of the confusion? If the differences didn’t matter, then why do people care enough to start a new church? By studying up on the other sects of Protestantism I realized that the splits were because of those same types of difficult questions that I had struggled with in confirmation. It turns out the Bible couldn't answer every question and figuring out the rest of the puzzle had led to fractures in the congregations. For example, the role that baptism was supposed to play in salvation was unclear. Lutherans believe that baptism was a symbol of the gift of grace from God, and it was necessary for salvation so infants were baptized in case they died young. Baptists on the other hand believed that baptism required a personal choice to be meaningful and cannot just be given to others.
On the one hand this gave me some peace in my struggles because I realized I wasn't alone in my confusion. After all, there were a lot of different denominations out there with quite a variety of opinions. Jehovah’s Witnesses for example don’t even believe in the trinity, but they are still Christians. But it made me wonder why the Bible would be so incomplete if it was the foundation of our faith. Regardless, without confirmation classes at our new church, I only had questions, and somehow the questions without answers were better than answers I didn’t understand. Secretly, I was relieved.
It would be to my surprise then when my parents asked me in 8th grade if I wanted to be confirmed. It turns out my old church would let me finish confirmation if I took a basic knowledge test of the Bible to prove that I understood scripture. My worries and concerns with the Bible that had faded over time were suddenly brought back to me fresh. Could I really be confirmed with doubts? Well, since it was still possible, I said sure.
The day came, and I had passed my test to be confirmed, but I felt like a fraud. How could I have passed the test when I still have so many questions? I didn't feel ready but my grandparents had driven all the way down to be there for me and I didn't want to let them down. I remembered the warnings from the story of doubting Thomas and I chose to drop my doubts and open my mind and heart to the Lord as best I could. After all, if I believed in God with all my heart, he would answer me. I was sure of it. So, In front of the pastor and my family and I gave my vows to devote my life to Christ. I closed my eyes and I wished with all my heart that God made himself known to me. But all I felt was emptiness. I was distraught.
Trying to find God
Initially my lack of ability to feel God’s presence made me worried, but eventually I convinced myself that it was simply because I was not yet worthy for God to make himself known to me. After all, God only spoke to people that were worthy as evidenced by the stories of Noah and Moses. I was confident that God would speak to me eventually, as long as I increased my devotion. It became my mission to answer these tough questions once and for all, so I could eliminate my doubt and become a true follower.
At this time I stopped attending my normal bible studies. My group leader wasn't helping me answer the hard questions and I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere. I didn’t want to keep talking through the easy-to-understand parts of the Bible. Those parts didn't trouble me or threaten my faith. They were a waste of my time to discuss. While trying to figure out my next steps, I chose to go back to that Church Summer Program, but this time as a leader instead of as an attendee. I thought that perhaps teaching and spreading the word of God would lead me down the right path and bring me closer to God.
But teaching the Bible only made it worse. Now I also had to answer the questions from kids with the same doubts as myself, and all I could do was repeat the same unsatisfactory answer that my Bible study leader had told me. I knew deep down that my students could sense my lack of conviction, and the thought that I could be driving them farther from faith was more than I could bear. Lack of belief was one of only two unforgivable sins in Christianity, the other being suicide. If I caused anyone to miss out on Heaven by inspiring doubt… or if I was even just ineffective at bringing people closer to God, I could fail to save a soul, and if I went to heaven then the guilt I would feel for even that one soul would stay with me for all eternity. To me the guilt that I could let souls fall to hell was just as bad as enduring hell itself. After 2 years of leading small group study at the summer program, I stopped signing up to teach, because I just couldn’t bear the guilt and self-hatred I had.
At this point I brought some of my deepest concerns with Christianity to my parents. If God knows everything that is going to happen, then how is it possible we have free will? If God is always good then why is he capable of past mistakes like the flood? If the written word of God was so important, why didn’t he reveal himself to people that could write? Why did he only reveal himself to a small group of people in the Middle East and not others across the globe? My parents obviously couldn’t placate my worries, so they reached out to my pastor for help. I asked my questions, earnestly hoping and wishing that he had answers to put my mind at ease, but all I got in return was a petition for more faith. A reminder that I could trust God to make the right judgments on people at the end of time. What he didn’t understand was that I wasn’t just worried about the wrong judgement, but rather that the judgement existed at all. Since I wasn't satisfied, I started to read articles from popular and knowledgeable Christians online that explained the discrepancies and disturbing parts of the Bible: a form of discussion known as apologetics. But nothing they said settled my worries completely. I kept telling myself over and over that the only reason I couldn’t understand is because I didn’t have enough faith and it was my fault. Maybe I needed to be more pious.
The idea of living a sin-free life consumed me, and the fact that it was impossible started tearing me apart from the inside. Sure, avoiding the big sins like killing people was easy, but what about coveting? What about impure thoughts? I had finally built up the courage to ask a girl out at school and you would think any boy in high school would be happy having their feelings reciprocated, but I was torn. I wasn’t ready to marry, but how could I date without sin? The Bible taught that romance and intimacy was reserved for marriage only, so I dated my girlfriend for a year and a half before allowing her to even kiss me. I hated myself for even thinking of her too much when we were together because lustful thoughts were sinful. But of course I couldn’t repress my thoughts completely so my hatred for myself only grew more and more as the days went by. It was the most understandable thing in the world when she broke up with me, and while I was sad I was also relieved.
While my faith continued to ruin me, my love for science continued to reap rewards in contrast. Where faith gave me confusion and self-hatred and fear, science gave me understanding and clarity and confidence. The more I questioned science, the more it’s answers satisfied me. I loved the Hubble telescope images that showed just how vast and dangerous and beautiful our universe could be. I loved programming and how it’s basic building blocks were nothing but logic. I loved biology and understanding what made living things tick. There was so much beauty in the world that could be explained with science and to me the explanations didn’t detract from that beauty but enhanced it. However, the critical thinking skills that science gave me also led me to ask a harrowing question: why haven’t we been able to detect God’s actions?
I mean, measuring the effects of God should have been trivial! In the past God won WARS for the Israelites, he performed miracles to prove his existence to the Moses and the Egyptians, and spoke directly with his followers often and gave prophecy as evidence of his knowledge. Even doubting Thomas was allowed to feel Jesus’s sides when he asked to! But geology could find no record of a global flood. Archeology could find no record of 2 million Jews leaving Egypt. Anthropology found human skeletons that were 100,000 years older than the Bible said the earth was and the discovery of other hominids like Neanderthals aligned perfectly with the theory of evolution, but had no mention in the creation story. People kept telling me we need faith, but God and Jesus didn’t hide from us in the Bible. They provided evidence in abundance. Why would they hide now?
Eventually I came across a pastor that revealed to me what almost all pastors learn in seminary school but no one talks about at church: that the Bible was a collection of separate books written at different times that need to be understood in light of the culture that each was written in. For example, The global flood could have been a flood that simply covered the world as they knew it, the age of the universe wasn’t important to the faith anyway, and most Biblical scholars agreed that Genesis was a creation myth of early Hebrews. What really matters is that the prophets had accurate prophecy and that Jesus died for our sins and was risen from the dead. I began to read Bible scholars like Raymond E Brown and Bart Erhman to better understand the background of the books. I looked up online lectures on the original Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic to help me understand the original meaning of difficult verses. I discovered how “hell” wasn’t the unified concept that appears in the English bible, but rather that there were many different Hebrew and Greek words that had been translated to “hell”, each with different meanings. Finally I was able to answer most of my pressing questions, but could only do so by looking at the Bible as a historical record and not divine inspiration. But if that was what it took I would make that change. So I remained a believer, but God began to shrink in my mind.
The Last Straw
The final straw that broke the camels back was the idea of homosexuality as a sin. It was 2010 and people were actively debating gay marriage legality in daily conversation. Everything I had learned from science was telling me that homosexuality wasn’t a choice and it couldn’t be changed and it did nothing to harm someone, while the Bible was telling me it was a sin and deserving of God's wrath. Now, normally when it came to conflicts between the Bible and science, I would side with science in a heartbeat and dismiss the bible as the product of a different time, but this was different. The other types of conflicts were mostly historical in nature and I could write it down to bad record keeping, but the Bible as a moral guide was supposed to be eternal. If the Bible wasn’t accurate on what is moral and what isn’t, how could I use it to guide the way I live my life? How could I avoid sin? How would I know what God expects of me if I can’t understand his morals?
So I started asking around in different Christian denominations to find a better way to read the Bible in order to extract its meaning. I even looked to other Abrahamic faiths that read the same texts: like Judaism, Islam, and Mormonism. But while other groups had a unique approach to the faith, the fundamental interpretation here in this case was the same: homosexuality was a detestable act. Regardless of how nicely some churches treated homosexuals, they still believed it to be a sin when it came down to it. I had to truly go to the very fringe liberal versions of the faith to find anyone accepting of homosexuality as natural. Some said for example that this was just Paul’s view and Jesus never spoke against homosexuals. Therefore, Paul's letters can be dismissed as merely Paul's opinion and not as moral guidance from God. And in the case of Leviticus the laws aren’t enforced if there is no temple of worship and sacrifice in Jerusalem. But we rely on Paul’s letters for so much other guidance on the faith that it would be unthinkable to pick and choose his opinions. And if Leviticus is just enforced with the temples.. well then I hope the next temple is never built!
I was at a loss of options to continue forward in my faith,so for the first time my mind wandered past not just the boundaries of Lutheranism, but the boundaries of Christianity and Abrahamic faiths as well. If there was one true God out there, maybe someone else had captured the idea down better. They may have called him by a different name, but perhaps it’s still the same God that I know exists in my heart, right? The God of love and compassion. However, my research into other faiths--while able to solve some of my fear and self-hatred--would normally raise other objections at the same time. I found myself just cherry picking bits and pieces from every faith, to where the final faith I ended up with resembled nothing else on earth. This wouldn’t do.
At this point I decided to try a daring thought experiment. I would pretend that I didn't grow up with Christianity and I would try to convince myself to join it anew. After all, if it’s true, then this shouldn’t be too hard, right? In my head I stood in front of a dozen versions of myself, each advocating for a different faith, but I placed my attention on my Christian self. He tried to explain to me how God loved me and watched over me and had a plan for my life. But looking around I realized that other people of different faiths made the same exact claim of their God. This might be a reason to believe in A GOD, but it wasn’t a reason to pick Christianity above Judaism or Islam. So my Christian self changed tactics. He reminded me that God performed miracles as evidence of his power. But so did Mohammad I found myself countering. Or at least we have the same amount of evidence for his miracles occurring as those from Jesus or Moses. My Christian self then reminded me that we know the Christian God is the true God because he was able to defeat death by resurrecting Jesus. But in my studies I had learned many other stories of resurrections in other faiths. Achilles was resurrected by his divine mother and brought into the realm of the Gods. But, my Christian self countered, those people didn’t actually believe that stuff. Well, how do you tell which people actually believe their faiths, I responded. They all certainly have the same conviction. They all worship, perform rituals, and even die for their faith, just like Christians do. This thought experiment wasn’t working out. I just couldn’t make Christianity stand out.
Leaving the Faith
I remember clearly the first night that I admitted that God might not exist. I was in my Junior year of high school, laying in my bed and looking at the stars outside my bedroom window. My worldview was falling to pieces, and I felt so insignificant and powerless. It was just so easy to be born into this world with a life that gave you little to no chance to be saved. Why would these innocent people, through virtue of nothing but their birth, be essentially condemned to miss out on eternity?
"Maybe he just doesn't exist" I thought suddenly. It was a small thought, not much else. It wasn't an assertion, just a possibility. "What would that mean for me" I dared to wonder.
"Well… then my thoughts would be my own… " I pondered “..there would be no one to listen to them… and no one to punish me for them either…”
"..I don't have to try to change others either..." I considered, “..their actions would only be judged on their impact to this life, not the next…” I began to get emotional
"I wouldn’t have to live with guilt for every person I failed to convert…” I thought,”and I wouldn’t have to live with my failures for all of eternity..”
and at that thought I audibly gasped because suddenly, the largest weight in the world was lifted off my shoulders. A weight I had no idea was there in the first place. I began to hyperventilate and physically shake as I couldn’t help but consider the full ramifications. Suddenly life was so precious to me. If there was no afterlife, then this is all we have. This is all we have to be the best we can and experience all we can. Good deeds became so much more wondrous since they had no reward. Sacrifices for others became so much more meaningful since people were sacrificing the most important thing in life: their time alive. Love and relationships became more beautiful as they lost the threats of sin associated with sex and lust. I realized that I desperately wanted this to be true!! But I had to actually say it.
I became fearful again. Because what if I was wrong? I would be facing damnation. God could even strike me down on the spot for even uttering such a blasphemy. He could turn me into a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife. Maybe he was already planning to do that because he knew my thoughts and just my consideration of his existence could already have triggered my punishment. What I did next required the biggest leap of faith that I had ever taken in my entire life.
“God.. is not real”. I stammered.
I didn’t die. There was no storm on the horizon. No tornado, or lightning. No earthquake or fire raining down from the sky. There was no booming voice announcing my fate. I was still just there lying in bed.
So I began to giggle, and then began to cry. They weren't tears of sadness though, they were tears of joy. It was like I had thrown off chains and seen sunlight for the first time. I was free to show someone love outside of marriage. I was free to welcome others into my life with different beliefs without judging them. “God’s not real” I whispered again. This time the tears of joy were mixed with tears of loss. I felt loss because religion was such a large part of my identity. It was my whole universe, the reason for my existence. How would I dare show myself in front of my parents or friends? Then I reminded myself of the implications of life without an afterlife. The absurdity of it’s preciousness. The incredible fortune that I was able to experience it. And there was so much more to experience now and so little time! I needed to start learning and traveling and meeting others immediately. It was the most purpose I had ever felt in my life.
Aftermath
For the next 10 years, when asked, I would continue to say I just had doubts, or that I was “agnostic” because there is less stigma about the term, although by definition I was “without religion” and therefore an atheist. I could still acknowledge the possibility of a higher power, but it's just that I have yet to be convinced that it's there, and my life was so much more meaningful without an eternal afterlife. "Atheism" just had such a negative connotation to it, and besides I didn’t care about labels or what other people believed.
But gradually however, I began losing my ambivalence towards faith. I realized more and more how religion not only forms beliefs but inspires actions as well. According to a poll from 2013, 41% of Americans believe they are living in the end times (source). If you think the world will end soon you have no reason to care for the environment or to care about the living conditions of future generations. People who believed that homosexuality was sinful would use words or even physical violence to harm others or themselves. People that held faith as the highest virtue and routinely deny evidence would see no problem with denying evidence elsewhere in their life, leading to dangerously false ideas like the anti-vaccination movement. World heritage sites were being destroyed as heretical to the local faith and book burnings and honor killings continued around the world.
There is just so little representation for those without religion in the world right now. In modern surveys, people who answer “none” for their religion make up practically 30% of the USA, but we only have 1 congress person who is openly non-religious at the time of publishing this blog. In university studies, atheists are compared to rapists and other criminals in terms of trustworthiness (source). This needs to change and it won’t change if we keep quietly assuming that everyone is Christian in this country. The term "atheist" needs to be de-stigmatized. So I want to say it out loud not just for myself this time, but for the world.
I am an atheist.