I was raised in a Baptist church from birth. My family changed churches every few years due to different reason, preacher left, got offended, divorced, or just did not like the people. My mom was even a Sunday school teacher for a while. I got saved when I was twelve. I remember my mother crying in the pew, she was so happy. My sisters soon followed. I am sure they wanted to make mom just as happy. On the way home from church, on the day I got saved, I told my mom I did not feel any different and asked how I could be sure I was saved. She said “You have to faith.”
After a few months I asked my step father some questions about the bible and after numerous answers that did not satisfy me he said I needed to have faith. That faith was a good thing and showed God I loved him and that we can not understand God. I was 12, so I took him at his word and vowed to never question God again and prayed for God to forgive me for questioning him.
After high school I joined the Navy and I went to church on Base. I dated a girl who was not a Christian and eventually broke up with her because of it. No other reason. She was wonderful. But I thought it was what God wanted. I dated lots of girls growing up and I always asked them if there were Christians and made that a priority.
Soon after I got out of the Navy I met my wife. She was a good Episcopal girl and invited me to her church. I went even though I did not know anything about Episcopal. It was a really boring service and they recited a lot of memorized lines. I felt out of place. They offered a new comers class. I took the class and learned all the new stuff. I eventually became a chalice bearer. That means I passed the cup of wine. I was also an usher. My wife and I got married and had two kids. Our kids were in church every Sunday. I helped out in service and my wife worked in the Nursery.
Four years go by and the church has an issue with the pastor and people start to leave. The congregation dropped to less than half. Then the Gay bishop issue made another half leave. So we were down to 25% of the original congregation. Most of the staff got laid off. Everything in the church changed to volunteer. I helped on weekends with yard work and fixing things for the church.
After a couple years of that my wife and I felt God was telling us to change to a new church. We saw a billboard for a new church and decided to give it a try. It was a non-denominational church and did not have any ceremonies. It only had 100 members. We were quickly welcomed in and I started playing guitar in the band.
It was the most fun I had in church. I was doing something I loved. The people were great and the fellowship was wonderful.
Now my whole life I was a skeptic about everything but religion. I thought it was a sin to question religion. I would always check my sources on every subject and any rumor I heard. One day I realized that it was silly to not apply that same reasoning to my religion. So I started reading about the history of the church and the other books of the bible that were left out. I read about evolution, and anything by Richard Dawkins.
After a couple of month of studying I went to my preacher and asked him to explain a few things. He said the same thing my parents told me when I was twelve. “You need to have faith.” This time I was not convinced.
I soon realized that I did not believe anymore. I continued reading and I found the video of Richard Dawkins on “The God Delusion” and “The Virus of Faith.” I decided to show these to my wife. I hoped it would help here understand why I had changed. We watched the video together, half way through she made a comment about how wrong Richard Dawkins was and that we needed to pray for him. At one point she turned to me and flat out asked me. “Are to an atheist now?” I was amazed at how she had picked up on it. I told her I no longer believed the Bible and was an atheist. She cried.
It has only been a month since I told my wife. She is worried I am going to cheat on her now, or divorce her. I was worried she was going to kick me out. My kids are 5 and 7 and they are asking why daddy does not go to church. I refer them to their mother. She tells them I am just going through a hard time believing and eventually I will come around.
I try to explain to her that I am not going through anything. This change is not an emotional response. I just looked at the facts and the evidence and my mind was changed. I am not sure what the future holds for me now. She says I am not the same person and the people at church talk to her all the time. I love my wife and want her to understand.
Christmas was rough. Her father came to visit. He has been an atheist for years and we had a lot to talk about since we have a lot more in common. I told him that we need to talk about it when my wife is not around as to not offend her. I am trying to be sensitive to her. She decided to come into our conversation and she seemed to enjoy learning.
On Christmas day we started another discussion and she could hear us. She started crying. She said she just could not take it on Christmas day.
I don’t bring it up unless she asked about it now. Life is much harder now as an atheist, and I miss playing guitar in the band. Guess I need to find another band now.
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mikefight,
Thanks for sharing your story. I hope things will start going better for you and your wife and kids. That must be a tough situation. Thanks for sharing with us about it.
Wow! I appreciate your intellectual honesty and courage to use your critical faculties against all admonitions to the contrary. Hopefully the church will learn from this and stop asking people to just have faith. Just continue to love your wife, be gracious and patient and she will see that you are the same trustworthy person she married. Someday she will appreciate that her husband has genuine integrity displayed by following what he thinks is true, popular or not. Keep studying, thinking and sharing your story.
Sounds like you suffered at the hands of incompetent Christians, possibly inauthentic ones, if they couldn’t give you a better answer than “just have faith”. I’m a devout Christian and that’s the biggest load of BS I’ve ever heard. There’s nothing at all simplistic about faith. When Jesus said we must enter the Kingdom of God with faith “like a child”, he wasn’t saying that Heaven was for immature, ignorant fools. He was highlighting their innocence and trust. No, you cannot maintain a relationship with God, nor anyone else, without trust. But trust requires REASONS to trust, right? The reason we trust our parents as children is that they’ve earned our trust by being there for us, day in and day out, providing for our needs, nurturing us. Even if we see their flaws or experience their discipline, we trust them because we love them and we know they love us–because they’re there.
So, I can completely understand why you think the Christian faith is a load of crap. If you listen to Dawkins very long, you’ll build yourself a whole stinkin’ pile of reasons. HOWEVER, if you listen to people like C.S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel, Alister McGrath, (the list could go on), then you have a whole pile of reasons to believe. But it takes initiative on OUR part to seek the truth on “the other side”. See, there’s an element of truth to the “faith” argument. First, you do have faith. The athiest has faith that there is no god. He has faith that nothing bad could possibly result from his lack of belief in and surrender to God. But the tricky thing–and this is no circular argument, just think about it for a second–is that a certain element of faith PRECEDES one’s seeking of God. If you don’t start with at least enough faith to assume that exploring the possibility of God is worthwhile, then you will never honestly (1) open your mind to the truth of it and (2) seek to learn the reasons why COMPETENT, authentic Christians believe what they do.
I can’t–and won’t try–to change your mind. All I can do is offer you this: if there’s an inkling of faith inside you that still wonders if God’s real and Jesus is the answer to life, then take that little bit of faith, go to the library and check out a book or two by some of the authors I mentioned above. Mere Christianity, by CS Lewis is a great one. More Than A Carpenter, by McDowell is very short (less than 100 pages), to the point, and easy to read. I’m sure you’ve heard of The Case for Faith and The Case for Christ by Strobel. If not, those are great reads as well. Also, you might want to look into some of the recent criticisms of Dawkins, especially with regard to “Delusion”. The book is the laughing stock of the intellectual community, including most athiests. If you want to be a good athiest, don’t look to Dawkins.
Grace.
Mikefight: Thank you for your story…I’m afraid it’s all too common, being asked to believe in the utterly unbelievable is a ridiculous thing for religion to ask. I’d like to share with you a definition of faith that speaks to me, one that allows me to aspire to follow Jesus without all the Xian baggage (incarnation, atonement, resurrection, ascension, etc.). It’s from Wilfred Cantwell Smith, and it goes like this: Faith, at it’s best, has taken the form of a quiet confidence and joy which allows one to feel at home in the universe. It sounds to me that you’re heading in the right direction.
Of course, you’re still left with the question, “Why am I here?”
Answer: To recognize my oneness with the universe.
Riiiight. Too bad that’s a circular and evasive answer.
Next question: How did I get here? How did HERE get here? Evolution? Before that. Big Bang? Before that. Condensed microscopic particle? Before that…
Mikefight, I hope you and your wife can work this out. If you both want to make the marriage work I think you’ll find a way. But it might take time for her to see you really are the same person.
Mike, I think it bodes well that your wife’s father is an athiest. Since he probably still loves her mother despite it.
It’s a shame you have to find a new band. One of the things that bothers me about many Christians is how conditional their friendship and love are. Even if they don’t agree with you, they should be there for you through your “crisis of faith” evne if that is not how you think of it, but no, they are fearful that if they are around you that they might become infected, too. What kind of faith is that?