I used to be a Christian. I’m now an agnostic atheist.
The story of how I got from there to here is a long one. It has a large cast of characters, spans some three decades, and is set in a variety of locations, both exotic and mundane. The plot wanders a bit, but some overarching themes emerge when looking at the whole picture. I am the playwright and the storyteller.
And I’m not going to tell you my story.
I am not going to reveal the details. I am not going to tell you the names of the dramatis personae, nor describe the roles they played. I am not going to tell you how long I was a Christian, or how I became an atheist. I am not going to tell you the plotline, or talk about the common threads and themes I’ve noticed along the way.
Do you know why?
Of course you don’t. So I will tell you.
I am not going to tell you my story for the simple reason that you will not listen.
Oh, I know that you will read the words on the page, you will gain perhaps a superficial understanding of the chain of events, you will perhaps remember some of the more unusual names, or pick out particular problems or issues that just stand out to you, for one reason or another — but when all is said and done, you will form in your mind your own List of Reasons Why Godlessgyrl Left. They will be based not on what I have said here, but on what your religion has told you, and on what you believe. If you are a typical believer (and you are; don’t imagine that you are somehow above average in the understanding department), you will likely choose one or more Real Reasons Why She Left from the following list:
- Someone in the church hurt her.
- She was/is angry at God.
- She wasn’t raised in the church.
- She was raised in the wrong church.
- She was never a Real Christian(tm) to begin with.
- She was/is looking at the behavior of bad believers and judging the entire faith on those bad people, who of course aren’t really TrueChristians(tm) anyway, since if they were they wouldn’t be acting that way.
- She’s read her Bible, but she didn’t understand it properly.
- She didn’t pray hard enough.
- She left because she just wants to live in her sin.
- She’s just rejecting her inadequate parental figures.
- God has given her plenty of answers to her endless questions, she just doesn’t like them.
- She hates God.
- Etc.
I’m sure you’ll be able to come up with some other things to add to the list on your own. The point that I am making is that you will look right past what I myself am telling you, about my own life - my own experiences, thoughts, feelings, and so on - and ignore it, in favor of your own judgments. You will simply dismiss what I have to say, because it will not align with what your church, your Bible, your pastor, and your ego tells you. I am the highest authority on my own life: and you will not realize or believe this.
How do I know all this? I know it because of two things.
First: I have yet to meet a Christian who did not do this.
Seriously. I abhor painting a group with a broad brush the way that I am in this post, but truth is: Christians, you’ve earned it. Some of you have been more stubborn about it than others, some have been more gentle; but every single one of you gives me at least a deer-in-the-headlights look of utter confusion. And I can tell you’re not really listening. It’s too much of a struggle.
Second: I used to be a Christian — and I did exactly the same thing. Like you, I was taught that apostates and nonbelievers were deceived by a power far greater than they will ever understand. Like you, I was taught to pity them. I was taught that nonbelievers had empty, meaningless lives. And I was encouraged to evangelize them.
Yes - just like you, I had an ulterior motive: to lead people to Jesus. Teach them the Truth(tm). Show them the Bible. It’s one of Christianity’s dirty little secrets: every interaction you have with another human being is a chance for spreading the Word. I know as well as you do that getting to know someone simply because you like them as a person takes a back seat to getting to know them so you can slip some witnessing into the exchange without their noticing. The difference between us is that I’m willing to admit it. If this offends you, don’t think I don’t know what I’m talking about: remember, I used to be in the club, too. I know the secret handshake. I still have the decoder ring, even.
So if there is nothing else that you take from this post, take just this: do you really want to understand why people leave your religion?
Then just LISTEN.
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Seriously. I abhor painting a group with a broad brush the way that I am in this post,
Then don’t!
Why do the very thing you are angry with Christians for doing to you?
That makes no sense to me.
Good luck with letting go of your anger.
Why? because it happens far too often. Every time I tell my story one person (at least) has to go, “oh, you left cuz people hurt you”. People, interstingly, will focus on my last pastor who treated me horribly, not realising that he treated me that way AFTER I had left.
I totally relate to Godlessgyrls post and her frustration. Part of the reason listed for this web page is for “the church” to get to understand some of its own problems. This is one, you can get mad at the messenger and call her angry, or you can go,huh,and honestly ask why.
What would happen if current Christians accepted that if, not all, but, the majority of people who have left have done so because the theology as it is right now, makes no sense. What would happen if Christians did not say, or you just do not understand, or some other reason that doesn’t hear what the apostate says. What if… you just accepted what a person said about their own experience?
I have my theory, you can disagree to be sure, but maybe giving this a long thought might be helpful. My theory is that an apostate that has left because they have truly studied, and have come to the conclusion that the theology is flawed, not the people, not the pastors, not the church, but the bible, the teachings, and the theology are wrong, nonsenseical and simply untrue. Those kinds of people are hard, if not immpossible, to win back. If people hurt a person, the answer is easy. Christians cannot, though, turn their back on, or change the basic tenents of the faith. If this is the apostates problem, then they cannot be won back.
If a person is hurt by people, you can say that is people… not God. If they have a problem with one line of scripture, that can be put down to wrong interpertation, or the apostate trying to justify sin. Most of the reasons that Godlessgyrl lists can be addressed. So when an apostate states a reason that cannot be addressed, people just disreguard that reason and look for an issue that they can solve.
Thank you for your understanding, Purple.
I posted what amounts to a harsh judgment of the listening capacities of the Christians I have interacted with thus far about my apostacy. I would not have written about it if it were not a judgment well-earned.
Helen, I have no idea if you, too, are a Christian: but you clearly aren’t listening, either. You have done exactly what I find the most frustrating: you have reached into my post and pulled from it what you wished to see, and you have addressed only that - just as most Christians thus far have reached into my personal story and pulled from it what they wished to see, and addressed only that.
I do not reveal the details of my story because I do not wish to subject something so personal to that level of invalidation.
For any individuals genuinely interested in understanding why people leave the church, my advice still stands: just LISTEN.
Well even though I run the risk of reaching into your story and pulling out only one thing I believe the thing you want people to hear is that we should LISTEN!
This is one of the best letters on here and as you stated in the beginning of your post, it isn’t even a letter. But it is nonetheless challenging for those who read it.
He who has ears let him hear.
Thank you tim! I’m glad you got the message - you’re spot on!
That’s the one thing that I am more than happy to see people focusing on: the plea to LISTEN.
So thank you. I am heartened to see that you got it. You’ve made my evening. *:)
godlessgyrl - I guess you’re right - I didn’t listen much because a) I wasn’t the target audience b) I don’t much listen to angry tirades. But if you want to tell me your story I’ll listen.
As for whether I’m a Christian, you can find out more about me if you just LISTEN!
My story is the first one on here (Why I don’t go to church anymore).
I’ve had a number of painfully invalidating encounters. I wrote about what was probably my worst one so far here:
A pastor tries to help me
Thank you, Helen; fair ’nuff. And thank you for the link to your story. I’ll be sure to take a look.
Yikes about the pastor. That’s a lot like what I describe as being so utterly frustrating - kind of like something just never quite connects.
And then when it happens over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again… well, it’s beyond frustrating. By now my limit for tolerating that kind of thing is extremely low.
At any rate - it’s very very late here and I should’ve slept hours ago. But I’ll read your story as well when I next have the chance.
Hi Godlessgyrl - I read your letter with interest but was fascinated by your phrase “I am not going to tell you my story for the simple reason that you will not listen.” It looks to me as you really have not left the church if you don’t even imagine that some people who will read this letter are not Christians. I am not. I am a Buddhist who is living among many Christians and so am very interested in knowning how someone would leave this faith, which would seem very hard to do in this country where most people are so totally fanatic about their Christian faith. It takes courage - as I can tell you, most Americans are prejudiced against people who do not belong to one of the Christian’s cults.
So when you say “you will likely choose one or more Real Reasons Why She Left from the following list: ” I do not choose a reason, as I would not know any of these reasons. This site was given to me by one of my friend, who is Ba’hai and finds it interesting. I also read sites written by Jewish people and Muslims - so many of their torments are very similar to yours.
This was just a comment.
Mitsou
godlessgyrl, thanks.
It sucks when the same invalidating things happen over again :(. I’m sorry you’ve been through that.
Come by the conversation blog I host sometime if you like. (Conversation at the Edge) We do make an effort to listen to each other there.
Thanks, godlessgyrl, for the challenge and the opportunity to listen.
Dear Mrs godlessgyrl…thanks so much for what you said, i read it and said nothing, just listened, and think in the silence i heard something of your heart…i posted your letter on my blog and have taken a whole load of flak over it, comments and phone calls, but thats okay, i listened to them as well(its not even my letter), but i defended your right to speak freely, keep on speakin gyrl…the post is at
http://gardenofrenown.blogspot.com/2007/03/listen.html#links
Hey Godlessgyr,
Accusations are how folks avoid dealing with the issues you’ve raised. Who knows ‘why’ they avoid them…I’m sure the reasons are many.
Thanks for the listening reminder.
P.S. I know why people leave Christianity and why they leave other religions or belief systems in general…and if you give me your the decoder ring, I’ll tell you (I’m collecting them
)
Rick
Imagine a world where we all just listened to one another. Just listened - didn’t offer opinions, or feedback. Didn’t try to persuade or convince. Just listened. I’d like to live in that world.
I’m a Christian, but perhaps the Christians you are writing about would not consider me one, or if they did, they would say I was prideful or rebellious or somme other label that is meant to marginalize my beliefs. That is until I could reassure them with the secret handhake and show them my decoder ring. For a very long time I did not like telling people I am a Christian not for what I actually believe, but for what others would assume I believe.
I’m not going to judge you at all. I’m not even going to pray for you because I am afraid you are going to hell. Because even though I am a Christian, I don’t happen to believe that. I don’t believe that religion or its adherence is the authority over what your own heart tells you. You are born alone and you die alone. In the middle, you have to find as much authenticity as you can. That is what I had trouble with… I’m not good at pretending things I don’t feel, and I think organized religion is all about polishing up that flesh and living a lie. I agree with you concerning the goal - to use every human interaction as a chance to manipulate. How icky is that? Do you know what manipulation is? It’s witchcraft. whether you are attempting to manipulate spirits, power, or people you are practicing withcraft. That’s what rituals are, and chanting… it is an attempt to use your will to manipulate through energy force. No wonder you are disgusted. I would be willing to bet that you are a very gentle and loving person with an honest heart. You just don’t want to live a lie; you are just looking for truth, your own truth. And kudos to you, wherever your search may lead, because you can’t live on a borrowed revelation.
As a former Christian myself, I can attest to the fact that it is Fear which keeps them from discussing the issue or even listening to the issues. There is the fear of hell, fear of others, fear of the church, fear of family, and fear of the doubt itself.
Christians, (a lot of them anyway), are taught that the first tenant of the faith is acceptance of “the fact” that the Bible is the word of God, that it is “the truth”.
If you have doubts about that basic principle then they simply have no mechanisms to deal with you or help you through. There are no proofs which they can show you. There is no archeology to back it up. There are no ancient official records which back up the stories. There simply is no corroborating evidence. So, they simply don’t know where to go from there, except to read the Bible to you. It is because the faith is a blind faith in something which cannot be proven or verified. To start having doubts about it now, is to start down the road to hell, so they have been taught. Therefore they are not ever going to listen, ever, ever, ever, never.
i have read over the first message, and all the replies, and i have just two things to say, not to change peoples minds, because if they have already been made up than whats the point, but to just interject an observance.
for robin, regardless of what people think or believe in.. there is a reality to life, its not possible to have one truth for each person, then there is no one truth, and the reality of truth is destroyed. Truth can not be based on opinion or feelings, regardless of which “truth” you choose to believe in.
Noogatiger: what are the topics which get ignored? im just curious as to the specifics which you have found? and i wonder if the church itself, which many people know has a lack of solid understanding at times, might be unable to answer the questions you have, but what about scholars? or theologians? im just wondering if you have had a chance to speak to them concerning your concerns.
I believe that the church has a lot of problems, dont get me wrong, by no means is it a perfect place, but to look at a place that is supposed to represent Christ, and which fails more often than not. and then to say that Christ is that way… there seems to be a problem.
“Just the facts”
1. For something which is supposed to be the word of God this is a book which has been edited, added to, and subtracted from thousands of times over the years. The men attributed to be the writers for the most part did not write the books with their names on them either.
2. There is no such place as HELL. This was an idea of pagan origin added to this book by the early church to scare the hell out of people and make them want to convert. It is an idea which was never in the original writings.
3. Moses did not write the Pentateuch.
4. God as presented in the Old Testament is bi-polar, angry and vindictive one day, loving the next, and then destroying all of mankind except Noah and family the next.
5. Women in the Bible are property, like cattle.
6. Other humans in the Bible could also be property, (slaves), and this was OK with the Bible writers.
7. Jesus never saw fit to write a single word, nor have anything written down while he was on earth.
8. The scriptures in use during Christ’s time on earth contained books of the Bible which the Protestant churches do not recognize as scripture, yet the Catholic Church does.
9. The New Testament was only begun as letters to other churches, 40 years after Christ’s death, and none of the first writers thought they were writing new scriptures. They had no idea.
10. It took almost 300 years to come to a compromise about which of these writings would make up what we call the New Testament and which ones would not.
11. There are many Bible prophecies which never came to pass.
12. There are many things called Bible prophecies which are not prophecies at all.
13. Luke has the date of the Birth of Christ under the wrong ruler.
14. Matthew quotes the wrong Old Testament book when he quotes a prophecy fulfilled, which is not really even a prophecy in the book it actually is in.
15. The details surrounding the resurrection day events at the tomb are different from one book to another.
16. How did Judas die?
17. There never was a worldwide flood.
18. Bible cosmology does not match the observed universe. Stars are not just small lights hung on some outer firmament.
19. The Bible taught a flat circular earth, not a sphere.
I can keep going, and going and going, and going, but I will stop with those. The Bible is full, and I mean full, of errors in science and in math and contradictions and outright moral problems.
It is a book by men, about men, and the God they made up. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a God up there somewhere. Who knows? It just means that if he is there, he had nothing to do with this book, or Christianity.
Goodness - it looks as if my post here has been as busy as I have been in the past few months! It certainly seems to have seen some traffic.
I must thank everyone for their replies, and thank people for reading my post. It is a difficult and harsh message, but I hope that sensitive readers will understand the very real frustration which lies beneath it. (Insensitive readers can smeg off.) I am in agreement with barbarag, that the world would be much improved if humans could learn to really listen to one another. Robin and others, thank you for your kind words, as well.
Loveissimple, though your answer is polite (and I would hope, well-intentioned), it is also ignorant. I do not mean that your post demonstrates any lack of intelligence on your part, but your final paragraph betrays a lack of knowledge and understanding of why people do indeed leave their churches. Now, granted, I did not reveal in my initial post why I actually left Christianity, so of course you would be ignorant of my reasons. But in the interest of fostering a greater understanding between current and former believers, I feel motivated to enlighten you.
It is a common Christian misconception that one of the reasons why people leave the church is because they have confused Christ with Christianity. More often than not, this is not, in fact, the case. Ex-believers are smart enough to understand the difference between the person of Christ, vs. the religion which has grown up around the worship of and devotion to him.
And yet I do feel moved to point out that every Christian is a representative of Christ on earth. If Christians act reprehensibly, how does that reflect on their supposed master?
What the faults in Christians (and the church) indicated to me, however, was not so much that their master (that is, Christ) was reprehensible himself, but that he simply did not exist to rein in his wayward followers. A little in-depth research indicated that my initial suspicions were most likely correct: the church certainly exists, but Jesus Christ probably never did. And I, for one, find it difficult to blame a nonexistent person for the faults of those who believe he exists.
I hope that sheds a little light on the topic. Thank you, again, for your replies, one and all.
Ironically, I read your letter after someone attacked mine. You’re right. Totally, absolutely and 100% right. Feel free to read my letter and the comments below to validate your opinion.
Thank you for helping me understand this mindset, i havent thought about it that way before. I was trying to make my response as polite as possible and i do apologize if it came across as an attack, i had not meant it to be one.
I am a christian, and while i feel i am secure in my faith in Jesus Christ, i respect what you are saying because it makes sense. However, for me, I still feel that the problem dosent lie with the lack of a real savior, but with the lack of genuine representation. But thats how i see it, and again, i do see what your saying as something that is a possible interpretation of the way the church is.
I am still looking deeper to see what there is to say about some of these problems people see with the church and also with God and Jesus as well.
I’m sorry I just have to reply again. Regarding godlessgyrl’s and loveissimple’s comments: I agree that most apostates, or ex-believers, or post-Christians, etc did not actually leave the church because they think Christ is the same way as Christians. To reject Christianity, not just the church, is to reject the very theology based on Christ’s deity. Therefore Christ (to us non-believers) is not God, the son of God, or anything more than either complete fiction or partial fiction. We can’t hold anything against him, because we don’t think he is real in the sense that you do. It isn’t simply a matter of Jesus being right or Jesus being wrong. Most of us reject either the fact that Jesus existed at all or that if he did, what he did and said is grossly misrepresented in a book which was written by men, and passed down and changed for thousands of years. We don’t really blame the Church, we don’t really blame Christians, we don’t really blame God. We can’t. We don’t have enough belief either in God or Christianity to place blame on something that we feel may or may not exist. And I think it difficult for a lot of us (although not all) to hold something against a group of people who felt as we once did.
I have a few friends who I believe are a true representation of Christ, or as close as they can get and still be human. But I reject the infallibility of the Bible, and I reject the idea that Jesus is the Son of God, and that, in order not be punished forever, I have to accept him. Therefore, even though these people are exceptionally Christ-like, they can’t convince me to change, because my belief isn’t contingent on their actions.
Sorry, loveissimple, this is not a gang-up. You just seem to actually be “listening”.