de-conversion

Prayer: Why I may do it Anyway (if asked)

On Good Friday, 1973, my parents caught me smoking. It wasn’t the first time I’d been caught, but it was the last. This wasn’t because I quit immediately, per their demands. It was, rather, because I quickly grew fairly skilled at hiding my vice from them. Oh, they continued to harbor suspicions, but they never again caught me in the act. Anyway, it so happened that, like most good evangelical Christians, our family was scheduled to attend the annual Good Friday service that very evening. So, off to church we went.

I sat through the service and dreaded the coming altar call because I knew exactly what was going to happen. Sure enough, the pianist had barely begun playing the prayer chorus when my mother ambled over to where I was sitting with some friends and insisted that I accompany her to the altar. There, of course, I was compelled to repent of my sin, renounce my filthy habit and ask Jesus to forgive me. I mouthed the requisite syllables as tears of rage flowed down my cheeks.

I was enraged at being compelled to say a prayer that I did not mean and thereby label myself as a hypocrite. You see, when I was fourteen I was in what I now regard as a state of rebellious disobedience of God. I believed in God but had absolutely no desire to follow, obey, love or worship him. Therefore, my prayer was utterly insincere and, as I understood the matter then, both he and I knew I hadn’t meant a word of it. I believed that uttering an insincere prayer while in a state of believer’s rebellion was the height of hypocrisy…

Continue Reading 5 comments May 14, 2008

Should we embrace moderate Christianity?

Ok, maybe not embrace, but befriend?

Recently on a whim I bought a book from the new books display at my local bookstore (what else is new, right?). The title is The Fall of the Evangelical Nation: The Surprising Crisis Inside the Church. I’m on page 53 right now, and I had to stop to think and write about something that’s been on my mind since Sam Harris’s first book came out. I’ve been thinking about it even more since I read about half of Chris Hedges’s latest while having coffee at the bookstore a few weeks ago (I decided not to buy it).

Here’s the question: Is fundamentalism the authentic religious voice?

My answer is “no”…. but I seem to be in the minority of opinion.

The media features fundamentalists or extreme conservative believers every time a topic regarding morality comes up, as if these are the only people who can speak for believers, as if they have authority to speak for all people of faith on these issues. Not only are atheists and agnostics left out of the conversation, but moderate and liberal believers often are as well. They are not taken as seriously as those who are literalist or extremist in their views, and are often considered “soft” or “lax,” as if they were not “true” followers of the faith. When journalists act this way, they are echoing the fundamentalist point of view…

Continue Reading 27 comments May 12, 2008

Prayer: Why do it Anyway?

The subject of prayer has been widely debated over the years. We’ve discussed this topic on several occasions including Simen’s What’s the Point with Prayer?, MysteryOfIniquity’s Prayer: Communion with yourself, and LeoPardus’ Praying my way to losing faith.

Slapdash recently made this comment on one of our posts:

For me, the issue of (unanswered) prayer was the first, primary, and most important thing that unraveled my faith.

Christianity is completely schizophrenic when it comes to prayer. On the one hand you have loads of scriptures inviting us to pray - to pray about everything, to pray without ceasing, to pray boldly, to pray specifically, to pray with the faith of a mustard seed - and our prayers will be answered.

On the other hand, based as far as I can tell only on the Lord’s prayer, Christians insist that you add “not my will be done, but yours” to every prayer, thus effectively giving God an ‘out’ any and every time your original desire doesn’t come to pass…

Continue Reading 7 comments May 11, 2008

The Christ-Centered Marriage

As I cruised the atheosphere this morning, I came across Possummomma’s 400th post (congratulations, Pmomma!). It includes a segment in which she discusses the effects of her acceptance of atheism on her marriage:

I know your husband is an agnostic-Catholic. How is that working in your home? Was he unhappy about your change in beliefs? If my girl friend came home and said she’d stopped believing in God, I don’t know if I would be happy with it.

Pdaddy took it well. We’d both voiced criticisms and doubts…I was just the first of the two of us to put time into researching those doubts. And, it didn’t change the basis for our relationship. I know some theist couples base their relationship on serving god or putting God first, but we were never like that. And, our children and friendship (between p-daddy and I) has always been the foundation of our marriage so atheism wasn’t a deal breaker.

That passage took me back nearly 30 years, to the time when the deacon and I were engaged and envisioning a lifetime together as faithful servants of God. In our conversations, we always affirmed that God/Jesus had to be our first love. He would be the hub of our marriage…

Continue Reading 42 comments May 3, 2008

Analogy of a Marriage

Pilgrim’s Further Progress

(nod to LeoPardus for the suggestion)

There once was a girl who was looking for love. She was tired of the same old surface relationships; ones that never truly satisfied her heart as well as her intellect. She tried dating off and on. She found a lovely peaceful man named Buddha, but to her, he was too passive. She ended up always having to make the decisions or sit calmly watching him meditate. She needed more excitement than that. She dated a guy named Aristotle and even his best friend Plato, but they were too much “into hanging out with the guys” and didn’t want to commit to romance. Her friends kept trying to set her up with a new guy named Jesus. He was perfect for her and would love her until the end of time. He was manly and heroic. His relationship with his Mother wasn’t so hot, but his dad and he were very close. He sounded wonderful, almost too wonderful, but after a series of failed dating experiences, she agreed to go on a blind date and see for herself.

She was enraptured! Never before had she felt like someone knew her very soul. He would gaze into her eyes, listen to her conversation for hours, and she just KNEW that he was the one. Apparently, he did too, because instantly he professed his love for her and wooed her with all his might. Sure, there were some warning signals. He wanted her to completely renounce all her old friends and even her family…

Continue Reading 32 comments April 28, 2008

Branding an Adolescent Mind

Maybe you were one of those snobby rich kids that had everything they ever wanted growing up, or maybe you were the kid who saved up every dollar and bought your own pair of designer jeans twice a year and took exquisite care of them. I was neither. I had nice things but Levi’s were the extent of my brand loyalties. Aside from the trendy things we all focus on as teenagers, there are a myriad of other mundane everyday things in our adolescent lives that we use because they are available to us. Toothpaste, ketchup, shaving cream, etc.

When you leave home for the first time, whether for college, marriage, or the working world, you are suddenly faced with more choices than you ever thought possible. You take for granted all the common utilitarian things your parents provided for you. Do you remember the first time you went out to buy toothpaste for yourself? What do you get? Do you buy what your mom had always bought for you? Do you stretch your rebellious wings in protest and go for something new? As simple and foolish as it sounds, it is a microcosm of the process we go through into adulthood. How much do we cling to? How far do we run away?…

Continue Reading 21 comments April 26, 2008