HIS:
I have Christian buddies back in chruch who think I did this to ‘backslide’, I grew tired of living life in the straight and narrow, or found the Christian life a burden.

Oh yes, because now that you’re a backslider you’re just whooping it up every night with your wild, irresponsible debauchery, right? (rolling my eyes). You’re probably struggling with more ideological and philosophical burdens now than you ever did as a Christian! They’d never buy that, though.

I asked her. She said yes. My wife agreed to write an article and place it here.

Woo-hoo!!! Terrific. I really look forward to her thoughts. Tell her she may be able to shed a lot of light for those of us whose spouses are not as open to talking about their perspectives honestly with us. I appreciate her openness.

Richard you really articulated something that I feel deeply. I have really enjoyed following the comments on this post. I am willing to accept that my experience with God may be only a product of evolution, my hope is that it is not. Yet, often I resonate with others experiences who do not believe in God (especially those who have de-converted from a fundamentalist backround). That is why I think it is important for me to read, listen and learn from this perspective.

What would be really cool is if your wife would be willing to write something about her reactions to all this going on in your life and how she handles it. ?

I asked her. She said yes. My wife agreed to write an article and place it here. It may be a while though, as she is occupied with other stuff right now. I wonder what she will say too. Stay toooooned.

What I eventually came to was a realization of the staggering preciousness of life precisely *because* of its finitude. It

Yeah, this was a real discovery of mine also. I used to imagine what Heaven would be like. Now that I realize that there is no heaven, and that I really will die, and that I really am mortal, I value life. I realize that life is now more than just a mock trail where God is watching my every move. There is more to life than evangelizing the Gospel and saving souls from the griddles of hell.

Like you Richard, I have discovered that life lived actively without God is a more moral life – because it *will* end. There is more to treasure, more to cherish, because this is it baby.

I have Christian buddies back in chruch who think I did this to ‘backslide’, I grew tired of living life in the straight and narrow, or found the Christian life a burden. On the contrary! Thanks for your reply, Richard!

What I eventually came to was a realization of the staggering preciousness of life precisely *because* of its finitude. It was existentialsit thinking, especially Nietzsche, who struggled heavily with nihilism, that helped me the most. I came realize that immersion in life, a kind of joie devivre, could become my meaning. A naked affirmation of the value of life itself, made all the more poignant because it is limited and sometimes painful, is all the “meaning” my life could ever need.

I say this here because that experience of life’s sheer, utter gorgeousness became a “spiritual” experience more profound than any I had ever had as a Christian, and one which I still today wish to try to express. I suspect, but cannot prove, that many of the names spiritual types have given their experiences over the years — Ground of Being, the numious, etc — are name for experiences similar to mine and to that of the writer of the original CHristian article above. We are trying to find some way to talk about the beauty, majesty, worthwhileness, and, well, the *goodness* of life itself.

My own way of resolving this question at hand– is this experience religious, does it point to God, or is it entirely natural — is essentially a pragmatic critique. I ask: what difference does it make? My experience is no less moving and important to me if it is a product of evolution, which is actually what I pretty strongly suspect, than if it comes from “God”. My experience is equally inspiring either way. I remain somewhat open to an “ineffable” god, an Eternal Thou (to use Buber’s term), but it is the problem of theodicy, not an ideological committment to naturalism, that makes me skeptical. Regardless, the experience is what it is and those who have had something similar know how precious it is. It is as though in those moments we feel the quickening of life itself.

For me, the only author I have read who really makes sense to me about how to handle this is the Jewish theologian Mordecai Kaplan, who founded Reconstructionist Judaism. He suggests we use words liek “God” and “Holy” self-consciously as ways to express that which we most value. He was a scientifically minded naturalist, and did not believe in a personal God, but found value in religious practice (Judaism, in his case) because he felt it put him in touch with, and sensitized him to, just this feeling.

Richard

As a means of artistic expression, I indulge in photography of, among many other things, the wonders of nature all around us. There is often something seemingly magical in the way the light interacts with the world that at times can produce a strong emotional reaction in me.

I suppose if I were a religious person, I might describe this experience as a spiritual response or as seeing “god” in the scene, but to me there is far more wonder and awe in nature itself than in any fantastical interpretation we feeble-minded humans have historically chosen to superimpose over it.

For the strongly religious peron this will bne interpreted as spiritual in the sense of the presence of divine spirit or somesuch notion. For the hard atheist it is spiritual in the sense of feelings of faintly grasping the connectedness of things or the beauty of things etc – but still at the scale beyond the merely human.
So we all have spiritual experiences – they are a product of us being small clever apes in a very large and complex world.

And the dawn of spirituality? Imagine the dawn of proto human consciousness – when the ape suddenly looks up and no longer just sees trees and savannah and thinks “where is the food?” but becomes able to see the scale and complexity of the world and faintly grasp how small it itself is in all that.
Now that must have been some spiritual experience!

That’s the way to look at it, HIS, definitely. You’ll come to some more conclusions in future – or perhaps not – but in the long run what matters for all of us is what we do with our lives.

Thanks for recommending DaGoodS blog! Wow. I was in tears, truly. Amazingly good read. Next time someone tells me a deconvert “couldn’t have been a True Christian,” I will have someplace to refer them.