The Inherent Subjectivity of Written Text: (Why Biblically-Derived Objective Morality Is Impossible, And Why That’s Okay.)

“Hi, Nathan. If you don’t believe in God, what stops you from murdering other people?”

This question (or some variation of it), is very popular amongst apologists, and is often used as an introduction to a popular theistic argument: The “Argument From Morality.” Atheist writers/speakers often dismiss this question with responses such as: “What makes you think I have any desire to murder people?” and “Is your faith in God the only thing stopping YOU from murdering people?” (I’m looking at you, Christopher Hitchens…) These deflections may satisfy someone who just wants to shut down a conversation quickly, but I don’t think they’re quite good enough. While this argument might sound easy to dismiss, I think the underlying question IS important:

Where do we get our sense of morality from, and how do we consistently choose right and wrong if it’s not written in a book?

So, that’s what we’re talking about today.

(I say “we”, but I would like to emphasize that YOU have been gifted the free-will to leave at any time. I, unfortunately, have been predestined to finish this blog post.*)

*Calvinist humor

Let’s get into it!

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The underlying premise of the question “If you aren’t a Christian, what stops you from being a murderer” (and questions like it) can be summed up like this: 

“If humans don’t have an Ultimate Moral Authority telling us how to live our lives, we have no choice but to just make up a moral code on our own and do whatever we want. Therefore, humans need some sort of objective standard (like the Bible) for how to live so we don’t devolve into chaos and nihilism, where everyone just does what is right in their own eyes.” [referencing Judges 17:6 for impact]

I have many issues with this premise, and I love making lists about the issues I have. So, I’ll start by making a list:

1. Critique #1: (the most obvious critique) - Behaving badly has consequences in the real world, even if we don’t account for a god punishing us later. The premise of the question incorrectly assumes that humans have no incentive to behave aside from a god-given moral code (and the alleged punishment that comes from violating said code). This is patently NOT the case.

   For one, human societies have always had laws. The threat of punishment in the mortal world has seemingly always been necessary to achieve polite society. In spite of the fact that many people believe in a future “judgement day” where everyone will suffer the consequences of their actions, no society has been unable to avoid writing down some extra rules to guide people’s actions. A prime example is the very act presented in the initial question: Murder. In all societies around the world, murder results in some consequence (usually jail time.) If you murder someone in the US, you will be prosecuted. If you murder someone in any other country, you will be prosecuted (or, depending on where you do it, swiftly killed in retaliation.) Legal consequences for murder ensure a population that thinks twice before murdering each other. The threat of punishment isn’t just confined to the legal realm, however.

   A secondary form of behavior modification comes from the fact that people just treat you better when you’re not a jerk. If you’re someone who is known as a backstabbing liar, I can assure you that nobody is inviting you to the next neighborhood BBQ. This seems obvious enough, doesn’t it? Steal from enough people, and soon you’ll have a reputation as a thief and your picture will be hanging in every grocery store. No one needs a book from God to understand that their actions have consequences in the human realm too, do they?

   Act like a jerk, and you’re gonna have a bad time.
   
   As a related note: it seems that even having a “moral code” like the Bible doesn’t seem to stop bad things from happening in Churches. [Here’s an article about the large numbers of abuse cases covered up by the Southern Baptist Convention]

2. Critique #2: being good feels good. This one seems obvious too, doesn’t it? When I open a door for a pregnant mother who is pushing a stroller with kids, I’m not doing it because I’m picturing God sending me to heaven for doing so. Being kind to a fellow human just…feels right. Unless you’re the rare clinical sociopath, chances are: you feel the same way. There are plenty of studies on this: (Here’s an article about one) —but I’m sure each reader here can verify this by demonstration themselves: It’s almost Christmas time: and I’m sure most of us are excited to give our loved-ones gifts of some kind. A selfless act like gift-giving provides one of the best feelings in the world. Why wouldn’t you want to feel this way all the time? Being good feels good.

3. Critique #3: (the main point of this blog post) - The Bible doesn’t actually work as an objective moral standard. Let’s break down some reasons why:
   
   -For one, each individual still needs to (subjectively) decide to use some version of the Bible in the first place. We are relying on human decision-making to pick the “right” moral standard. After all, plenty of other religions and religious texts provide a moral code. There are also plenty of secular moral constructs that provide the same. How do you choose which code to follow? The simple answer? ——You ask yourself: “what makes the most sense and seems right?”…and you pick that thing.
   
   Adding even more to this problem: we have to first decide which books of the Bible actually come from God in the first place…which requires us to make a very important decision based simply on how we feel about those books. Do we think all of these books come from God? How can we be sure Paul actually speaks for God? Did Paul even write all of the books that are attributed to him?
   
   To put it more clearly: Humans always choose what is “right in their own eyes” - but some humans have decided that following some version of the Bible is the right thing to do, and they’ve each decided on a specific version of the Bible that they feel is right. (Or worse, they’ve chosen to accept a version someone told them was right, simply because they decided that person was worth trusting.) Regardless of how you got there—either doing your own research or trusting your pastor: You, the subjective human, must decide what is right.
   
   -Secondly, a written text can NEVER be fully objective. It will ALWAYS require interpretation by the reader. This should be obvious just by looking at the sheer number of Christians who disagree on fairly large issues (Do you need good works to get to heaven? Is slavery immoral? Is pacifism the right way to live, or is violence okay? Should babies be baptized? Does the Pope speak for God? Is God a 5-point Calvinist? Does hell last forever? Can you pray to the dead?)
   
   A biblical case can be made for (and against) all of these things…and yet: it seems obvious that it would be helpful to have a clear moral framework to decide if slavery was ACTUALLY wrong. (I’m sure the victims of American chattel slavery would have preferred the Bible be more clear on this issue.) The Bible, unfortunately, does not provide such a framework for us: Instead, it requires lots of contextualizing (and interpreting) for a Christian to make the argument that slavery is definitively wrong. Some Christians to this day will argue that slavery ISN’T wrong.
   
   If the moral code from God was clear, there also wouldn’t be theological debates in Christian circles about whether it’s moral for a woman to divorce her abusive husband. (If you’ve spent any amount of time in a fundamentalist Christian church, you’ve heard the “biblical” argument that a woman SHOULD stay with her abusive spouse because “God hates divorce” and so that God can “use her to get through to him”.)
   
   This is a severe problem. Even if we conclude that the Bible is 100% true, we need to use our (subjective) human understanding to read it and decide what it means. We still need to interpret its moral code for situations that don’t appear in the text, and we need to make our best guess (interpret) when the text contradicts itself on various issues. You, the subjective human, must decide what is right.
   
   (But what about the Holy Spirit, Nathan? Doesn’t The Holy Spirit help us interpret the Bible when we run into parts we can’t figure out?)
   
   Well, that concept, in itself is a subjective belief. Not all Christians view the work of the Holy Spirit the same way (is the “speaking in tongues” that happens in some churches demonic, or from God?) The “guidance” that the Holy Spirit is presumed to provide comes in only one form: an internal one that only the individual can reference. This is the most subjective thing possible. Is that “still, small voice” really the Holy Spirit….Or is it just what you’re leaning toward after thinking about it for a while?
   
   No one else hear what you’re thinking, which makes Holy Spirit claims extremely subjective. (Raise your hand if you’ve heard stories about “that guy” at Bible college telling a girl he had a crush on that God told him they should get married…) Maybe the guy honestly believes he heard God telling him to marry that girl, but it seems just as likely he just had a big crush and confused his strong feelings for something more. Even worse: maybe he’s lying.
   
   How can you be sure that you’re not mistaken about your own feelings? And how can you decide who is lying (or mistaken) when someone claims to have a specific Holy Spirit guidance that you don’t feel? You, the subjective human, must decide what is right.
   
   

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Let’s do a brief summary:

• There are plenty of reasons to do good things without referencing the Bible

• The Bible doesn’t actually stop Christians from doing bad things

• Deciding to use the Bible as a moral code in the first place is still a very subjective decision, based on an individual’s subjective morals.

• Calling the Bible “objective” doesn’t make sense, because it requires subjective interpretation, based on an individual’s subjective understanding of the text.

Conclusion:

• While the various versions of the Bible contain lots of beautiful poetry and wisdom, they do not provide an objective moral code that can be clearly followed. Each individual still needs to decide for themselves how to interpret the texts and which texts to follow.
  
  In addition, the texts do not provide guidance for many situations that result from living in society. We still need lawyers and laws to figure out the fair way to handle a landlord stealing a tenant’s deposit, a person committing embezzlement, and how much to fine a company for polluting a local river. We need laws to figure out how many years in prison someone gets for negligent homicide vs. premeditated murder. The Bible says that children should be killed for disrespecting their parents. Do you agree with that? Hopefully not.
  
  This is a big topic, which makes it hard to address in a short blog post. I’ve tried very hard to stay focused on a few main points without chasing down too many side-quests. If anyone comments, I’m happy to chase down additional targets.
  
  Suffice to say: I, a non-believer, have zero interest in murder….and luckily, most people seem to be on the same page.
  
  
  Signing off for now,
  
  Nathan “I Do Not Think Murder Is Good For Society” Brazil

Ask An Ex-Christian!

Hello, Beautiful Blog Reader.

Knocking so late at my door? A bit odd of you.

…Oh, I see. It’s quite stormy outside, and you got lost? I see.

It IS pretty stormy outside, isn’t it?

Well, I don’t normally take in STRANGERS like this, but I suppose I can make an exception for a few minutes to set you on your journey before you have to brave the rain again. I don’t suppose you’d want to come in out of the rain for a moment and dry your coat?

Here, let me take that for you! I’ll just hang it up over here next to my “Worst Blog Author EVER” trophy.

It’s not too late to turn back into the night if you prefe..….oh wait! It actually might be too late now. I can feel it setting in. The pure inevitability of it.

Drat! The door’s somehow magically locked, it’s raining outside, and it seems you’re stuck here: Reading YET ANOTHER unreasonably long deconstruction-related blog post from Nathan. How could you have been so foolish to fall for this again? It truly was a mistake to click that link.

Well, anyway…you’re already here.

Come! Sit down! …And grab a cup of tea if you’d like! There’s a fresh pot on the stove, and cups are…inside the dishwasher. Yes, I’m behind on chores again. It’s these damn blog posts, I swear.

We can sit by the fireplace and read together, if you want. Like old friends! Or like new friends who enjoy that sort of emotional vulnerability…

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This post is simply a bunch of Questions and Answers, hopefully interesting, but also probably a bit boring (and long) compared to my normal posts. Feel free to skip around, or skip entirely! (I never actually locked the door.)

….If you do stay, feel free to help yourself to another cup of tea at any point.

This blog post exists because I recently presented my Facebook and Instagram followers with a link to a survey, wherein I solicited questions about my deconstruction journey (or any questions about faith/deconstruction in general.)

I’ve done my best to consolidate and answer questions as deeply as I can, but I didn’t want to take an eternity to get to the point; so some of the answers may feel too short to adequately address the subject matter. (I also know some of my readers won’t like my answers, regardless of length.)

What’s that they say about not being able to please everybody?

That being said, some of my answers are ALSO a bit redundant (answered in prior questions) and ramble into other adjacent topics, so feel free to reach out for any clarification if you feel you’d like a deeper answer.

Shall we begin?

1) Why do you talk about this so much? Do you hate Christians? Why don’t you talk about other religions?

I get these three questions...or a variation of them, often phrased as bad-faith accusations: e.g., “You seem like you care a lot about this God you claim you don’t believe in!”—quite a lot, so I’m putting this at the top of the post.

A. Primarily, I talk about this so much because it’s interesting to me. I’ve spent most of my life thinking about Christianity very seriously from the perspective that it held the ultimate answers for life. Now that I don’t think it holds those answers, there’s a lot to unpack about the Christian faith that I’m interested in exploring; both as it pertains to my own faith (or lack thereof) and as it pertains to the faith that many still hold. Writing, critiquing, debating, and discussing the faith are all ways I am exploring further after leaving. This won’t surprise anyone who knows me. Asking lots of questions about things and debating them in the public square has always been my modus operandi, and I’m have little expectation that I’ll ever kick that habit. Secondly, I want to provide an outlet for my many Christian followers who may not feel comfortable with (or interested in) asking serious questions about their faith. If my platform can be a space where people encounter new ideas and see challenging questions that make them think, I want to do that. If my platform can help validate someone’s experience “Oh, wow, I’m not crazy for thinking that!”, I would love to do that. Personally, I hadn’t read a single book written by an atheist until I had already left the Christian faith, because I was already convinced that I wouldn’t learn anything useful since I knew the truth about reality, i.e., I knew the Christian paradigm was true. I now realize that was an arrogant and naïve way to live, and I think fewer people should live that way. If publishing these blogs from an ex-Christian perspective provides the catalyst for people to think more critically about their beliefs (and alternatives to them), I will consider my goal achieved.

B. I do not hate Christians. My critical posts are almost exclusively dedicated to rather niche Fundamentalist Christian ideas, which most Christians don’t really even hold to. Even if they did, however, I think we are all susceptible to bad ideas, and it’s not easy to begin to hold new opinions when you grew up believing certain things so strongly. “If not for grace, there go I”, to put it in religious terms. I consider myself fortunate to have found a path out of Fundamentalist Christianity, and it makes me sad to think that so many people I know are wasting such large amounts of their lives on a faith expression that seems so false. Critiquing flaws with Christian doctrines and behaviors is something I did even AS a Christian, and I will always believe that the truth should be spoken even if people are sensitive to it and take it personally. In my experience in the church, 99% of Christians I knew were sincere, genuine, and kind people who would give the shirt off their back to help someone. I consider myself lucky to have been surrounded by Christians who took their faith seriously and weren’t hypocritical about it, unlike so many Christians in the public square. That being said: I think it’s very possible to be a wonderful person and hold miserable ideas, and I will ALWAYS be here to critique miserable ideas (which Christian Fundamentalism seems to have in abundance).

C. I’m always surprised at this question. My many years spent in the Christian church mean that Christianity is the most relevant religion for me to critique. I know a LOT about it, and I’ve seen many of the flaws first-hand. Christianity is the religion of most people I know, as well as most people who live in the United States. It has affected more in this country than any other ideology, so talking about it is more relevant than talking about other religions that have had a  relatively minor impact on the country and in the lives of people I know. To put it another way: “Why doesn’t the NFL talk about baseball?” Obviously their experience is with football, and baseball is not the reason their fans tune in. That being said, I do speak about other religions on occasion, when I find it relevant. Islam, for instance, has many similarities to Christianity (including most of its flaws), and is growing at a rapid rate. Muslim apologists use many similar arguments to Christian apologists, and I don’t doubt that I’ll be interacting with more Muslims in the near future as their faith becomes more mainstream in the US. For now, though: I know a lot about Christianity, and it’s the most relevant in the Western world. 

2) Do you believe in any god at all? What label do you use for your beliefs now?

Simply put: I don’t believe in any of the gods I’ve ever heard about.

I think they are all of human-made origin. I do not think the Christian god, or any other gods from the many world religions are real.  In this sense, I am an atheist, because I don’t possess a belief in a god. None of the god-claims I’ve heard are convincing to me. I’m also highly skeptical of anyone who claims they have figured out how to believe in a god correctly and who claims they have special information about how to do it.

However, I am agnostic [literally: “a-not/without + gno-knowing/to know”] to the fact that a god of some sort might exist.

Simply put: While I’m quite convinced that none of the gods I’ve heard about are real, I’m open to the idea that there might be Something Out There, and we just don’t know what it is yet. To sum those beliefs up, I call myself an “Agnostic Atheist” most of the time. I’m certainly not a believer in anything, but I don’t mind the idea of the supernatural. If there IS Something Out There, I don’t think anyone has found it.  

3) How have you come to terms with there being no afterlife/heaven/hell? I’m also deconstructing, and the thing I have struggled with deeply and found the most terrifying is the thought that once I die, it’s over. How do you deal with the concept of going from being alive to nothingness? And not seeing any of your loved ones ever again? I don’t know how to wrap my head around it.

This is a tough question, and I can empathize with your fear (though I don’t personally have any fear about death/loss these days, I have had it in the past.) The inevitability of death is one of the most sobering truths of our world, because we all must encounter it at some point. Religion’s biggest draw, in my opinion: is the offer of eternal life. That being said, I’ve personally found more peace and purpose outside of the Christian faith. I think about it this way: If this life is the only one we get, I had better make the most of it since an afterlife seems unlikely. To me, this is vastly superior to the fundamentalist Christian perspective that often hand-waves away suffering and world problems because “God will fix everything in the end”. Believing in just this life: I’m motivated to make the most of it. I’m not afraid of death, because I don’t believe hell exists. Even famous Christians like C.S. Lewis didn’t believe in the “traditional” hell that is often preached from pulpits.. While fear certainly seems to convert a lot of people to religion, and keep them in the faith, I think that even a VERY staunch former believer can learn to shed the hell-brainwashing that often occurs from such a young age.

Here are a few other thoughts from other people far wiser than me that you might find helpful (and feel free to send me a message if you want to chat more about this, there are actually support groups for people who have this sort of religious trauma, and I’d be happy to point you toward them):

a) Here’s an article about hell trauma

b) This quote by Mark Twain: "I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

c) This quote by Bertrand Russell: "I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own."

d) This quote by Socrates in Apology: “For let me tell you gentlemen, that to be afraid of death is only another form of thinking that one is wise when one is not. It is to think that one knows what one does not know. No one knows with regard to death whether it is not really the greatest blessing that can happen to a person, but people dread it as though it were the greatest evil, and this ignorance which thinks that it knows what it does not, must surely be ignorance most culpable.”

4) Have you ever heard of Pascal’s wager or seen images of it? What do you think?

Short answer: Yes I have, and I think it’s silly.

For those who haven’t heard of Pascal’s wager, the premise is simply this: If the consequences for being wrong about Christianity are so severe (eternal punishment in hell), is it worth gambling with eternity? A Christian apologist will often put it this way when trying to convert someone: “If I'm wrong, I have lost nothing; If you're wrong, you have lost everything.”

The wager used to be convincing to me, because I wasn’t very well educated about other world religions, and I figured: Hell sounds pretty bad, so why not just stick with Christianity–just in case? As I studied a bit more about world religions, I realized that many other faiths have terrible punishments for those who aren’t converts or aren’t following the religion correctly. Given this fact, the wager falls flat. I’ve heard Muslim apologists use the same argument for why converting to Islam is the safest choice, and obviously that sounds just as silly to me as the Christian version of the argument. 

A good response to the wager is to just ask the apologist: “What if you’re wrong about Islam? Is it worth gambling with your soul and going to Jahannam? Even worse, what if there’s a god we haven’t discovered yet who is actually in charge of things and will get upset we invented all these other gods?” It becomes obvious that this isn’t simply a binary choice. There are a lot of different faiths to choose from, and a lot of alleged punishments for people who choose wrong.

I choose none of them: because I’m convinced each one I’ve studied is false, and I think choosing any false faith would be a waste of the one life I know I have.

To sum up:
a) You’re gambling with terrible punishments even if you pick Christianity. There’s no “safe” gamble.
b) I’m not remotely convinced any of these punishments actually exist, so I don’t think this is actually a gamble.

5) When did you know Christ was real? Then when did you know he wasn’t?

Not to be pedantic, but the use of the word “know” here is a bit confusing to me, because (almost by definition) I’m not sure it’s possible to know about a spiritual realm in a conclusive way. By definition, we can’t see, taste, or touch something spiritual. I would be very skeptical of someone who claimed they did “know” something spiritual, rather than just asserting that they believe it very strongly.

To make this point more clearly for my Evangelical audience, nearly every passionate Mormon I’ve spoken to has had the famous “burning in the bosom” that convinced them they were right about their beliefs. They “knew” their beliefs to be true. Obviously, my evangelical friends would say this wasn’t actually God at work, so it’s clear that the criteria for “knowing” about something can’t just be a feeling one has. I think humans are very good at working ourselves up into an emotional state and letting that take us to conclusions that aren’t based in reality. What’s to separate MY strong feeling that my god exists from a Muslim’s strong feeling that her god exists?

Now, colloquially, we can probably say “know” just means “be convinced”. So, to answer THAT question: when was I convinced of Christ’s existence?

Probably around the age of 6 or 7 years old, I had my “conversion” experience, where I woke up from a nightmare that I was burning and suffering in hell, being tormented by demons. After praying about it with my mom and confessing my sins to God in the hallway outside my room, I was quite convinced that I was going to heaven, and fell asleep peacefully after that. So, I was definitely convinced by the age of 7, if not earlier, since I’m sure the fear of hell and buy-in to the “you are inherently evil and must be saved from your sins” narrative had been building for a while.

Over the years as I was growing up, I remained convinced. While I did go through a brief agnostic period for a couple months when I was about 12 (or somewhere around there), I quickly convinced myself that this was not the right idea, and started believing again. (Pascal’s wager played a big part in this reconversion, actually.)

I’ve also experienced many “feelings” that I would have chalked up to experiencing God’s “presence”. Tellingly enough, almost all of these experiences were while listening to or participating in some form of emotional religious experience. Getting “the chills” while praying alone or singing worship songs was something that I long used as a reason for why I felt my belief was true. “This is what the Holy Spirit feels like”, I thought.

Another, (admittedly funny) memory I have for why I was convinced God was real: when I was probably in my early teen years, I was getting ready to go to a church project day (we were fixing up our older church building we’d recently purchased.) I couldn’t find my hammer and was stressed out trying to find it, almost bursting into tears because I was worried about making my dad late. I was about to give up and decided to bow my head and pray about finding my hammer while standing in my closet (where I’d been looking for it). After I finished praying, I opened my eyes and stared right at my feet, where my hammer had been sitting all along. It seems silly now, but at that moment, I was truly convinced God had materialized this hammer in front of me, and for years this was one of my strongest examples of a “miracle” I’d seen in my own life. (Not a second-hand story someone else had told me.)

This sort of emotional component to belief is crucial to be a staunch believer, I think. Logic can only get you so far down a path to faith. As far as “logically convinced”, however, I was also that. I can comfortably spout off any of the many arguments Christian apologists use to defend the faith. I found most of these arguments convincing for a long time, and have personally used most of them while witnessing to non-Christians. (This always makes it a bit awkward when people try to reconvert me using the same arguments.)

So, as far as belief is concerned: I absolutely, sincerely believed for the majority of my life. In my early 20s, I taught, participated in, and organized Bible studies out of a desire to grow in my faith and help others grow in theirs. Defaulting to prayer during stressful situations is something I still catch myself doing on occasion, because it was formerly something that was so second-nature to me. I was convinced that my ultimate aide and help in the world came from God. I believed that I was a sinner, that Jesus had died for my sins, and that this was the only path to salvation.  Even when I was questioning different theological ideas as a young adult, I was convinced that these core tenets of the faith were true.

I’ve never been “dishonest” about my faith, in the way that I think many people might assume after hearing my story. When I realized I had stopped believing, I almost immediately made it public (hence these blog posts.) I’ve been calling myself a Christian all the way up until about 28 years old, when I finally decided to let go of the last few snippets of belief I had left.  I’m 31 years old now - so it’s only been about three years of unbelief (give or take). I don’t remember an exact moment when I knew it wasn’t true: but it dawned on me when a friend asked me if I was a Christian and I realized I wanted to answer “no” for the first time in my life.

Deprogramming from any serious religion isn’t an easy task. I would be lying if I said I had never had a twinge of fear crop up while talking about my beliefs, especially early on my path out. Saying out loud (or even thinking the sentence) “Jesus isn’t God” was something that made me feel like I might have a heart attack or be struck by lightning for a very long time. Even while I was fully logically convinced that my former belief system was bunk, there was a lot of work that needed to happen to unwind all the years of self-induced emotional convincing I’d done.

6) What was your "this isn't making sense/working" moment? Or moments? What made you decide to fully reject Christianity instead of just switching to a church that had different beliefs? Why did you decide to share very publicly your deconstruction and deconversion (instead of hiding it so as not to catch heat)?

A. There definitely wasn’t just “one moment.”  For me, the level of belief I had was so strong that I needed years of slowly working my way out. A single rough or bad experience would never have been enough, because it’s easy to chalk up bad things to individual human flaws rather than confronting the bad system head-on. It was really a slow trickle of questions I couldn’t answer that pulled me out, rather than one big jolt.

My initial questions began when confronting the reality of the age of the earth. It’s pretty clear after even minimal research that the earth is extremely old, far older than the approximately 6000 years the Bible presents. Plenty of Christians agree with and understand this, including serious Christian apologists [like Dr. William Lane Craig.] The issue, of course, is that once you reach this point: you have to start understanding portions of the Bible as analogy or parable, rather than literal. While I think this is obvious for even the most serious Christians, the fundamentalist crowd generally shies away from anything other than literal interpretation. It’s clear that portions of the Bible that have been taught as historical fact for thousands of years are merely stories, and that has a devastating effect on how the rest of the Bible can be interpreted. The story of the flood of Noah stops making sense pretty rapidly when taken literally. Did Noah have to personally carry every single STD onto the boat to explain why we have those now? Did two penguins really walk thousands of miles through the mountains and deserts to get back to their cold weather habitats after the boat landed so that they could repopulate their species? What did the carnivores eat on the boat? What happened to every single forest and plant that was covered by tens of thousands of feet of water for over a month? Clearly, there was an issue here, and there needed to be a way to reconcile these passages with reality.

Once I got to a point where it was clear a lot of the Bible was full of stories designed to share a message and guide a narrative, rather than containing specific factual truths, there came many more questions about the text. For one, why do we treat THESE books [the 66 individual books in the Protestant bible] as the true biblical canon? What’s to stop us from throwing one out or adding a new one? Who added them to the canon in the first place, and why do we trust that they were guided by God’s hand to add them, specifically? There are a LOT of other books that could have been added (link here).

Though I studied and looked for answers for years, the answers to the question about the biblical canon were not remotely satisfactory to me. Far from it, even. “A bunch of people hundreds of years ago agreed that these texts were the right ones and other texts were the wrong ones” is not an answer I find convincing. Historical longevity and a large following is not a good reason to believe in the truth and God-guided inspiration of a document (as evidenced by the large following and historical longevity of the equally-untrue Quran.)

To this day, I’ve never heard someone explain the origin of the Protestant canon in a way that makes any compelling case for its inspiration, and I certainly haven’t found an answer myself. “More people believed it than believed other versions of the canon” is not a good reason to believe something. To put it most plainly: it is an act of faith to believe that modern Christians have somehow collected the exact, correct 66 books that God intended for them to have to shape their theology. Once I realized I couldn’t come up with good reasons for believing in infallibility of the canon, it stopped being something I believed.

I still believed some basic Christian tenets for quite a while after abandoning the traditional Protestant canon: for instance, I believed that Jesus was the Son of God and had been resurrected from the dead. It didn’t seem necessary to affirm, for instance: that every letter Paul is presumed to have written was an inspired document, to hold onto those basic beliefs. He was just…a guy…after all. [So were Joseph Smith and Muhammad]. Eventually, though: I stopped being convinced of all of it. When studying the biblical canon and realizing how utterly human the assembly process and writing process (as well as how human the actual content) was: It became impossible not to recognize how human even the most “sacred” parts were. These were just fantastic books, written by men, to tell stories, share their theologies, and sometimes even to pass along legends they may have assumed were true. Here’s a video explaining how the famous “Lord, Liar, or Lunatic” defense really doesn’t hold up., since I know this will be a common response I get to these concerns about the text being uninspired

B. All that to say, I never felt like just switching over to a “softer” form of Christianity made rational sense. I’m not convinced the Protestant Bible contains any supernatural truth, even if one can find lots of decent wisdom and moral teaching hidden amongst the injunctions for how to correctly keep slaves. The message that Jesus is the Son of God and that all humans are dirty sinners in need of forgiveness is something I now view as a vile and manipulative lie, so I wouldn’t want to attend a church that preached that, even if they were “nice” about it. While I think there are plenty of progressive churches I could comfortably attend, where pastors simply preach sermons about helping your neighbor and taking care of the poor and widowed, I don’t see much reason to go to a church just to get this sort of message. I do have lots of friends who’ve gone this route since deconstruction: and I personally know that the “community” is something people really miss when they leave the church, which is why so many deconstructed Christians gravitate toward some form of worship, even if they hardly believe anything resembling their former faith. Maybe I’ll find something like that at some point, but for now, I’m quite content having my Sunday mornings free to catch up on sleep. 

C. I’ve kind of answered this question in Question 1 at the top of this post, but I’ll add a bit more here as it pertains to “catching heat”. Simply put, I’m not afraid of the conflict I know this sort of openness brings, so it’s no trouble for me at all to talk about it. I’m conflict-positive, to put it mildly. I also believe the conflict here is important because these subjects affect a lot of people. Not only do I think many Christians are trapped in these dogmatic systems, wasting years of their lives on the proverbial treadmill, but I have many gay and queer people in my life who are negatively affected by Christian hatred in the public sphere; both from a legal standpoint (gay marriage hasn’t been legal for that long…), and from a personal standpoint– being openly humiliated and discriminated against by Christians for simply loving someone of the “wrong” gender. As someone with a uniquely in-depth understanding of these belief systems and the Christian mindset, I find it’s my responsibility to talk about the harm this sort of toxic dogma can cause, rather than run from the conflict. If someone in my life is offended by what I say, and yet can’t separate their personal offense at my beliefs from their love for me as a person, I would find it hard to believe that this person truly loved me in the first place.

The people who have been most upset by my speaking out are people who I realize were only appreciating me for what I contributed to their paradigm. Question the belief system, and suddenly the “love” for you turns into horror and anger at your perceived betrayal, and constant accusations about your intentions and motives. My motives have always been truth-seeking, and I’ll be damned (so to speak), if I let the “Fear of Man” (as it’s often put in the Bible) convince me not to speak openly.

7) Is there any part of the Bible you think is true? Why?

I have no problem believing that portions of the Bible have some basis in historical fact, but I also think a whole lot of it is legend, exaggeration, forgery, or simply an unintentional game of telephone. A good example of this would be the Jesus character we read about in the New Testament. I think it’s highly likely that such a person existed: but quite unlikely that most of the accounts of his escapades are based on historical fact. Did he walk on water? I don’t believe so. Did a story about a traveling miracle-worker walking on water spread rapidly throughout the land until it eventually made it into the written account of his life, during a time when traveling apocalyptic preachers and fraudulent miracle-workers were commonplace?
This seems more likely to me. It seems important to remind people that our modern understanding of the world has only been the norm for a short time. You could have told anyone 1000 years ago that unicorns were real, and you had seen them during your travels, and they would have believed you. Joseph Smith was able to get such a large following because it was commonplace for people to believe in mystical ideas and people took him at his word when he said he had discovered magical golden plates and God-spectacles to interpret them. People still use and swear by dowsing rods. It is STILL easy to convince people of things that have no basis in fact, even during a time when we should know better, so it’s not at all hard for me to accept that a whole lot of the Bible (like talking snakes and donkeys) are things ancient people accepted as fact because they didn’t know any better. We live in an era with recording devices and the internet, and yet people are convinced Tupac and Elvis are still alive. In an era where people had NO modern forms of communication (or any real way to verify a claim made 100 years prior), it’s easy to see how legends could arise, especially in a population primed to believe (and already comfortable believing) fantastical claims already.

I already posted a link to this video, but if you’re skipping around, it’s relevant here as well

8) How much did the American Christian movement aligning with Trump influence your new perspective on Christianity?

It was very frustrating, but it didn’t really do much for me. Like I’ve discussed above, this was a very personal decision I made over many years of looking for answers about the root of my faith. It was clear to me that Trump didn’t represent Christianity, and the Christians who claimed he did were clearly not true believers, as I saw it. I recall writing a Facebook post during the first Trump election campaign basically saying “we don’t claim him”. (And in the defense of many of my Christian friends, lots of them agreed with the post.) That being said, I think it’s been clear for years how much of a chokehold the Republican party has on American Evangelicals. Mention the word abortion a couple times in your speech, and suddenly no one cares that you’re planning to endlessly bomb the Middle East, despite how that seems to directly counteract the idea of being “pro-life”. You’ll get the Christian vote anyway, because Republicans have dedicated years to perfecting the right things to say to get the Evangelical vote. I do think the whole Trump thing made it really clear that Evangelicals can no longer pretend to care about having moral leadership. What would have gotten Obama crucified (so to speak) was just another daily reveal for Donald Trump. Paid a porn star hush money? He’s on his third former-model wife? Not a problem! God is using him to stack the Supreme Court in our favor. Until Evangelicals can confront the way they’ve become so easy to manipulate with a few key issues, they will continue to vote for horrendously immoral people, and Christians will continue to leave the church because of the clear hypocrisy. It’s not why I left, but the writing is clearly on the wall: as the number of people in the US defining themselves as Christian rapidly declines year over year. You can’t be openly hypocritical in your voting habits and expect people to take your faith proclamations seriously.

9) Since leaving the Christian faith, what have you found to guide you in your personal life as far as deciding what’s good or bad, what’s healthy for your mind and what’s not? Do you have something you have found to rest your decisions on or do you feel as though a pragmatic mindset has been more a driving factor?

Frankly, this hasn’t been something I’ve struggled with. It seems easy enough to accept that life is better when I’m kind to people, helping people, and working to learn new things and better myself. A deeper meaning beyond that hasn’t been something I’ve felt the need to chase, because this simple meaning seems good enough. I’m happy, I’m healthy, I’m feel that helping others and connecting with them gives me great purpose. When I run into a problem, it’s easy to ask: “Is this a kind response?” “Does this help me or someone else, or does it hurt people?” Sam Harris wrote a book called “The Moral Landscape”. I haven’t actually read it (got way too many books on my reading list), but the premise is simply: “morality – is that which leads to human flourishing, which means, living a satisfying life.” This not only means MY life, but the lives of the people around me.

I’ve written about this before, but I also feel as if I have more impetus to strive to create and experience good things in this life because I’m no longer planning to just die and go to heaven as my “ultimate retirement plan.” Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to work hard for myself and help people when I was a Christian too; but in the back of my mind were always two driving factors: a) My life purpose is to glorify God by leading more people to Christ and b) Everything will work out according to God’s purpose. The Christian perspective didn’t provide the same “finality” that I have for my life now, which I view as a fatal flaw for the Christian worldview. To put it another way:  If I’ve got one life, I had better use it to enact the changes I want to see in the world, because I can’t count on a god to do it for me and make everything “right in the end”. Rather than accepting things like world hunger as “part of a fallen world”, I believe that this life is the only chance we have to make a difference for the suffering of other people: because God isn’t writing them any IOUs. Plenty of Christians use their faith for good, but I’ve heard just as many use their paradigm to justify why horrible things like poverty and starvation are just “things that will happen in a fallen world”. The atheist does not get that luxury, and I’m glad for it.

10) What do you think about the “new age” stigma in Christianity and do you think it affects people's views on political issues and lifestyles such as LGBTQ and abortion?

I’m having trouble understanding what this question is getting at, since I’m not sure how they’re defining “new age stigma”.

Just judging by the phrasing (which seems negative), I think this person is concerned that modern Christians are becoming more accepting of LGBTQ people and are more open to being pro-choice. To which I have to say: I find this to be a good change.

Abortion is a complicated moral topic, but I think respecting human autonomy is critical. Even if we choose to define personhood at conception (which I think is dubious, even when attempting to use biblical passages to make the argument), there are so many cases where a full-formed, adult woman will suffer or die because of anti-abortion legislation. Are Christians really comfortable with legally forcing a woman to die because of a debate about the value of her ectopic pregnancy? (Even if some aren’t, many are.)

Attempting to ban a woman’s right to her own medical care (especially in medically necessary cases) is cruel and would be unheard of if the genders were flipped, frankly. Watching Christians stumble over the moral “quandary” of forcing a 10-year old rape victim to carry a child to full-term has been almost awe-inspiring in its absurdity. Of course a 10-year old child should not carry a baby to term. The girl’s life is in danger even if “everything goes right”, and I should hope all reasonable people can agree that a 10-year old rape victim is not an example of anything going right. It seems like utter common sense to say: “Provide the child rape victim an with abortion before the pregnancy develops further (endangering her life), and lock the rapist up.” There’s also very little pragmatic logic for why conception is the point at which life starts. Why not sperm? Why not eggs? Why isn’t masturbation murder? I’m personally opposed to late term abortion, (except in medically necessary cases), but I find it frustrating that many evangelicals are unable to recognize the obvious nuance on this issue and are so easily manipulated by politicians because of it. I’ve known at least one woman personally who required an abortion to save her life. I can’t even imagine holding the perspective that she should have been forced to die.

As far as LGBTQ people are concerned: I’m also not sure a single pragmatic case can be made for why to deny them equal rights outside of a religious framework, so I’m quite glad that many Christians are finally accepting of them in their lives and in their churches. There are very few verses in the Bible that can even be used to argue against being gay—perhaps six short passages, total; and theological/textual debates can easily be made about most of them. Rather than debate interpretation, I find it’s easier to just say that these sorts of problematic passages probably weren’t inspired and don’t actually reflect the will of God. Since humans are responsible for deciding which parts of the Bible are considered inspired, anyway, we might as well take some of that responsibility and use it for something good here, since it’s clear this sort of dogma is hurting people.

The fact is: the trend of evangelicals preaching against being gay is a cultural thing that will soon fall by the wayside. Many of my readers are probably too young to remember this, but in the 1960s, many Evangelicals prohibited interracial marriages and used their interpretation of the Bible to do it: only changing their opinions to be in line with the broader changes in society after it was clear the world was going to leave them behind for holding terrible ideas.  Bob Jones University didn’t even allow interracial dating until the year 2000. Like former Christian interpretations about interracial relationships, women wearing head coverings, slavery, and many other things: I think it’s inevitable that the modern church will change its opinions about being gay over the next couple decades as it becomes less easy to hold onto old (and bad) ideas. And that, my friends, is a fantastic thing.

If you’re a gay Evangelical Christian who is struggling with acceptance and depression because of how your Church views and treats you, please feel free to reach out to me to chat about this. MANY modern churches recognize and affirm your love, and you aren’t stuck here if you still have faith and want to stay Christian.

11) In general, do you think it’s harmful for people to believe in Jesus? If so, why? If not, why not?

In general, no. I do not think it’s inherently harmful. I think it’s very easy for harm to come from holding certain beliefs in a dogmatic way, but the vast majority of Christians do not have a faith like this. For most Christians, Jesus is simply a shoulder to cry on, a good role model, and a representation of the potential for life after death (which is a truly comforting thought for many who have lost family members and friends.)

I actually think that some form of religion is something the average person probably needs in some sense. We are weak creatures, life is confusing, and death is scary. I believe our species evolved religion to cope with these challenging truths.

As long as religious belief isn’t being used to harm anyone else, I’m perfectly happy (and thankful, even) for people to have it.

12) What has been the response of your former college friends? As a fellow LETU grad and ex-Christian I’m curious of the reception you’ve received, both good and bad.

The vast majority of my friends from LETU have actually deconstructed in some form or another, so most of the response has just been “oh wow, glad you made it out too!” or something to that effect. While I do have some LETU friends that are still pretty devout, many of them don’t use Facebook and haven’t seen my blog posts. Two of my best friends from back then are completely disconnected from social media: one does overseas mission work and we’ve drifted more out of touch each year for almost a decade now, and the other is someone I’ve actually sent my blog to via email because we have a history of these sorts of conversations. He’s insisted that he loves me and is still praying for me to come back to the faith.

Of the devout friends that have seen my posts and responded, the response has always been one of curiosity and dialogue, never of judgment or hostility. This makes sense to me: I’ve kept in touch with many good people from that period, and I would expect nothing less from them (which is why I’m friends with them.)

13) Why are people so triggered about the truth? 🤔

I’m assuming this question is referring to the many upset comments made on my recent post where I asked for people to submit questions for this blog (as well as the tons of messages and comments I’ve gotten for posting my other blogs.)

I’ll be honest: I don’t understand the lashing out either. Even at my most devout, I wouldn’t have dreamed of interacting with an ex-Christian the way many Christians have interacted with me. Threats of hell and accusations about my motives have become so common it’s mostly just funny at this point to read them.

If I were to wager a guess: I think some people tie up so much of their identities in their faith that they view my critical questioning and disagreement as a personal attack (even though I’m literally just writing blog posts about my personal story and views on my own damn website.) They assume it’s impossible that they’re wrong, and they treat denial of their theology as inherently evil behavior. Rather than being willing to question if their beliefs are true, many people would rather dismiss the questions entirely and say things in an attempt to get me to stop.

It’s also clear that there’s a lot of fear that I’ll draw other Christians away from the faith, so they think discouraging me from talking makes this less likely to happen. (Which is weird, because most of their theology preaches “once saved, always saved” and asserts the concepts of irresistible grace and limited atonement. According to their own theology, nothing I do can stop God’s plan of the “Elect” from getting to heaven. If God want them in, they’re getting in! So, if any of you Calvinists are reading this, maybe uh…stop worrying so much about what I say. Also, maybe stop being Calvinist. It’s a terrible theology. Please feel free to fight in the comments with the Arminians about this.)

14) I can't tell if I don't believe anything man has told me about God, if I do believe in God themselves, or if God is a concept man made up altogether. I want to believe in a higher power, but it's hard to connect to and understand them when people and organized religion are so untrustworthy and shitty. Did you ever get to this point? What did you settle on?

I did get to a similar point, yes. For a while, rather than using the term “Atheist”, I stuck with “Deist”. I decided Deism (the belief in a god, but not a specific one) was a good label for my beliefs for a while, because I felt like there was probably some sort of divine originating force for the universe.

I’ve more recently come to feel that this label stopped capturing my beliefs fully, though, because I don’t think identifying one single stereotypical “god” as the origin force is necessary for my worldview, and it seems more important to recognize that I don’t claim any god-belief when talking to people. There are a lot of different possibilities to consider (for instance: our universe might simply be a simulation within an entirely different universe, with entirely different rules about time and energy and matter. How would we even know the difference?) In that case, it’s equally likely some alien kid produced us as a science project rather than the traditional vision of a “god”.

I get the idea that it’s comforting to believe in a higher power that cares about us, but I don’t find there to be any convincing evidence that this is the case. It seems far more likely, given the vast amounts of death and chaos in the world: that things are just…happening. If a god exists in this sort of universe, they seem to view us quite like a plaything, which isn’t much of a comfort to me at all.

That being said, maybe there is a creator who truly cares about at least some of us (presumably while also not caring about the millions of starving children in the world). This is why I remain an “Agnostic Atheist” for now (re: the first question on this blog). There might be a god, but I certainly don’t know who, how, why, or what it is.

And that is a perfectly reasonable position to have, I think. (Which is why I hold it.) There’s no point in making up a story to explain the universe and fill the gaps in your knowledge, just because you feel like something supernatural has to be there. There’s a lot about the world I don’t know about, and so far, I’ve been able to get along just fine. Most people don’t understand how their car works, and yet they drive to work every day. We don’t understand the inner workings of every microchip in our cellphones. Why are we so worried about something that can’t possibly be proved one way or another, and is by definition something you must take on “faith”?

If there is a god who cared that we knew about them, it seems obvious that they would reveal themselves in a way that each person could actually believe and understand conclusively: rather than relying on the assembly, translation, and interpretation of obscure ancient texts that weren’t even readily available to most of the world until the last couple centuries. The Christian version of god has not only chosen not to convincingly reveal himself to most of humanity over the ages (I’m certainly not remotely convinced), but he’s apparently actively “hardened the hearts” of many whom he apparently doesn’t want to see in heaven.

*******************
And that, my friends, is the Tea.

The Bad God

Hello! It’s me again, Nathan.
I’m back again with another triggering blog post.
(You will find torches, pitchforks, and matches beneath your seats. Please ready them.)

This post will hopefully be shorter than the last. I wrote it on my phone late last night after a discussion with one of my friends….so my apologies if it’s a bit disjointed. It felt like a good continuation of my last post, and address a lot of the similar arguments I’ve been getting in my inbox. (Thank you, Timo, for the content inspiration. I’ve placed two torches under your seat as a gesture of goodwill!)

I’ve had a LOT of conversations with friends and family since my last post. The people most interested in long conversations are, predictably, people who are still Fundamentalist Christian in some way. Many of the reasons I disagree with Christianity have to do with that specific expression of the Christian faith, so it’s understandable that most of my critical thoughts on the subject would be something fundamentalists want to interact with. I also think my posts get a lot of interaction from fundamentalists, because of all the flavors of Christianity, fundamentalists (by definition) are THE MOST convinced that they have an entirely correct picture of God, and are therefore more convinced that they need to defend that picture. (This sort of dogmatism isn’t generally present in more “ChristianityLite”-styles of faith.)

So…..I’m addressing this one to the fundies. Let’s get to the meat of things:

TL;DR version: Evangelical Fundamentalists constantly claim that their version of God is the ULTIMATE representation of Perfection and Goodness…. and YET, the Evangelical Christian version of God is actually Quite Bad.
(Please light your torches and burn the blog post in a safe way, thank you.)

Initial Expected Reactions:

• My non-Christian friends: “Obviously??! I thought everyone knew that??”

• My non-Evangelical-but-still-Christian friends: “It’s a relationship, not a religion! Fundamentalists are needlessly dogmatic. God isn’t like that at all! Jesus just wants to love YOU.”

• My evangelical friends: “““You. WILL. Burn. In. Hell. If. You. Don’t. Get. Your. Act. Together!!! Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings”™️ -Ben Shapiro”-Michael Scott”” (Or something like that.)

There's a funny irony when it comes to defining things like "grace" and "good" via the Evangelical Christian God's (I’m going to shorten this to ECG for this post) attributes. Those words (and other nice-sounding words LIKE that) either: a) become so diluted they lose meaning entirely, because the ECG doesn't actually fit the dictionary definition of ANY of those words, when you begin to probe his character. Or....b) The words retain their meaning, but the actual characteristics of the ECG become so diluted that they no longer line up with the much of the actual text of the bible (and thus, the ECG just becomes a Generic Christian God™️, rather than a Hyper-Literal Fundamentalist Monster God™️).

In this post, I'm going to focus on the first part of the irony. Mostly because it's the exact flaw I grew up ignoring, but also because I feel that a God derived via that flaw is inherently more terrible than one derived from the other. If I’m being honest, I don’t really have an issue with the soft/fuzzy version of God many modern Christians accept. Do I think it’s silly? Sure. But I’d argue it’s also innocuous, and if religion ends up making people feel comfort and purpose, without causing too much harm, who am I do stop that?

Today, however, we’re going to focus on the ECG, a character I believe to be the opposite of innocuous.

Quick recap: the Bible describes God as good….a lot. (Click here for some examples). Think of any other “positive-sounding” word you can, and it’s probably been used in the Bible to describe God. Here’s a bunch of verses about how PERFECT God is.

Fundamentalist Christians (like me, pre-deconstruction) obviously take the Bible seriously, so they have to spend tons of time redefining (and thus diluting) words like "good" and “perfect” to just mean "whatever God does", which is...just...intellectually dishonest, because it takes away the entire meaning of the word. "Good" becomes useless as a word when it's used from the fundamentalist perspective. You'd be hard-pressed to find any sane human who would argue that 1 TRILLION MILLION BILLION YEARS OF ETERNAL AGONIZING PUNISHMENT IN HELL is "good" treatment for say: a dying 10-year old kid committed some minor “sins”. Maybe he lied a few times, got jealous a few times, maybe punched his brother once or twice, but never “Committed his life to Christ” (for whatever reason).

This is absolute insanity. There's no "justice", "grace", "love", "mercy", or "goodness" in that sort of a god. Using positive words to define that sort of behavior is laughable, if not a completely deranged abuse of the English language. And yet, fundamentalism preaches that "God is loving" and that everlasting punishment is a fair price to pay for, in what most human lifetimes, amounts to less than 80 years of minor misbehaving. Even human courts are more fair than that. 

Heck, I'd even argue that an everlasting punishment for terrible things like murder isn't even "grace", much less even remotely *fair*. Assuming there IS an afterlife, why would it make sense to condemn a murderer to eternal torture for taking someone else’s life prematurely? Yeah, it's messed up to murder, but mayyyyybe just 100 years of burning alive would do the trick in setting them straight? Especially when you consider the murdered person also gets eternal life and thus isn't really effected that badly, in the scheme of things?  

"Ahhh," (I hear the fundamentalists typing) ,"but you don't GET it, Nathan: Sin is not sin because it harms other humans. Sin is sin because it OFFENDS God! It is an AFFRONT to his Perfection. God has no choice but to eternally torment all things that offend him."

To which I say...
Weird take, and I feel like he has plenty of other choices.

But, I get it. I mean, I've used similar argument(s) myself plenty of times, so I do understand the allure. It's a very convenient way to sidestep the fact that fundamentalists have to pretend "God is Good" for sending people to hell. The fact is: if God was perfect and good, he would have perfect forgiveness. (No..."I-murdered-my-son-on-a-cross-and-if-you-say-the-magic-words-and- truly-believe-in-him-I'll-let-your-sins-slide" is conditional forgiveness. I'm talking UNCONDITIONAL forgiveness. Conditional forgiveness is NOT perfect. Perfect forgiveness would require no actions taken, no actions needed, no magic words said, and DEFINITELY no need to hear the special story from a missionary to even get the chance to say and believe all that in the first place.) 

There's nothing "perfect" about condemning unreached African tribes to eternal fire just because nobody got to them yet with the "good news". It's actually just morally reprehensible that a god would behave that way. There's nothing "perfect" or "good" about an eternal punishment calendar that sends nice old ladies to hell because they were Buddhist and didn't think the Christian missionaries who knocked on their door in the 1980s were convincing. Defining ANY of that as "perfect" is to strip the word of all its meaning. 

Let's do an exercise. For the sake of argument (channeling my inner Ben Shapiro again), let's say the ECG exists. Let's say his constitution is so sensitive to sin, it just reallyyyy makes his stomach churn when someone lies. Now, he CAN'T let them come to heaven... Can't do it! Way too many bad vibes if they show up! (It's already sounding quite silly, but let's keep rolling.)

"... Alright", we say. "Kinda makes sense, I guess? I mean, obviously you don't want bad vibes at your house/sky castle, or whatever. Maybe God could make a special place for liars that's away from him, but not like...burning forever?" 

(The fundamentalists begin typing again.) "NO, NATHAN. THE POINT OF HELL IS THAT YOU'RE SEPARATED FROM GOD, THAT'S THE REALLY BAD PART ABOUT IT. IT’S NOT ABOUT THE FIRE! GOD HAS TO SEPARATE US FROM HIMSELF AND ALL HIS GOODNESS"

Me: "Hmm, okay, fair enough. Weird that everyone emphasizes the lake of fire so much, huh? Heck, you probably wouldn't even notice that eternal fire stuff if you were like...reallllllyyyy sadddd....about being separated from God? Annnnnyway."
 

Isn't it kinda weird that the all-powerful, all-knowing God who created the entire universe from scratch (including heaven and hell) wasn't able to come up with a better way than hell to separate his feelings about sin from his "perfect" personality? 

Yeah, it's weird. So weird, I'd argue...it's not perfect at all. (Unless of course, you make up a new, weird definition for "perfect"...)

I'll leave you, the fundamentalist, with a few simple questions:

1) If your God can't do certain things, is he really "all-powerful"? And if he's not all powerful, how can you consider him perfect?

2) If your God is good, why do his plans for justice involve completely uneven cosmic scales that result in eternal torment?

3) If your God is so sensitive to sin that he torments nice old ladies in hell forever because they never converted, is he really that strong of a god? Or is he more like a vindictive serial killer who never got his way? Is a god like that worth worshipping?

4) Is it possible certain things you think about God are wrong? Is it possible you've been believing a partial lie? 

5) Were you able to ask yourself those questions honestly, or did you immediately try to come up with counter arguments because my post made you upset? How far in this brainwashing are you?


(Please place your torches and pitchforks in the baskets to your left as you exit the theater.)
-Nathan

Losing My Religion: A Fundamentalist Christian Changes His Mind About His Faith And Highly Recommends It (Alternate Title: Is Nathan Going To Hell?)

I’m no longer a Christian.
(You can stop reading here if you want.)

I almost didn’t write this.
I wondered if this was something that even needed to be said. Would this topic offend people I love or make them sad? (Probably at least the latter.) Would anyone even care enough to read this? (You’ll have to let me know.) “There’s a lot going on in the world, and Nathan’s personal beliefs are not high up on the list of things I have time to care about, anyway!” There was also a part of me that didn’t even think it would matter to me if I wrote this or not. Do I even want to take the time to do this? I’ve got a busy life, I’m behind on all kinds of chores right now…writing about my beliefs and my life seems kinda pointless, in light of all the productive things I could be doing, doesn’t it?

If you’re seeing this, though, it appears I decided to postpone my chores and write about it; regardless of how it will be received, or how valuable of an exercise it may not be.

Maybe it would have been best to just process my religious deconstruction privately. Religion is one of the main things you’re not supposed to talk about if you want to avoid long, drawn-out internet arguments, right? Unfortunately, anyone who has me on Facebook (or knows me in person) knows that long, drawn-out opinions are something I thrive on giving. I suppose, then, that this essay was an inevitable step on my journey of processing my thoughts on the topic that has shaped my life more than anything else for over 30 years.

Some of you may still be wondering, “Why bother writing this? Just move on.”

I’ll give you three reasons:
First, as I alluded above, I like to process my thoughts through writing. Writing this essay will give me an opportunity to organize my thoughts on a personal (arguably critically important), and complex topic.

Second (also alluded to above and related to my first point), I have always been an extremely vocal and opinionated person, both online and in person. Anyone who has been friends with me for 10+ years knows this, and has seen me 1) decry various things I had (at the time) deemed biblically immoral (being gay, premarital sex, men being effeminate/not leading their households, etc.) 2) be generally argumentative and oftentimes quite arrogant with people who weren’t approaching life from the same religious framework. A big part of this behavior has been because I genuinely enjoy argument as a way to flesh out a more thorough understanding of my own beliefs. A more regrettable facet to this behavior is that I love being right about things and proving people wrong, quite often as a way to assert my voice at the expense of other opinions I deem incorrect. Thus, we have my second reason for writing this essay: I want to proclaim loudly that I’ve changed my mind. I want to apologize for errors I’ve made and for holding my religious opinions in arrogance. I’ve made a lot of progress to this goal over the years even before my deconstruction. I’ve prioritized more fully-listening to perspectives I disagree with, and I think I’ve gotten much better over the years at changing my mind. That being said, I’ve only recently come to realize how damaging many of my old beliefs were, and wanted to do my best to acknowledge that damage somewhere public.

Third, and potentially most offensive to those readers who still hold to a fundamentalist version of Christianity: I wanted to write this as an inspiration to consider changing your mind. I’m aware that for most of you, this will be out of the question. Not only may you not be interested in changing your mind, it just might be impossible for you to get to that point where you could. Belief is so ingrained in a Christian’s identity (and psyche), it might even be impossible for you to seriously consider the possibility that a non-Christian belief system could be true. You likely have numerous answers for why you believe what you do. (A big part of any fundamentalist paradigm is coming up with responses to common critiques.) There is a LOT of ingrained fear behind fundamentalism. After all, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” (Proverbs 9:10a) If you grew up in the church like I did, you may have had nightmares about hell as a child. For many Christians, even saying the sentence “Jesus is not God” could give you a physiological response akin to a panic attack. I hesitate to say the word “brainwashing,” because in my experience, Christians actively and genuinely believe these things: but there are few words that more accurately describe the act of training up a child in a fundamentalist Christian tradition, to the point where they wake up in bed at 6 years old crying because they are worried about going to hell. The cumulative effect of accepting the Christian paradigm I was given as a child, and living it each day has left me feeling like I was wrapped in a tight ball of yarn and added more yarn to it every day, by my own hand. With a lifetime of being steeped in, and actively steeping myself in fundamentalist Christianity, I have had to unwind a lot of thread on this ball of yarn. Each successive day of unwinding has given me clarity, hope, and peace, but it hasn’t been easy or painless. As an adult, gathering the courage to leave Christianity was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. If this essay inspires you with questions, or helps you start unraveling your own ball of yarn, I will consider that a success.


Now: I’ve written way too many words about why I’m writing words. Let’s get to the meat of things.

1) My background:

For those of you who don’t know, my name is Nathan. Now ex-Christian, but formerly very Christian. I’m the son of a pastor, who, with my mother, also happened to be a missionary in Japan for the first four or so years of my life. (That one-two PK/MK combo!) Some of my very first memories involve bible studies in Japan and singing songs in church. My parents wanted to go to Japan to share the Gospel (literal meaning: “good news”) of Jesus Christ to the largely unchurched population. Since Japan is approximately 1% Christian, it was a perfect place to do that. We left Japan when I was about five years-old, and moved to Los Angeles, where my dad finished up his master’s degree at a seminary (Bible school) run by John MacArther, a fairly famous megachurch pastor who subscribes to a rigid, “Reformed Baptist” tradition, and is also the president of a large Christian college adjacent to the seminary. When I was about nine years-old, we moved to rural Eastern Oregon, where my dad became a pastor of a small church for the remainder of my childhood. While my parents had (and have) their own nuanced beliefs, they essentially subscribed to the vast majority of the Reformed Baptist tenets, and passed those beliefs to the rest of our household. There is a lot of nuance to what different fundamentalist Christian groups believe (see here for details), but the essentials I was taught can be roughly summed up as: 1) The Christian Bible is perfect, and is the only legitimate way to learn about God. 2) Humans are flawed and exist solely to please God 3) God is perfect and encompasses all good traits.
From there, the Reformed Baptist interpretation of the Bible leads to many specific beliefs and mentalities. I won’t go into too much more detail, but understanding this framework is critical to understanding the mindset of those in this system (and understanding my mindset before I began to abandon it.) Here are a few substantial beliefs:
1) Men should lead their households, and women should be “helpers”
2) Marriage between a man and a woman is a specific God-designed structure to reflect the relationship “between Jesus and the Church [the global collection of true Christian believers]” (with men being like Jesus and women being like the Church)
3) Human desires and (and even needs) are inherently wrong and illegitimate unless they are executed with an intent to please God and guided by the principles in the Christian Bible.
4) The guiding force behind all human actions should be the question: “Is this what God wants?”

Understandably, this may feel like a bit much for those of you not living in a faith-based paradigm. Suffice to say, I fully bought-in to this framework after my initial conversion at 6-years old. I did have several brief lapses in my faith, notably about 10-years old, when I briefly determined I was agnostic and held that belief privately before converting back and praying for Jesus to save me again. At 12 years-old, I went publicly before my church and got baptized (reading aloud my desire to live within God’s will for my life and commit fully to him, as well as acknowledging how he’d saved me from my sinful nature.) I believed my words fully in that moment, and I was fully committed to my role in life serving God.

Fast-forward a few years. I remained extremely involved in church, and truly enjoyed my life there. All my good friends were from church, and were as fully-bought-in as I was. We had mid-week Bible studies, Sunday school, Sunday service (my dad preached almost every Sunday unless we had a guest), as well as lots of special church-related events like potlucks, Christmas caroling, etc. I also got involved with local youth groups at other churches, because our own church was of the opinion that youth groups weren’t productive and kids should just learn with the adults. For many people, this much church might sound like a special kind of hell (irony not lost on me). For me, it was a sense of purpose, the right thing to do (because it was what God wanted), and most importantly: it basically made it impossible to doubt your faith for more than a couple days before you got a spiritual boost from your church family.

When I would have doubts (albeit rarely), they always melted away after the first harmonies of “Amazing Grace” were sung by the congregation…And I didn’t have that many doubts. I knew (and still know) the “correct” Christian answer to any critique of the faith. I was always “prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15)...and I DID have hope, and I DID make a constant defense for my faith. I was constantly witnessing to my friends at school and trying to subtly influence them to see the truth of the Bible/Christianity. I was fully convinced the vast majority of my friends and the people I interacted with were going to hell, and that it was my responsibility to help guide them away from that fate. Since every action of mine was guided by my desire to please God, I felt like I was on a constant shadow mission to witness to and “save” the people I interacted with. Even small interactions were flavored by the mindset that the person sitting across from me might not be saved, and I needed to limit my interaction in ways that didn’t make Jesus look bad and that made them more likely to convert at some point. As one can imagine, this constant subtext to all interactions made it hard to genuinely connect with people who weren’t Christian. I didn’t care about that, though: I truly just wanted to help save people from hell.


2) How and why I abandoned my faith:

From the outside-looking-in at fundamentalist Christianity, there are many obvious concerns. From the blatant sexism in the New Testament, to the murder of babies and genocide that are glossed over in the Old Testament, it’s easy to find things that are hard to justify. To the fundamentalist, however, these concerns are irrelevant. With the perspective that God is the ultimate, all-powerful being of truth and all that is good, you can immediately rationalize these things as “part of God’s plan.” God sent an Angel of Death to kill all Egyptian first-born sons? “That’s okay: Evil Pharaoh needed to learn a lesson, and God (who knows everyone’s entire life before they live it) probably knew that they’d all grow up to be evil anyway!” Women shouldn’t ever give verbal opinions in church and should wait until they get home to ask their husbands’ questions? (1st Corinthians 14:34–35) “Uhhhh…personal preference: depends which church you go to. Probably a safe bet to just make sure they aren’t ever pastors? It’s okay though: doesn’t it *make sense* that women and men are meant to have different *roles* in life? With women being submissive to men, of course. I mean, it’s part of God’s design.”

Good fundamentalists (e.g., those who believe in Biblical inerrancy) can generally never be shaken with a simple critique of “bad things” in the bible. When you start from the framework that God is the very definition of all things good, you can’t ever truly criticize him, even for patently evil actions. (Not that a true Christian would dare criticize God, anyway.) “Well, God knows best” is always an acceptable answer for the fundamentalist, because it truly is the essence of their belief. All of it rides on God. Even if it feels bad, it must be good, because God did it, and God IS good. As a fundamentalist, I got very good at reasoning my way around these critiques in ways that didn’t make God seem like a bad guy, (even if I was really just using word salad and circular logic to muddy the waters.)

My journey to leave my faith began with a simple question about 6 years ago (I can’t put an exact date on it, it’s something that just slowly ate away at me until it became a fully-formed thought): What if the Bible isn’t fully inspired (“God-breathed”)? There are some verses that even modern Christians debate as inspired (Mark 16 has several, for instance), so why not consider the possibility that entire books (out of the 66) aren’t supposed to be in there? Humans assembled the Bible, didn’t they? Who is to say that God inspired Revelation, for instance, and that it wasn’t just some weird fever dream John had? Am I really trusting a bunch of historical humans to have assembled the Bible in the exact order that God wanted? This question led me to the rapid realization that I would lose my faith if I didn’t figure out exactly how and why the Bible came to be in its entirety. I began reading and researching everything I could. I bought books, and I requested more book recommendations on the topic from my dad. I dug online, I dug into the Bible itself and used every available tool (including prayer) to try to convince myself of the validity of the Bible as a source of truth. My search for truth was exceptionally disappointing. Not only could I not find good (logical) reasoning for why some passages are considered inspired over others: but I began coming to terms with the large amount of inconsistencies and general weirdness in the Bible that isn’t really discussed in Christian circles. I finally came to terms with it: None of the Bible was inspired: It was all just words, written by humans. Many of these words contained great human wisdom, poetry, and beauty: but they aren’t God’s words. Humans decided to ascribe deeper meaning to them after the fact, or specifically wrote them with the intent to pass them off as God’s words. The Bible was no different, in substance, from any other religious text. Human-written.

This realization was the nuclear warhead for my faith.

Though I’d previously had it at my fingertips, my only source of ultimate truth was now gone. The truth I’d based my entire life on and used to guide my every action (to the best of my ability) was revealed to be a lie. Not only was this a huge blow to me mentally, but it was a crushing emotional experience. I became depressed and filled the void with as many distractions as I could muster. I wanted to believe in the Bible, and I wanted to believe in the God I’d been taught. It turned out He didn’t want me to.


3) Where I’m at now:

Unsurprisingly, the thread kept unraveling further. I got to a point where I questioned everything spiritual I’d been taught (except the existence of some God (or at least, some sort of Creative Force.) Surprisingly (to me), I started to become whole again. Where I’d once believed (and been told) I would only find pain and lack of purpose “outside of God’s will”: I suddenly realized deeper meaning than I’d ever had as a Christian. The uncertainty of what comes after death gave me a new reason to live fully and genuinely during the short life I have. I could actually build genuine connections with non-Christian coworkers and friends–Connections that weren't predicated on my secret hope to convert them. I could experience new things and interact with new kinds of people who I’d previously silently (to their face) and openly (behind their back) condemned for their “lifestyle choices.”

I’m at a place now where I’ve come to accept that most of what I grew up learning was an extraordinary lie (we can call it a myth if that feels better), taught to me with no ill intent, by people who genuinely believed it with the core of their being. I’ve come to feel very foolish for buying into it in the first place, but find solace in the fact that I also never knew any better until I had the opportunity to learn. I hope this essay prompts similar questions for those willing to ask.


I have many, many friends and family who still believe. (You might even still be reading this!) I know many of them will think (or say) something like this:
“That’s so sad he fell away from the faith, I’ll pray that God pulls him back.”
“He was never actually a Christian before, he was just going through the motions.”
“It really is too bad, I wonder if his parents could have done anything different.”

Of course, this is just the canned reaction to seeing someone abandon their faith. I’ve given it myself countless times upon witnessing a former Christian leave the Church. “They were never truly saved.” Rather than accept the fact that it’s possible to change your mind about something so serious, it’s easier to resort to just dismissing the validity of the decision. (Look up John Calvin if you’re interested in why this response is typical of reformed Fundamentalism.)

One of the biggest issues with fundamentalism is the inability to accept any other differing beliefs as holding potential truth. This leads to condescending responses like this, as well as a lot of well-intentioned condescension/infantilizing of people in general. (I say well-intentioned, because fundamentalists really just believe you need Jesus to change you, and then you’ll be fine.) When your framework for how the world should function becomes exceptionally narrow, with your worldview at the very top, you end up throwing away a lot of legitimate experiences and people with it. I almost wrote this as two separate essays: one for Christian friends, and one for my non-Christian friends, because the way both parties approach the world is so entirely different, and it’s been hard to try to write in what truly boils down to two separate languages, at the same time.

That being said, I’m glad I only wrote one essay, because this has been an all-day affair.

I could keep going and write much more, but I don’t have time for a book (at least not tonight.) I’ll keep it simple: Since abandoning religion, I have never felt more at peace with the world, or able to genuinely love people and experience life more fully. I remain confident that I don’t know everything about existence, and I’m okay with that. This is a journey I’m truly just starting, but I’m thankful for everyone who has taken the time to learn about it with me. If you’re having similar questions about your faith or want to start a similar journey, please reach out. It’s possible to leave, even if you feel you’ll lose every support system you’ve ever relied on. I can’t promise you won’t lose things you value, but I can promise you I’ll personally never choose to go back to the way things were, because the world is so much fuller for me now. It wasn’t easy for me to start either on this path, but living a life without believing in myths has rocked my world in only the best ways and I’m growing more in love with life as I unwind each new thread.

-Nathan