Almost an Atheist

Posted by Helen on: 11.07.2006 /

The format of the Almost an Atheist workshop at the conference was:

• Jim introduced me
• I spoke for about half an hour
• Jim shared a few thoughts
• Jim opened up for questions from the audience
• Jim asked people to share what they appreciated

It looked like around 100 people were there. There were seven other workshops at the same time as mine. In view of that I was very appreciative of the support of the bloggers who chose mine. I was touched to see some of the other people who were there - I think these people were there: Mike Howerton, the Loyds, Lisa Domke, John the pastor I sat next to at breakfast, George Barna, Sunil Sardar. And others.

I decided to talk without notes in the hope that it would flow better than if I kept referring to them. The downside of that was, I did forget a few things here and there I meant to say. But any that were at all substantive came up in the questions, so that was good.

Here’s a detailed summary of the talk I gave. This is especially for Julie Marie and Eliza and anyone else who wished they could be there but couldn’t.

Opening: “Bible Expert talks about Ex-Christians”

I opened by saying that before I gave my talk I was going to have a Bible Expert comment on Ex-Christians. However, due to budget constraints the Bible expert was me with my Christian hat on. I actually brought a hat with me for this: it says “Soak up the Son” and 1 John 5:11 on it.

The ‘Bible Expert’ said: What can we say about ex-Christians from a Biblical point of view? First, a little investigation reveals most of them never were ‘real’ Christians in the first place. If one of them had died while thinking he/she was a Christian, and gone to stand face to face with Jesus he/she would have been in for a big shock. Jesus would have asked “Why should I let you into my heaven?” They would have answered something like: “Because I went to church faithfully? I did my best to be a good person?” And Jesus would have responded “That’s not good enough. You have to be perfect to get into my heaven!”

But some of these people really are true children of God. They experienced his power and goodness; maybe served him faithfully for years; then for some reason turned their back on him and walked away, rebelling against his authority. These bother me more than the first group because they were ignorant; whereas these people knew the truth and they walked away. I’m not sure why: maybe they were disappointed by Christians, or by God not answering their prayers; maybe the lure of sin was too great.

One day they will stand before Jesus and look into his eyes and realize they made a terrible mistake. They could have been standing there hearing him say “Well done, my good and faithful servant!” but instead they threw away that opportunity and wasted their lives.

What I Am

I said “almost an atheist” is a pretty good description. I live my life a-theistically: without God; God is not a part of my personal life. I don’t talk to God or consult him about my decisions. I set my own priorities and values. And by the way, some Christians say that if you do that the only rational choice is to be selfish. I disagree - because, if I am kind to someone, that makes them happy. And making them happy makes me happy. So I think that’s a very rational choice!

I talked about being a stay at home Mom, how I would pick up my children from school every day when they were younger. I mentioned a day when they were 5 and 7 when something came up and I couldn’t be there and didn’t have a contingency plan. I said how I felt terrible thinking about how they would come out of the door when the bell rang, look around at the parents/caregivers waiting and there would be no-one there for them. They wouldn’t know what to do.

Then I said, a few years ago when I began to doubt the existence of God I realized that if he wasn’t there for me I wouldn’t know what to do. God has made wonderful promises in the Bible, but if he doesn’t exist he can’t keep any of them. I decided I wanted a contingency plan and I thought “Who knows who to live without God? Atheists!” So I started reading an atheist discussion board online and based on what I learned there I made changes in my life so I wasn’t dependent on God anymore.

Why “almost”? I said, first, I hate labels so I would always prefer to have ‘almost’ in there. Also, ‘atheist’ implies a strong stand against God’s existence which isn’t exactly where I’m at. I asked for a show of hands of who has never interacted with me or posted here. (I promised nothing bad would happen to them if they put their hands up) There were some people there who did put their hands up. So I said, if anyone had asked me the day before about you, I would have said you weren’t a part of my life, but I wouldn’t have denied your existence. And that’s more or less how it is with me and God.

[I meant to add here that I talked to my husband about the children and he couldn't pick them up either but he arranged that a babysitter they knew and trusted would. So that worked out fine. I think I forgot to say this]

What I Was

I shared how I became a Christian: this took place 22 years ago, when I was 20 years old and a college student. About 2 weeks after I heard the gospel for the first time, I prayed by myself in my room “Jesus, thank you for dying for my sins. Please come into my life; I give my life to you”. As I prayed I felt a strong and powerful presence. At the time I believed this was God answering my prayer - I was very excited. Because of that experience, partly, I started getting involved right away in going to church, reading and studying the Bible and other Christian activities and was very enthusiastic about them.

I said - I could talk more about Christian activities over the next 16 or so years but I’d rather share a story about a part of my life, to show you what it was like for me, being a Christian.

When I became a Christian I was in a serious dating relationship. It wasn’t long before Christians started pointing out to me “You know, Christians shouldn’t marry unbelievers - the Bible says “Do not be yoked with unbelievers”. After first I hoped my boyfriend would become a Christian also and I prayed hard for that. As time went by the likelihood of that seemed to diminish. The following summer I tried to break up with him but neither of us really wanted to and that didn’t work. I felt guilty that I had given my life to God but in this area I was not putting him first.

In our final year at college he decided he wanted to go to graduate school in the US: he applied and was accepted by the University of Chicago. We got engaged and made plans to move here together. After graduation I came here to interview for jobs. I told God “If you don’t want me to go you could stop me getting a job” - but as it turned out, I was offered both jobs I applied for. (Jim made some comment here but I can’t remember exactly what he said)

We moved to Chicago the fall after we graduated. I started attending a large evangelical church there and we made plans to get married a year later. I would have loved if the pastor of the church where I was going could have married us but I didn’t even ask. I knew he wouldn’t and he would have tried to discourage me from marrying an unbeliever. In fact I kept a low profile at church in general because I’d had enough “Don’t marry an unbeliever” advice by then.

We made arrangements to get married in a small chapel on the university campus and asked the Episcopal chaplain if he’d perform the service. He was very happy to and I was pleased that I did at least have a Christian wedding performed by a Christian minister.

About a year after we got married I had a dream that was very striking to me. It was at the end of my life and God was judging people. I could see who was losing rewards because of the sin there had been in their life. Then it was my turn. I was stunned that I didn’t lose anything! How could it be that this ‘thing’ I was so focused on - marrying an unbeliever, didn’t even figure on God’s radar when he looked at my whole life?

In the morning I really wanted to know if this was a message from God to me. I opened my Bible and found myself in Philippians 3 where it says “One thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus”. That verse became my life verse: I determined not to dwell on what I had done but to look ahead and be as available to God as I could, notwithstanding that my own choices had somewhat limited my availability.

I wrapped up this part by saying, my husband is a wonderful guy; I’ve never regretted marrying him - my only regret all along was that I couldn’t find a way to do it without feeling I was disobeying God.

Five Key Choices I Made

1. Being kind over being good

   This happened late in the year 2000, about 6 years ago. I think it was the choice that set me in a different direction, on the path which led me right out of conservative Christianity.

   In the fall of that year I had got involved in a campaign all about ‘being right’. Churches often run workshops using materials from an outside source. The campaign was to alert churches that the producer of one of these workshops was denying the doctrine of the Trinity in her statement of faith on her website. She claimed the workshop was Bible-based but in fact she was denying a core doctrine of Biblical Christianity.

   It was cool when churches wrote back and said “Thanks for telling us”. It was especially cool when Christianity Today and the Wall Street Journal picked up this story and my name got mentioned.

   However I started to think about what I was doing. The producer of the workshop was like me - she had the same motive - we were both doing our best to do what God wanted. And what had she ever done to hurt me? And here I was doing this to her. How had I got into this? I had set up my website a few years earlier and called it “Love is the most excellent way”. As I looked at myself I thought “I look more like a Pharisee than a Christian!”

   So I abruptly quit the campaign. I took down the page on my website involved with it and put up an apology to the workshop producer instead. I also mailed her an apology. One nice thing was - I got a note back from her with a photo of her family. Another consequence was - the people who had liked me doing the campaign, who thought I was a heroine - now wondered if I was a heretic too.

2. Choosing what I knew was real over what I might be making up

   I was in the habit of having a quiet time each day (or trying to) where I would talk to God and read the Bible. I began to think “How do I know? God is talking back to me? Maybe I am just talking to myself.” Christians in my tradition might say “Test what you hear with Scripture. If what you hear lines up with the Bible, assume it’s God!” The problem was, I’d already figured out how to justify the most crazy-seeming thing, which no-one else agreed with, with Scripture. All I had to do was turn to Genesis where God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.

   So that didn’t work for me. I decided to take the drastic step of not praying anymore. It was sort of an experiment - I would see how it went. It went well so I haven’t ever started praying again.

   [Here I meant to say a couple of other things but forgot. (I did mention them during question time, though) I meant to say that I started to look at other aspects of my Christian life this way, asking whether I could be sure God was involved. As a result I decided the Bible didn't seem amazing or consistent enough to be the Word of God - to me it seemed more like it was by human authors who believed in God. And I also decided that Christians didn't seem different enough from non-Christians in character/character-based behavior to justify believing that the Christians are uniquely empowered by the Holy Spirit.]

3. Being childlike but not childish

   Jesus said you need to become like a child to enter the kingdom of heaven. This is what I think of as childlike: being curious, playful, not afraid to take risks, having fun, laughing easily, not taking life too seriously. Have you ever noticed that Christians sometimes take life sooooo seriously??? I sometimes wonder if God looks down from heaven at Christians and thinks “Oh Myself - I wish they would just lighten up a bit!!!” (People laughed at that - I was glad!)

   I think it’s good to be this way throughout our lives.

   On the other hand I think of ‘childish’ as a stage which is normal for children, but which we should grow out of. It’s the stage where we idealize authority figures. If the authority figure does anything that doesn’t make sense to us we blame ourselves rather than mess up our ideal picture of them.

   I decided to be childlike but not childish. A consequence of this was, I found I couldn’t listen to Christian sermons on the radio anymore because I felt ‘talked down to’.

4. Being free rather than burdened

   [I meant to quote Galatians 5:1 and Matthew 11:30 here but I think I forgot - oh well! Those verses say "It is for freedom Christ has set you free; stand firm and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." Also Jesus said "My yoke is easy and my burden is light"]

   When I became a Christian I was set free in various ways. However in the last few years I’ve realized that Christianity also put a burden on me that I was unaware of at the time. I wasn’t in a tradition where I was afraid I could lose my salvation, so it wasn’t a burden of fear. Even so, trying to figure out God’s will and please him was quite a burden. I’ve felt much more freedom since I’ve stopped intentionally trying to figure out his will.

   Another freedom I now have is - being free to enjoy everything in life. Before, I would heavily discount whatever conservative Christians said was not of ‘eternal value’.

   Another one is - being free to enjoy conversations without feeling I need to try to sell something the other person doesn’t want to buy. Which is often how I felt if I tried to share the gospel with someone.

5. Being a follower of Jesus even though I can’t say I’m a believer in him

   I have too many doubts to say I’m a believer in Jesus, but I can still choose to be a follower. One of the neat things for me is that Off The Map emphasizes following Jesus and doesn’t have a litmus test for belief. So that has worked out well for me.

   I ended with something I had posted on Jason Clark’s blog a couple of weeks earlier. Which is: I believe I am following Jesus when:

   1. I am fully me in every way that is good
   2. I oppose misuse of power whever I encounter it
   3. I don’t prioritize my own personal comfort and convenience if something else seems more important
   4. I remember everyone matters
   5. I do what’s right even when (almost) no-one notices
   6. I jump off the bandwagon and don’t even mind if I have a hard landing - because I’d rather that than be taken somewhere I don’t think I should go

Questions after the talk

There were several and I’m afraid I don’t remember them all. A few I remember were:

1. How do you interpret the powerful experience you had when you became a Christian, which you thought was God, now?

   I said, I’ve had some very intense emotional experiences since then; I think it’s possible it could have been one of them.

2. Comment on the Bible verses about not leaving your husband if you get saved when already married; and about winning him over without a word.
   
   I said I wished I could have made the first one apply but unfortunately I wasn’t married yet when I got saved. Jim jumped in and said “You missed the window on that one!” I said I tried to apply winning him over without a word.
3. In your list of what it means to follow Jesus you said “I remember that everyone matters” - do you believe Jesus thought that?
   
   I said, yes, because he cared about individuals. He touched the leper even though humanly speaking, he could have caught leprosy; and he noticed Zaccheus up the tree and called him down and had dinner with him.

I think someone asked whether my reasons for leaving the faith were all emotional and I said, no, I also have serious intellectual issues with the Bible. In this or the mainstage interview I think I said that I had watched Arminians and Calvinists argue online for years about who was right - and each had their own key set of verses to prove their position (which of course, were different verses). And one day it just occurred to me - hey, maybe they both are right and the Bible contradicts itself. Which opened the door to a whole other way of looking at the Bible.

Deborah Loyd asked what Christians could do better in interacting with people like me, which was a very kind, thoughtful question. I can’t remember how I answered, though.

What people appreciated

Jim asked people to share what they appreciated. People, including some bloggers, said very kind things. Meg insisted Jim let her get her comment in, when he was about ready to wrap up the workshop - which was very sweet, and surprising too because she said “I’m a blogger” and I had no idea who she was, since we hadn’t met yet!

Mike Howerton thanked me for being kind to him - which touched me because I had been thinking he’d been kind to me and had no idea what I had done that he thought was kind to him! We had chatted earlier in the day and I’d enjoyed that.

Throughout the day

People came up to me throughout the rest of the day to thank me for coming to the conference and having the courage to share, and for my authenticity.

One woman said she didn’t agree with me but she was praying for me. She wasn’t mean - just concerned. And she didn’t try to ‘debate’ me on anything which I appreciated.

One person said the comment had come up “Doesn’t your deconversion prove the people right who warned you not to marry an atheist?” This rather threw me because I felt like I should have anticipated someone thinking that and I didn’t. I asked Jim if I could address it in the mainstage interview and he said I could. So at that time I shared it and responded with “I don’t think it does because my husband never did one thing to pull me away from the faith”.

Mainstage Interview

There are a couple of short blog entries about this on other blogs:

Revolution Conference: Why I Don’t Go to Church Anymore - Christine Wicker & Helen Mildenhall (I’m in the middle in the photo)

Off The Map equal with atheists

The best part of the interview was teasing Jim about whether he was violating the Pledge of Kindness he just led everyone in. He jumped in as I was talking about pulling away from the faith and said “You mean, you backslid”. So I looked at the Pledge and said “Didn’t you just say that…?” That got a good laugh from everyone, which was fun. Getting to tease Jim onstage made my conference experience complete! :-)

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Semi-Related Posts

• Explaining “almost an atheist”
• An atheist at a Christian college
• How to Please an Atheist (or Christian)
• How to Irritate an Atheist
• New bloggers on the eBay atheist blog
• Christians and atheists can be special friends
• Constitution of dialog

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