The story of my conversion

This is one of those posts that sits in your head for a long time, scratching at the door every now and then wanting to be let out for a pee. Dodgy metaphors aside, I've never sat down and given myself the time to commit this post to the virtual page. I'll give it a go.

I would say that this post might never have been written had it not been for the growing number of  conversations I've had recently where I've broken cover and spoken my mind more openly and honestly than I've ever felt comfortable with before.

So, I should get down to the title of this post (it was going to be 'Coming out', but I thought that may have set me up for accusations of baiting the trap).

I am no longer a believer. A believer in what? In most of what I was brought up to believe. In God, the Bible, the myths and stories that have shaped my life and character since I was a youngster. I am no longer a Christian.

First, in the style of all testimonies, and more for those who don't know me that well, a little background.

I was born into a Christian family. A pretty fundamentalist lot, my grandfather was one of the founders of the Baptist church my family attended for all of my childhood. I was sent to Sunday School there from the time I could stand. My father and mother were, I thought at the time, pretty strict. No TV or shopping on a Sunday. Prayers and Bible before bed. That sort of stuff (I did watch 'normal' TV during the week, so I did get my fill of The A-Team and Airwolf too). I can't remember having been taught it explicitly, but I pretty much grew up with the notion that everything was bad. Only God was good and we couldn't consider ourselves or anything we did as good or wholesome or particularly worthwhile. Getting saved was the number one priority. Once that was out of the way, getting everyone else saved became your number one priority.

Now, don't get me wrong, I had a happy childhood. I had toys. Went to school. I had friends. But church was the centre of everything. Looking back on it now, I wouldn't say my parents were hardline fundies. They certainly believed and wanted me to as well, but I can't say that they preached to me themselves. Preaching was left to the professionals. But I grew up 'knowing' that sex outside of marriage was sinful; gays were, well, sinful; drinking, smoking, swearing were .... you get the idea. God created the world. He created me. He loved me. He wanted me back but I was, you guessed it, sinful.

I was saved at age 5. Yes, I knew what I was doing. I understood what it all meant. I wasn't coerced. You may say, and probably quite rightly, that given my upbringing, the chances of me becoming a christian were pretty high. My path was probably already laid out for me (God has a plan for everyone, don't you know).

After that, I joined in and did my part. I sang the songs and learned the memory verses. I went to meetings. In later years, I taught Sunday School and even 'spoke a wee word' at the odd prayer meeting. I was involved in outreach and evangelism.

It happens to most christians. You'll live your life quite happily the way your parents brought you up, but, eventually, inevitably, the two enemies of the faith will creep in: How? and Why?. For me, these two showed up pretty early on. One thing that you're taught and is repeated often within evangelical circles is that you will have doubts. Everyone has doubts. It's natural. And in evangelical circles natural equals sinful. They are synonymous. But, none of my doubts were being addressed by any teaching I received. Nothing I read or discussed could quite scratch the itch that was building in my mind.

I won't claim to have had any original problems or issues. Just the usual stuff: the problem of pain (why do bad things happen to good people?) and the problem of good (why do people, who are all sinful, do good things?). Why and how did a good, all-powerful, all-knowing God let sin come into the world in the first place? Where *did* sin actually come from anyway? Did God create it? If so, how can he be good? If not, does that mean that there was another being capable of creation? Who would that be? Satan? But surely the Bible teaches that God created Satan and if Satan created sin then, ultimately, God created sin. (I could go on, but I'll maybe take separate posts to outline some of the issues I have with the teachings taken or interpreted from the bible). Needless to say that those questions led to much deeper questions. Eventually, I had to come to terms with the fact that God, if he existed at all, was certainly not like how he had been taught to me.

Over the years, all these questions started to form into a different view of the world, one that didn't require a god to explain goodness or pain or justice or life or happiness or sickness. But I couldn't embrace that new view of the world because of one teeny little thing that every christian child has slotted into their heads between the bedtime stories and prayers: fear.

I was scared to let go, not so much the idea of God, I had surrendered that quite early on, truth be told, but of everything else that went with it. Not certainty or assurance. I wasn't scared of hell. I was scared of what people would think. I knew I had been a sham christian for a long time. Now, everyone else would know too. To be honest, I still face that. There are still people I have known for years that I've never openly discussed this with.

I've had a couple of abortive attempts at 'coming out' over the last few years, but finally, I came to the point where it was more important to be honest than to be respected. The first person I told was my wife. I simply came out with it one evening. She, still a believer, took it rather badly. And that's when something that I never appreciated really hit me. Something that I never considered but which has made things more difficult.

You simply don't appreciate how much people associate what you say and believe with you the person. To others, what you believe is integral to who you are. I had been aware for years of the struggles that had been going on inside, but those around me knew nothing of that. I felt that I was the same person I had always been, but now I simply was admitting to something I had known for a long time. To those around me, I had become a different person. I had changed. I know people are worried about me. It doesn't matter that I don't believe they have any need to. Any reticence to post this has more to do with the feelings of others than anything in me That has been the hardest bit of coming out.

The best bit is the freedom. Freedom to be honest. To be yourself. It's the feeling of having been in a cramped, airless room and finally stepping into the fresh air. I really wouldn't trade that feeling for anything. Honesty is a liberating thing.

Since I've come out to friends, I've had, what I can only suspect, is the standard set of questions asked: "What purpose does your life have now?"; "How can you be happy?"; "You don't believe in evolution now, do you?" etc. etc. etc. I'd like to give my responses to those questions and more in later posts.

I know this post is not even close to the way it sounded in my head. I might still be tweaking it for a while yet, but I'm happy that it's done.