SALVATION IN APOSTASY
Comfort is a commodity. We place enormous value on ease, security. And to a large degree, I don’t know that I find that problematic. Of course we want to be safe. We want to know where our next meal is coming from. We want to know that rent will be covered this month, and next, and the one after. And so on.
Comfort, as a reprieve from strife or hard work, is a worthy and justified reward. Comfort for its own sake, though, can be poisonous. Its toxins seep into the soul and keep us trapped in routines that, while safe and predictable, are limiting at best, and dangerous at worst.
The luxury of comfort should be experienced in moderation, as with anything else.
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This past year has been one of considerable personal growth. I’ve experienced earth shattering ideological shifts. I’ve challenged my thinking, accepted no formerly held position without scrutiny, and have actively worked to improve myself in every way I possibly can.
2018 was also one of the least comfortable years of my life. It was painful, often excruciatingly so. It was dreary, often hopelessly so. It was lonely, often exclusively so. It was terrifying, often overwhelmingly so. It was also, without a doubt, the single best year of my life to date.
I began 2018 ideologically homeless. After Evangelical Christianity decided 45 was their guy, I washed my hands of the label once and for all: a former Christian, still a theist, floundering in a confusing world. Throughout 2017, depression deepened. I no longer had access to the supports I once had. When things got rough, I would pray and it would help.
But to whom could I pray now? I still believed in the concept of some sort of deity, but not in the bigoted, punitive, petty god of Christian theology. I still hated myself and distrusted my instincts and motives. I still felt deep shame for existing as a sinful and broken creature, unworthy of hope, love, joy.
I still had all of my religious baggage, but none of the religious coping mechanisms available to one who is not an apostate heretic.
Something had to change. My emotional trajectory throughout 2017 was not sustainable in the long term. So I attempted something I had attempted before with limited success. I wrote about my earliest childhood memories, and other formative experiences I had growing up, in an attempt to better understand my current state by examining the context that led to it.
The first time I tried this, I was too academic. I was too cold. I was writing as though someone else was going to read it and judge me for it. (In reality, I was judging myself.) I was too unaware of my own baggage to be genuinely honest.
This time around, I made two critical changes: 1) I decided to write about myself, rather than as myself, using third person narrative to distance my emotions from my memories. And 2) I decided I would use the present tense to encourage stream-of-consciousness and limit my ability for self-editing in real time.
It worked. Within 500 words, I discovered the through line for all my current problems with such clarity as I had never experienced before.
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Religion poisoned me by means of the doctrine of original sin. It was slowly, but very surely, killing me. And I’m speaking literally when I say this. I believed myself a villain. I would give everyone I met the benefit of the doubt until they gave me reason to distrust their motives. But with myself, I would assume I was evil and base my self-perception, and self-critique, on that idea.
I hated myself. Not because of anything I had done, but because of what I was. It’s the difference between shame and guilt. From my earliest memories, I understood what Christianity told me: all humans are born sinful, wicked, worthy of, and destined for, hell. I further understood that I was human. And one plus one is not difficult math, even for a small child.
For two decades, I experienced such negative self-talk that, I have recently come to learn, is not normal. I harshly question and judge my every word and action, as well as my every goddamn thought. Most of the criteria I use for deeming something within me as good or bad is arbitrary and based on bronze age mythologies that once served a function, but now serve only to harm individuals who are unfortunate enough to be ensnared by this anti-human ideology.
Thus, I discarded any vestigial theistic belief. I saw behind the curtain and the wizard was a joke, a sick, cruel, disgusting, malevolent joke.
****
Atheism afforded me a new ideological home, but by itself, Atheism is not a belief system or worldview. Really, it is simply the absence of one specific belief, but says nothing about any other aspect of one’s life.
Using this as my platform, I began to rebuild, to reshape my entire world from the ground up. I didn’t color my view of things with some idea about how a higher power or magical entity needed to save me or anyone else. Secular humanism gradually took shape as my foundational precept. (I realize now, I have always been a humanist.)
The first few months were brutal. Something the religious may not understand is that I never wanted to be an atheist. I did everything I could to ensure that would never be the case. I forced ignorance on myself in an effort to remain a good, virtuous Christian. I actively avoided things like science and sex education. If it seemed like something might cause me to doubt my faith, I retreated immediately and doubled down on my religiosity.
You see, I, along with many other Christians, had this idea that atheists weren’t atheists because they didn’t believe in gods. Atheists were atheists because the wanted to live a life of debauchery and sin. And you want to know something ironic? Some of the best people I’ve ever met, even from a superficial religious standpoint, have been atheists.
Some of the most generous, kindhearted, compassionate, and caring individuals I’ve encountered are atheists. That’s not to say the religious can’t also be those things. But one thing I find with atheists, that I usually don’t find in religious circles, is intellectual honesty and curiosity at finding truth, rather than defending doctrine from truth.
In the midst of my religious past life, it took a profoundly unconscionable politician to shake me of my willful blindness. As the cognitive dissonance increased in severity, my desire for authenticity overwhelmed my fear of hell.
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So at the beginning of 2018, after I finally bade farewell to any concept of the divine, I found myself asking incredibly terrifying questions. I no longer had any way of “trusting god” or praying or looking to anything outside myself to fix my problems. I had to take responsibility. And that’s something I had spent my entire life avoiding.
Taking responsibility for myself meant getting educated on so many uncomfortable and frightening things. But I dove in regardless. I began reading and watching educational content, participating in discussions (both online and in person), and listening to podcasts.
My two most egregious self-imposed blind spots I mentioned previously: science and sexuality. Both were the fast track to hell in my former view: science because it consistently and verifiably refutes biblical and religious claims, sexuality because it is the single strongest control mechanism religion has at its disposal (and holy fuck is it effective). And as I learned more and more about our wonderful world, I encountered, and still encounter, previously unknown hang-ups and anxieties.
As I’ve processed this journey, much of it has been through therapy. In one session, my therapist told me something that blew my mind. “What you’re describing,” she said, “are the things trauma victims experience.” We discussed it and I reflected on that concept.
Looking back on my history, I discovered she was right. I never had a singular traumatic experience. I was never physically or sexually abused, which made this trauma difficult for me to spot. Rather than a single event causing subsequent triggered responses, it was two decades of constant and vicious self-talk, constantly hating myself, constantly thinking of myself as the bad guy in my own story.
These myriad micro-traumas, as it were, had the same cumulative effect as a one-time traumatic event, but because they were so small and so constant and so continuously playing on a loop in the background (sometimes foreground) of my mind, they eventually brought me to a point where I would experience a trigger and then fall into a major depressive episode. I could do nothing about these episodes until I recognized the triggers. I couldn’t recognize my triggers until I shed religion.
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Slowly, bit by painstaking bit, I have begun to retrain my mind. Consciously, I’m on my own side for the first time in my entire life. I still have the subconscious hum running constantly in the background, telling me I’m worthless, disgusting, duplicitous, vile, sinful, wretched, undeserving of love or good things. It’s still there. It’s still spewing lies. But I recognize one important thing now: they are lies.
I don’t hate myself anymore. I’m not hopeless anymore. I’m not weak anymore. I’m happier and healthier than I have ever been in my goddamn life. I owe that to me. Me, and not some deity or other force external to me. Friends and family have helped in huge ways, and I am grateful every single day for each and every one of them, but at the end of the day, I am the maker of my emotional improvements.
I still have a long way to go. One day, maybe, hopefully, my first inclination upon hearing a compliment will be “thanks” rather than “that’s not true, I’m the worst and here’s why…” It is not today, but I am optimistic. And that’s a new and wonderful thing for me.
EMBRACING THE RAIN
It goes like this.
On a recent morning, I set out for a run. I needed this run. The winter blues were getting to me. I had no motivation or energy. I just wanted to lie in bed forever until the world ended. Even so, I managed to get up. And even more remarkably, I managed to wake up enough to embark on a run.
It was a struggle to get out of bed, a struggle to get out the door, a struggle to lean gently forward and allow my feet to catch me as gravity attempted to do its tireless work. I reluctantly cleared each hurdle in my way and, braving the cold and the dark, set off for yet another wintery run.
Two or three miles in, it began to rain, lightly at first, but it showed no signs of letting up. Gradually, over the course of the next few miles, the rain intensified. It increased in volume a little at a time until the clouds had apparently had enough of the slow crescendo, opting instead to loose the entirety of their contents. I went from generally damp to completely waterlogged in a matter of minutes.
One foot hit a puddle, drenching my sock and shoe. The other foot followed promptly thereafter. My jacket and tights eventually absorbed as much moisture as they could hold and became heavy, clinging to my skin. My gloves soaked through and my already cold hands got significantly colder.
I did not plan for this rain; I did not agree to it. The rain did not care.
****
When one is on a run beneath overcast skies and the clouds determine the time has come to shed their tears, the runner is faced with a binary choice: resent the discomfort of precipitation, or embrace the rain and surrender to the reality of the situation with openness.
On this particular run, I chose the latter. By the time I returned, all I felt was pure joy. The rain is only uncomfortable while you’re fighting it.
ADMONITION
I have one thought I’d like to leave you with. And that thought is as follows.
Question everything. Discard anything that does not hold up to scrutiny. Trust nothing that demands something of you on blind faith. Accept nothing as valid if accompanied by some variation of any phrase even tangentially resembling “because I said so.”
If the authority from which you hear something purported as fact or truth is not also willing to share the rationale behind that postulation, you should give them all the skepticism their demand for faith deserves.
Anyone requiring faith, calling it trust, and using it for ethically and morally dubious (potentially, nefarious) purposes deserves no mental concession from you.
No idea is sacred.
No concept is taboo.
No authority, no person, no philosophy, no ideology, no teaching or proverb, is above reproach.
Nothing deserves blind subservience. That which demands as much should be met only with the highest degree of suspicion.
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This is not a comfortable way to live. It is not easy, and it can be frustrating. But for all the pain and agony, there is no more rewarding or fulfilling way to live.
Embrace the rain; she is not your enemy. Comfort will harm. Growth will heal. Change is necessary, but more than that, it is inevitable. Embrace it and the pain it brings will be productive. Resist it, fight it, resent it, and the pain it brings will never end.
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I’m recovering every day in small and powerful ways. The growth I’ve experienced in a single year was unprecedented on my part. And I’m just getting started.