Speed’s Deconversion Story

A while ago I asked one of the commentators on my blog (Speed), if he would mind sharing his deconversion story.  Here it is !  I enjoyed reading it and I know if will be helpful to anyone in the midst of a similar journey.  Thanks for sharing Speed!

I was born into a Catholic home. We didn’t really discuss God or the Bible that much, but we went to church every Sunday unless we were sick. I attended Catechism as well, though I thought it was extremely boring and didn’t teach me anything useful. Plus at our church the priests didn’t seem that nice. Because of that, I started to think there was something wrong with Catholicism since the people who were supposed to represent God didn’t seem like the loving God they were teaching.

My life went fairly normal and I was fortunate to not have to face any tragedy. Because of that, questioning the big things in life didn’t really happen. It was easy to stay in my faith while things were going well.

Then in college, I got very sick with an infection that left me unable to eat. I suffered with this for almost a month and had to be hospitalized. At that point, the questions started coming. Being in a hospital for a while and being surrounded by so many people struggling with health issues, I started questioning why God allows us to go through these things. I had been told that it makes us stronger, but what if Idied? Surely that was possible, and this sickness would have done nothing but taken me out at a relatively young age.

Shortly after I got out of the hospital, I started to feel like I was living a double life. I noticed that about all Catholics I personally knew as well. It seemed in church, we had to act a certain way and be “holy” but when we got home, we were anything but. From the music we listened to, to the movies we watched, to the way we talked, I felt we were being hypocritical. I started listening to non-Catholic radio broadcasts that were very fundamental and realized that I needed to be Christian all the time and not just in church. Plus, these radio broadcasts seemed to be giving a totally different method of salvation which I never heard in the Catholic Church.

At that point, I decided to give my life to Jesus and become “born again.” I knew a pastor from another time in my life and went to him, said the salvation prayer, and then started attending his church services. I even started taking Bible college courses to better understand the Bible.

I remember at one of the church services, my pastor said that God was telling him someone there didn’t have the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I raised my hand. They got together and prayed with me. Nothing happened. Looking back, I realize it’s because I had no intention of acting in front of them and I told myself if something was going to happen, it was going to be from God and not me. After that day, I had doubts about what was going on and I wondered if most of this fundamentalist stuff was just a show.

My soon to be fiancé, whom I met in the Catholic church, was scared not only that I was going from Catholic to non-denominational, but she was scared that I was going to become a priest and end the relationship with her, though I had no intention of becoming a preacher. All of this caused quite a bit of strife in our relationship to the point where we almost broke up. Finally, she decided to follow me out of Catholicism, said the salvation prayer, and we were on the same page again.

My fiancé and I started attending church together. Things seemed to be going well, and we ended up getting married in that church. However, my wife started telling me that she questioned God a lot. She couldn’t understand why the world was like it was while an all-loving God sat back and watched. She didn’t get why salvation was sometimes preached as works and sometimes as just accepting Jesus into your heart, which she had trouble understanding what that really meant.

After we got married, we quit going to church regularly. We decided to take a break from church because we felt worn out from going every Sunday for our whole lives. We also didn’t enjoy the church we were going to as much, so after a little while we decided to try a few other churches. After attending a few, we both knew a lot of the extreme fundamentalists at the church were acting, and some of the people (including preachers) really rubbed us the wrong way. I felt like it was my fault for not enjoying any churches but I kept praying for God to lead us to a great church. Nothing happened. However, I still stayed Christian. I believed in God, but I didn’t believe these churches were being honest and I wasn’t going to force myself to attend church in a place I didn’t want to be.

Along with all of this, we started having problems in our life and we didn’t understand why they were happening. Because we were Christian, it naturally became a matter of asking God why this was happening to us and if it was some kind of punishment or trial.

Plus, I was having my own crisis with Christianity because I, in all honesty, knew I couldn’t share my faith with anyone. How could I ask someone to convert to my beliefs when God was nowhere to be found? We were supposed to have a personal relationship with Jesus, yet I was doing all the talking. What if I converted someone and they said they prayed and nothing happened? Would I just give them the typical “It wasn’t God’s will” response that I knew would give them no comfort? I then started to realize that God was failing me because as much as I prayed, God never seemed to respond.

Then the whole Hell issue started tearing away at me. What happened to my grandparents who had died? Were they being tortured in a place so bad that we couldn’t stand it for one second? I read Mary Baxter’s book about her revelation of Hell and I was shocked. From that point forward, I couldn’t turn on an oven or my BBQ pit without feeling anguish over people suffering in Hell. How could God do this? All I kept hearing was that even though God is love, he’s also just. But was this justice? We find torture barbaric and despicable yet God is doing this to over half of mankind and it will never end. All of a sudden life becomes a whirlwind of desperation and fear. How do you save the world? Nobody should have to suffer through Hell and how can I love God while knowing this is happening?

Then, we had a tragic time in our lives. We lost a close member of our family and I was getting extremely stressed at work. My health started to deteriorate. It got worse and worse but I prayed to God continuously to heal me. Nothing happened. I ended up being taken by ambulance to the hospital and was treated for multiple problems severe enough to where had I not been hospitalized, I definitely would have died. It was the scariest moment in my life, but I felt that at least if I did die, I would be in heaven.

However, in the hospital all of the “why” questions started coming back. Why did God allow all of this? Had I not gone to the ER, I would be dead. That bothered me for quite a while. Then I decided to keep my prayers simple. I just asked God to talk to me; to say anything. I would stay up at night asking for this, and I would clear my mind so I’d know it wasn’t my own thoughts talking to me. I heard nothing. This went on and on until I started to get very frustrated.

Then one evening about a year later, I got sick with bad stomach pains. The pain would come and go, but then it got worse on my right side. I had a hunch what it was but I prayed and prayed that it wasn’t and that God would heal me. I got nothing. At 3 AM one morning, I told my wife it was really bad and we needed to go to the ER. My fears were confirmed…it was appendicitis. I had to have surgery and long story short, my surgery and recovery didn’t go as well as anticipated and I ended up staying in the hospital for over a week.

Then at the same time this was going on, my grandfather had to have surgery as his health was deteriorating. Then all the Hell stuff started coming back and this time, it was even worse. If he died, was he going to be tortured forever since he was Catholic? What about everyone who helped me yet they weren’t “born again?” Did they deserve to suffer for not believing in a God who wouldn’t even speak to me when I prayed every single day?

I started researching Hell and was shocked to see how many people thought the Bible was mistranslated and the Hell I believed wasn’t really what the Bible taught. I was torn as to what this meant. In one way it made me feel better because I had a reason to believe that Hell didn’t exist, but then why did God allow his inerrant word to be sabotaged by translation issues? Then the story of Noah’s ark started to bother me. How could I justify this story? It’s so ridiculous that there was no way as a rational human being I could defend it. I started reading the Bible from the beginning and I was shocked at what I found. I found a God who endorsed ideas that I was taught were terrible. I saw thousands of people slain just for believing in another God. I read about children being killed, which turned my stomach. All of the animal sacrifice was so bizarre as well as the obsession with circumcision.

I started doing critical research of Christianity and every time I read an apologist page, I would role my eyes and every time I read an anti-Christian page, I would agree. It was then I started to realize I was turning. I remember at one time I thought to myself “If I take God out of the equation, everything makes sense.” I didn’t want it to be true, but it was hard for me to convince myself otherwise. I don’t remember what I searched for next, but it led me to a YouTube video for the Atheist Experience. As I watched a few videos, it was like layer after layer of Christian lies were peeled away. I saw how ridiculous Christians sounded as they made excuse after excuse for God. I realized how rational the atheists were and how non-rational my beliefs were. I started finding blogs about people who left Christianity, and I would relate to their stories. It made me realize that I was on the right track and I was justified in questioning things and following the evidence to an understanding that Christianity was in fact, a lie.

My wife was incredible as we talked about my new beliefs, and I think what I said resonated with her because Christianity didn’t sit right with her either. I knew she had hope that we would see all of our loved ones again one day, and I think that was the most depressing point of the conversation. However, I told her that even if we do want an afterlife, we wouldn’t want one based on Christianity where we weren’t sure who would make it and what the punishment would be for those who don’t. She agreed and she still hopes there is a better life after this one without believing Christianity.

Since I’ve left Christianity, I now find life more enjoyable. I don’t worry about people being tortured every day. I don’t have to worry about a God who finds me so terrible, that he had to kill his own son (or himself depending on how you look at it) so I could even be in his presence. I don’t have to try to decipher a boring, contradicting and confusing book to try to decide what is right and what is wrong. I can just live, and enjoy it. I always thought that it was the atheists who were missing out on a life with God, but I realize now it was me missing out on a life without stressing to reach for a God who was never there to begin with. Christianity really was a burden on my life, and I am so glad I’ve been relieved of it.