Out of the Closet
There you go. I am ‘out’ of the closet! I now dare to say I have a good understanding how LGTBQIA must feel doing a similar “dad, mom, I have to tell you something” kinda thing.
I guess I may have left many readers/friends wondering where I am at now. Some asked me directly. Don’t be afraid to ask me more questions, I have not been overwhelmed with hundreds of emails, so don’t worry to ask, vent, or just communicate some feelings. I have really appreciated those friends who said that they were sad about the results, or couldn’t sleep well after they read my blog, because that is a proper response as friends when someone no longer identifies with your core shared beliefs.
So what’s it like for me? Thanks for asking.
It feels like I have just been teleported by Star Trek’s Scotty/La Forge from planet A to planet B and am facing some interesting challenges (with apologies for non-Trekkies).
The Christian Planet
Planet A is the world of Christianity, in which I am most familiar. I know my ways, the ins and outs, the do’s and don’ts. Yet I have been forced to leave this world behind, by coming to the conclusion that the foundations of it just don’t make sense to me anymore. I could not breathe the air of this planet any longer, and had to leave. It was suffocating me, while I absolutely loved it: the people, the ideas, the mission and God himself.
Now all my accumulated brownie points there are gone; the promised heavenly treasures have vanished into thin air. Not that I just wanted to earn those credits, but hey, I just wanted to do something meaningful with my life. Now I don’t expect many people on this planet to listen to my ramblings about God anymore. Sadness it the overwhelming feeling I think, from both sides.
There is also much confusion regarding my absence now. “Why is the air we breathe suffocating you? Why did you say in your blog that you feel that the world has more color now? What went wrong? Where are you at right now?”
I feel I need to explain myself a bit more there. I don’t want to insult my Christian friends, or leave them in a state of confusion. I don’t want to convert anyone either. If you deconvert, it’s a long road that you would have to walk yourself mostly anyway, and if you are anything like me, you would be kicking and screaming the whole way that you want to go back to the planet that you love. No chance at all you would let anyone “help you” to get out!
The Secular Planet
Planet B is called the Secular World. While I used to be appalled by the stench of it all, as soon as I left the previous planet I just had to get my oxygen from there. My entire life I have believed that this world was a dark, gloomy place where the air smells of rotten eggs and your only hope is to drink a lot and party a bit until the inevitable pointless death awaits you.
So there I was, teleported in that new world… having to take my first breath. Still believing it was going to be awful… it was actually amazing! It felt like I was an asthma patient for quite some time and all of a sudden I could BREATHE again! I started reading new blogs, sites and books like an obsession. You could often catch me thinking and reading way past midnight. I was meeting new people, ideas, personalities, characters. It turned out I was FAR from the only one who was in as deep as I was from the Christian planet (being a missionary and all that) and then making the move to this world.
However it is not all a happy-clappy story. This world is very different, not just in content of ideas, but also in terms of community. This world has no welcoming ceremony, no clergy to tell you how to act now. There are no small groups assigned to you, no coaches or alpha courses. You come into this world alone, usually by birth, or through reason. Rarely do you come to this world because a group reached out to you to come and get you.
The Hidden Immigrant
Fortunately, I have quickly adjusted to my new environment. I had to let a lot of “wisdom” about this new world from my previous world go; like “life is pointless without God”, or that “there is no such thing as morality without God”. Turns out I was wrong about a lot of things. Humbling to say the least!
Now I’m like a hidden immigrant though. I may appear like a native of Planet B, but then I have to tell people that I basically only just arrived. So far I have seen nothing but positive remarks (thumbs up!!), yet it is also hard to tell others what it is like to be transported from one planet to the other in an instant. Some people (from both worlds) refuse to accept that this is what happened. “There must still be faith left in you”, I hear. “It can’t be that you became agnostic overnight”, others say.
It may also be hard for them to understand I could have inhaled the atmosphere from the Christian Planet for so long. For a lot of seculars, the Christian world smells of rotten eggs too. And while I no longer can be in that world anymore, I know from my own experience that it is (under certain conditions) perfectly possible to breathe there normally, enjoy life, people and all the opportunities and love that it gives. I was not crazy being back there. It was my normal habitat, and I enjoyed life and my intellectual faculties too.
Now To Blogging!
Where does this leave me with this blog? Although I am far from the only deconverted Christian blogger, I feel like there are still several things that are worth repeating from my own subjective point of view:
- What kept me in? How did I survive, no thrive, on the Christian planet?
- What got me out? What forces drove me away until I could not breathe anymore?
- What was “deconversion” like?
- What does Gods mission and missiology have to do with this?
I hope it will clarify things for people from both planets. That is all. No need to convert anyone. Not going into the intellectual arguments too much as this is not the actual problem that I had to deal with. I would also love good (critical) feedback on my stories, I am Dutch, so I can take a direct hit 🙂
From my own experience, for the hidden immigrants like me, we LOVE blogs like this in our early arrivals on this new planet. It was almost the only ‘guide’ that I had: other ex-Christians like me who went ahead and chartered the terrain. I still owe them much gratitude because the task is daunting, and not everything has been said yet. If I can offer any help or at least recognition, that would be awesome. Conversely I would love to hear more stories from others as well. Or if you are around, drink a beer together, or if not, have a chat. I like to dream big, but let’s just see if I can keep up a blog first!
October 16, 2015 at 20:40
As I depart for a mission in the morning, to tell people in a very dark nation about the light of the world reading this EJ is heart breaking. I do not know you well but I respect and admire you for your alternative views BUT I know another guy who was a missionary and has lost his faith. I do not see great joy in him I see a family struggling, I see a wife who has lost her soul mate, I see pain. This is obviously not you, however I will pray that you get a new revelation of God! I think you are very courageous letting the world know this but I pray also for your family to be able to ride alongside you and love you and for you to love them with an everlasting love! You may have made the choice yo reject God but He gas jot rejected you! Praying!!!!
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October 17, 2015 at 08:37
Hi Jan, thank you. I am very open to a new revelation from God, seriously. Please tell Him to do it in a way that is clearly supernatural, as that should be easy (I don’t mean this sarcastic). Any angel appearing by lightning flash before me would do. He has legions full of them. Please. I would be delighted at good proof. So far I have found none, also after reflecting on 30 years of being a born again Christian. Nothing really demanded a supernatural explanation.
There is pain involved in leaving my worldview behind, also in my family, certainly. Thank you for the love you wish on those that are close!
I wish you well on your travels 🙂
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October 18, 2015 at 09:02
Hi EJ. Thanks for your honesty in this and your willingness to be open about it. I am saddened by it, but also would really like to know more of your process to this point. I have many reservations about the Christian worldview but also finding God in new spaces. I have many questions to ask you, and not in an adversarial manner!
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October 18, 2015 at 12:45
Hey Doug,
Thanks for your comment! I have many blogposts in my mind to describe the process, and I like to answer (tough) questions too as it sharpens my own understanding. I am probably wrong about some things or many things, I have learned that much :-). Go ahead and ask them! I have always enjoyed your fresh perspectives on things in college.
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October 21, 2015 at 13:04
Hi, should I ask here? I don’t mind doing it in public, but email may be more personal.
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October 21, 2015 at 19:21
Hi Doug,
Whatever you want. In public has the advantage that others can read along, but if you want to say personal things in email, that is fine too 🙂
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October 20, 2015 at 04:35
Dear EJ,
When I first heard about your publicly denouncing Jesus and turning away from your Christian faith, I was shocked. Like blind-sided. I have been sad about your situation for days now. Being 12 time zones away from you and your family makes this whole revelation that much more surreal to me. I had no idea you were struggling like this, man! I have been thinking about you and your family for hours and days. We have prayed for you and your family – especially as this is certainly causing a huge amount of stress in your marriage and by extension, with your children. I’m not sure how best to say this other than God still loves you even if you cannot see him and you deny him. His love for you is bigger than any intellectual struggle you have about his existence or ability to act in your life.
I feel compelled to reply to you, even though I do not expect you or others in your world view (or planet B, as you call it) to resonate with it. I mostly don’t want your “out-of-the-closet” announcement to go unanswered by a believer in Jesus like myself, so here it goes.
I’ll first say that I can relate to you in your quest for reason, for rational thinking, in your pursuit of facts, for data, and the scientific method. Those things are not left out among those who believe in Jesus. You resonate with the term “Agnostic” because it allows you to say “I don’t know”. Christians, too, have a similar measure of “I don’t know” when it comes to things for which we don’t have enough information. As a Christian, I acknowledge that I don’t have all the information to answer all of my (or your) questions, and so I must trust God and have faith that God is God.
What I do know from my examination of sound reason and fact finding is that Jesus really did live. Jesus really did die. Jesus really did rise again. Jesus did say that he is the way, the truth and the life. I take him at his word and believe what he said, even if it doesn’t all make complete sense to me why it should be this way.
Belief in the invisible God of the Bible does take faith, and although I have not met Jesus in the flesh, I take him at his word (that he is God in the flesh, sent to save us).
To have faith is a deliberate choice, and it does not disqualify me from desiring and pursuing facts, knowledge, reason, the scientific method, etc. My faith is my own choice, which recognizes my humble position as “created” before the Creator, and I acknowledge through my act of faith that I cannot answer all of my questions from my vantage point of a created human being.
I believe that we humans were not created with the capacity to know everything, and there is a built-in dependency that everyone has on God, who does know everything. Instead of leaving my questions simply unanswered with “I don’t know”, I submit to the God of the universe in faith and am content with “He knows”. This is of course not a sufficient answer for you because “faith” is not a real thing on planet B (if there is, I’d like to hear about this from you).
I’ll close by saying that while I disagree with the conclusions you’ve come to regarding Jesus and God and I have spent considerable time saddened and in deep thought about your new position, the real ones hurting right now are your family. For any Christian reading this, I encourage you to pray for EJ and M and their family. I am sad that we are not physically present to help and support you guys during this difficult time.
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October 20, 2015 at 07:41
Hi Chris,
Thank you for your heart felt response. Yes, it was a shock, for me the most of everyone. I just thought I was dealing with some doubt issues that will (of course) be solved by Jesus as he promised that nobody can steel a sheep out of his hands. Until I got an ‘aha’ moment and could connect all the dots, and I found myself from evangelical-christian-with-doubts to an unbeliever within the stretch of an hour or so (that will be a different story one day). From my perspective, I did not renounce Jesus, but he renounced me by failing to meet very clear promises in the Bible and I drew my conclusions.
I am curious how you know from reason and evidence that Jesus rose from the dead? Did you read ‘the case for Christ’ or something like that?
With the planet analogy I of course mean the worldview, not the people within it (I should blog about that). But faith is something I have come to view with suspicion rather than seeing it as a virtue. I mean that I have faith that the milk I buy in the supermarket is safe to drink. That is because I know how it is produced, there are quality checks and I then have ‘faith’ that they are all applied and nobody is trying to kill me. But if I had good evidence to the contrary, my ‘faith’ would only be dangerous. Having ‘faith’ in Jesus should be a tiny jump from good evidence to the acceptance of the whole message. For me it became a giant leap from only “negative” counter-evidence, to the “positive” gospel. It was like saying, I believe despite knowing that it probably doesn’t make much sense. And such faith is not a virtue for me anymore.
And yes I have missed your (families) company here in Thailand! I think you left around the time when this all happened.
Thanks!
EJ
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October 20, 2015 at 20:48
Hi EJ,
I appreciate that you are open to talking about your experience. Perhaps we can continue some dialog over email or when we are in the same country at the same time 🙂
I’ll finish by saying that, although I have not done nearly the quantity of investigation as the professionals, I have concluded that there are reasonable and convincing arguments for Christianity just as there are reasonable and convincing arguments against it (and which you obviously follow and subscribe to). I am reminded that no one can be completely objective in their arguments, and in the face of multiple opposing views each with their own arguments for their position, I choose to believe in the God of the Bible. This is called faith, and it’s more than just an incremental step, a logical assurance of something I did not witness first hand. Faith is a personal decision, and it’s part of being human. It’s easy for me personally to see that God created me to believe in Him, but not so easy for me to demonstrate this to someone who does not value faith as a legitimate mechanism in the search for truth.
I hope to see you before you leave. Praying for you and your family,
Chris
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October 21, 2015 at 17:49
EJ – I’m enjoying your writing a great deal. I know you’ll feel a great deal of pressure from both sides of this coin and I hope that you’ll find comfort in thinking for yourself and freedom in the ability to live without fear. If I can help in any way please let me know.
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October 21, 2015 at 19:28
Hi RagingRev,thanks for visiting the humble infancy of this blog. We have a lot in common I see, because I am also heavily into IT stuff (on the software side of things). Have you been blogging for 6 years already? Impressive!
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October 28, 2015 at 13:46
keep bloging. you’re helping me.
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October 29, 2015 at 03:17
Thanks! I will, it’s just hard to find enough time between jobs / family / social life. But I will continue, don’t worry. I just read parts of your blog… you have gone through a lot and still are. All the best with that!
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March 30, 2016 at 23:20
Ik heb je hele blog in een dag gelezen. Het had mijn verhaal kunnen zijn, maar jij schrijft het stukken mooier op… 😉
Misschien dat ik je binnenkort een email stuur. Als recent ontkeerde, mis ik (en zoek ik) erkenning en herkenning. Ik ben maar bij weinig mensen uit de kast als ex-christen, en bij wie ik het wel ben, mijn ex-vriend en mijn vriend, kan ik het verhaal niet zo delen, want de één is (nog) in het geloof, en de ander heeft er nooit iets mee gehad…
Groeten,
Niels
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March 31, 2016 at 18:09
Hey niels,
Wow, alles gelezen? Ik voel me vereerd 🙂
Voel je erg vrij een mail te sturen, ik praat er graag over, virtueel of in het echt. Ik heb wel eens eerder met mensen afgesproken en dat bevalt erg goed. Herkenning, erkenning, je vragen kwijt kunnen, kijken hoe anderen dingen ervaren… erg belangrijk! Je wereld staat op z’n kop op een manier die maar weinig zullen begrijpen…
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