Why define yourself?
I have recently become interested in defining myself. As a
middle aged woman who is just starting to find myself again after
years of raising little children, I am going through a process of
figuring out who the hell I am.
My search for the truth began about 30 years ago. I was raised in a home without religion of any kind. I was the weird teen who actually wanted to go to church. All of my friends went to church and I wanted to experience what they had - friends, youth group, parties, and a sense of belonging to something. I was beginning to question the world and then, the idea of a creator made sense to me. I was happy for awhile until I became disillsioned with "the church." Why couldn't I have communion while visiting a Catholic church? Why was there so much infighting within the major denominations and why did some churches choose to fight against the rights of others? I eventually stopped going to church and just put my quest for truth on the back burner.
In my 20's, I got married. The religion question came up again as we needed to get married and raise our children. My husband, a Catholic, was a big proponent of raising our kids in the Roman Catholic tradition. I later found out that his only reason for doing so was the tradition aspect, but I converted anyway.
The one problem with all of this was that the words I recited were empty. I honestly didn't believe in the god of the bible and though I thought Jesus was pretty cool, I didn't believe in the ressurection or most of the happenings in the bible. My faith was shaken as I began to read the bible for the first time and felt like it was all some kind of mythology, fraught with contradictions.
I tried to strengthen my lack of faith by immersing myself in a evangelical church and furthering my study of the bible. I tried to pray and I even thought that listening only to christian music would help my faith.
Of course, I wouldn't be here if I could have rectified all of that within myself. The concept of a loving God who possesses omnipotence just doesn't make sense to me. If there is a God who is supposedly in control, I have chosen not to worship him. I used to try to figure out those who claimed that God did this or that for them. Now I just laugh and wonder how could someone be so selfish? Do they really think that this God they worship has the power to control whether or not you find a library book but cannot do a thing to stop the spread of AIDS? Is your God like a magic fairy who yields his wand in some kind of sick and twisted way?
My churchgoing has ended and so has the futile bible reading. Praying is also out.
There is a very small part of me that feels sad about defining myself as an atheist. All of those years searching for something or someone seems like a fraud.
My hope is that someday soon I will be able to feel good about my decision to call myself an atheist. I guess I'm still in the mourning process.
My search for the truth began about 30 years ago. I was raised in a home without religion of any kind. I was the weird teen who actually wanted to go to church. All of my friends went to church and I wanted to experience what they had - friends, youth group, parties, and a sense of belonging to something. I was beginning to question the world and then, the idea of a creator made sense to me. I was happy for awhile until I became disillsioned with "the church." Why couldn't I have communion while visiting a Catholic church? Why was there so much infighting within the major denominations and why did some churches choose to fight against the rights of others? I eventually stopped going to church and just put my quest for truth on the back burner.
In my 20's, I got married. The religion question came up again as we needed to get married and raise our children. My husband, a Catholic, was a big proponent of raising our kids in the Roman Catholic tradition. I later found out that his only reason for doing so was the tradition aspect, but I converted anyway.
The one problem with all of this was that the words I recited were empty. I honestly didn't believe in the god of the bible and though I thought Jesus was pretty cool, I didn't believe in the ressurection or most of the happenings in the bible. My faith was shaken as I began to read the bible for the first time and felt like it was all some kind of mythology, fraught with contradictions.
I tried to strengthen my lack of faith by immersing myself in a evangelical church and furthering my study of the bible. I tried to pray and I even thought that listening only to christian music would help my faith.
Of course, I wouldn't be here if I could have rectified all of that within myself. The concept of a loving God who possesses omnipotence just doesn't make sense to me. If there is a God who is supposedly in control, I have chosen not to worship him. I used to try to figure out those who claimed that God did this or that for them. Now I just laugh and wonder how could someone be so selfish? Do they really think that this God they worship has the power to control whether or not you find a library book but cannot do a thing to stop the spread of AIDS? Is your God like a magic fairy who yields his wand in some kind of sick and twisted way?
My churchgoing has ended and so has the futile bible reading. Praying is also out.
There is a very small part of me that feels sad about defining myself as an atheist. All of those years searching for something or someone seems like a fraud.
My hope is that someday soon I will be able to feel good about my decision to call myself an atheist. I guess I'm still in the mourning process.
3 Comments
Welcome to deconversion and thanks for sharing your story. Many of us here have gone through a very similar process.
Here's a great post from the d-C blog by "the chaplain" that talks about this process: http://de-conversion.com/2007/11/09/the-stages-of-grief-over-my-loss-of-faith/
Looking forward to your participation in our little community.
Paul
I appreciate this post greatly as I find myself in a very similar situation and I feel a similar level of sadness (and some discomfort) at the thought of defining myself as an atheist. I will sometimes refer to myself as an agnostic but it feels cowardly and dishonest to do so.
I was also struck by the idea of a mourning process being involved in letting go of our belief in god. The first time I ever heard someone describe that was in this article (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/06/09/080609crbo_books_wood) and I have come across a few people on this site who have expressed the same feeling of sadness. Do you believe that this feeling will run its course or do we need to actively work through it?
On a side note: I find it interesting that as a teen you sought out god independently. I've often wondered what it would've been like to have grown up outside of the church and have pursued spirituality out of genuine interest and curiousity as opposed to having pursued it because I was taught (programmed) that I needed to.
Click here to sign up now.