I used to be an angry teenager. I spent a lot of time introspecting, understanding myself and getting those emotions under control. I created an internal buffer that helped me pause my reaction, disconnect myself emotionally, and look at the situation objectively. I took pride in being a “chilled dude” who wouldn’t overreact like he used to. I learned to give people the benefit of the doubt, and look for the reasons behind why people did things that were questionable.
I stopped believing in God and left Christianity. It’s a shift that rocked my world in every way. It impacted my wife, my family and my friends. Previously, I had inner turmoil about my beliefs but I was at peace with everyone around me. Now, my inner turmoil is resolved but I’m at odds with everyone around me. Need I say it’s been a heavy, emotional journey.
I’ve resisted the angry atheist stereotype for so long now, but every now and then I just see red. And I’m trying to figure out why, so here goes.
Christianity was so important to me. My identity was wrapped up in it. It was my community, my group, my people. It was something that my friends and family valued in me. It took me two years to let go of it. And I still think about it almost every day.
Do you want to know why I’m angry?
I’m angry because many (not all) of those friends and family don’t give a fck about that journey, or why I let go of something that was so important to me. They only care in the sense that they want me to revert to my previous beliefs. They only care in the sense that they think I’m wrong, or am going down a dangerous path. They wash their hands of me. God will reveal himself. You’ll be back. There’s no effort to *understand me, or my choices, or my journey. They valued my opinion until it no longer meshed with their beliefs. Now they don’t value my opinion. I don’t mind if we don’t agree, but do me the courtesy of asking how I see something, or why I have a certain perspective.
I’m angry because people assume that I left Christianity for all sorts of reasons that just aren’t true. Apparently I left because: I’m arrogant, I’m angry with God, I’ve been hurt by the church, I found faith too difficult, I saw it as a religion and not a relationship, I have secret sin, I want to worship myself, I wasn’t baptized with the Holy Spirit, I didn’t have a revelation of God’s love. And on top of that, people don’t give me a chance to defend myself. They label and dismiss. They assume whatever makes the most sense to them.
I’m angry because I have to keep a lot of my opinions to myself. The majority of my friends and family are Christian. They get to say whatever comes to mind, use religious language, say things that are loaded with religious ideas of how the world and universe work. Some of them are careful around us and do tone it down, which is really nice of them. But essentially there are these huge chunks of who we are that we’re all censoring, and that sucks. The difference is that I was once where they are now. I understand it. I can still put on my Christian hat and know that if someone says they’ll pray for me, they literally want God to help me out. They want good things for me. On the flip-side, it feels like people aren’t really bothered to know what I really think. As time goes on, this bothers me less. It’s too much work for people, and it’s counter-productive to argue about the tip of a branch when we disagree about the roots of the tree. But it still gets to me.
I’m angry because it feels like by being angry I’m playing into the religious position’s idea of what it’s like to be an atheist. I’ve done a lot to suppress my anger and frustration, because it feels like expressing them would be admitting defeat. Atheism is such a garbage word to the Christian mind. I feel a lot of pressure to prove them otherwise, and show that I’m a healthy, content, fulfilled human being. And for the most part I am. But Christianity says Jesus is the answer, and without him you’re lost, broken, sinful. And so now any human weakness that I have could be seen as a result of my atheism, and not my humanity. In other words, my anger is not justified, it’s self inflicted. I don’t have good reasons for being angry, I need Jesus.
I’m angry because people sold me a simplistic, dichotomous story of how everything works. Good and Evil, God and Satan, Believers and Unbelievers, In the World, not of the World. Heaven and Hell. Saved or Unsaved. And they sold it hard. No one in my circles bothered to bring the nuance. No one bothered to say that the pastor, or parent, or leader, or evangelist, might be wrong. No one bothered to say that the Bible might be wrong. And only when I started questioning these things did everyone jump onto the oh-its-so-nuanced bandwagon. I believed Adam and Eve were real people. Now I don’t. And now, when I question people about it, some of them are fine with them not being real people. So why didn’t they f*cking say so back then? Why was it unequivocally preached from the pulpit with astounding confidence? Why do so many people not actually believe in hell as eternal conscious torment? There was zero push-back on any of these fundamentalist, literalist ideas that I was taught. It was only once I left that people popped out of the woodwork to try explain it in a more palatable way. So is God going to grill me like a rotisserie chicken for not believing in him? Or am I going to be in psychological anguish due to self-induced separation? Or am I going to be annihilated? Or is everyone going to be saved? Or something in between? Because everyone has a different idea about it, but guess which one was preached with bloated confidence? And I could say the same for a myriad of theological ideas. There are hundreds, if not thousands of denominations because people can’t agree on doctrines.
I’m angry that Christians claim to love the truth, but only if the truth is synonymous with Jesus. It’s so frustrating seeing them be skeptical about everything and everyone: technology, the media, other religions, other beliefs, modern medicine, human progress, but their own beliefs get a hard pass on that healthy skepticism. If you ask God why he’s silent, you’re a psalmist. If you ask God if he’s really even there, then you’re a fool. If you doubt then you’re double-minded, and unstable in all your ways. Don’t lean on your own understanding. Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. Walk by faith, and not by sight. These passages undermine your ability and will to think for yourself, and to question what you’ve been taught. They’re not truth seeking, they’re gaslighting. I’ve even been told that without God, truth has no meaning, so if God doesn’t exist then there is no such thing as truth and it doesn’t matter. Ah yes, very truth seeking. If what I believe isn’t true, then truth is irrelevant, but until then it’s the most important thing in the universe!!!
So anyway. I don’t want to be angry for the rest of my life. And I don’t think I will be. There are days when I don’t think about religion. There are interactions where religion doesn’t feature, and doesn’t feel like it needs to. I’m becoming less triggered by religious language and assumptions. I’m slowly accepting that people are uncomfortable with challenging their beliefs, and that’s okay. I’m realizing that what’s obvious to me and what’s obvious to you can be so different. That we can believe different things and both be justified, rational, and reasonable. That we’re all wrong about so many things. That great minds have been debating these things for millennia and it’s not settled in either direction. That relationships are more important than agreeing on beliefs.
