For some time now (ever since May 1998) I have been working at a transition from a horse and buggy Mennonite community (Ontario, Canada) to mainstream society. Officially my deconversion happened late summer-early fall last year. I use that as my mark because that is when fundy Christians started treating me as not one of them. My optometrist kicked me out and will no longer serve me and my family turned cold. Mom passed away a few months ago and my siblings and dad almost wouldn't let me eat with them at the formal meal after the funeral. In the end they let me eat with them because I have not revoked my membership at a church I joined eight years ago.

In one sense I never was a real Christian because I never understood how the plan of salvation was supposed to work. I was taught that Jesus died so we could go to heaven when we died, and that if he had not died on the cross we would all go to hell. I accepted that. But HOW did his death "open heaven's gates"? That is the big question. I searched for The Answer until I was forty. Then I sort of gave up.

I gave up on a few other things, too. One of these was the attempt to gain the approval of my parents and family. Actually, I didn't exactly give it up but I decided it was no longer the most important thing in life; I realized I would never get their approval no matter how hard I tried and how good I was. It was never good enough for them. Our faith community did not allow education beyond Grade 8 or age 14, whichever came first.

Nine years ago I took my first course in post-secondary education and am today almost through my Masters. I told my family back in 1998 but forbade them to tell anyone else that I was taking university courses. I feared excommunication from the community and that would have been the worst possible thing to happen. It remained a secret for fourteen months. I chose to disclose because it became difficult keeping it a secret in such a close-knit community.

The consequence truly was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I don't know why but for me to leave my community was not something I ever wanted to do. I had to do it, though, because I could not live with the extreme disapproval of the entire community. It nearly cost my life on more than one occasion but I went through with it and have not looked back. They had never liked me and had already rejected me on an unofficial level. I left them for a modern Mennonite church. I needed a community to support me through the worst part of the transition.

Late last summer I found exChristian.net where, for the first time in my life, I had the opportunity to interact with atheists and agnostics as an equal. One of my professors was an agnostic and another and her husband were atheists. I learned a lot from them about what unbelievers are like. I was shocked to find that they were just as good people as any Christians I had ever known. I guess the "shocking" part was to find that I had been lied to.

Probably the church did not know better but I did not think that was a good enough excuse. If they did not know any unbelievers, in my opinion, they had no right to make judgments about unbelievers. And they had made very serious, albeit faulty, judgments. For that I hold them guilty. They say liars go to hell. I think it's time they sweep their own doorstep. I have little hope that they will ever do this.

So that's a little about me and my life.

Written in response to a question on exC: An Important Survey On Causes Of Deconversion, Please, all ExTheists, respond!

It's pretty hard to categorize my reason. I would say there was one Big Question and one only. It started from the first time I heard the story about the plan of salvation and it was the pursuit of my life until finally at the age of forty I realized that if there were an answer I would have found it. Since I cannot lie any longer, and since it is the central tenet of the Christian religion, I had no choice but to deconvert.

The central tenet is: Jesus died so we can go to heaven.

Okay, I accepted that without problem. But how does it work? What changed when Jesus died? How does Jesus dead body benefit human souls?

No answer. It makes no sense to my brain. I cannot believe something that makes no sense. In order not to lie I was forced to deconvert. As to the question about God's existence, that was a whole different category of thought and basically unconnected with this one. Two diferent sets of Christians, when they found out that I so much as considered Paganism (which is not atheist), kicked me out. That definitely helped me decide that I was no longer Christian if the Christians won't have me anymore. Re God's existence--when I read a science article about an experiment that can produce the "God feeling" I concluded there is probably no god and that it all begins and ends in the human psyche.

Is that philosophy, science, theology, moral, social, other?

Rightly or wrongly, I voted philosophy in the first section and other in the next two.

Originally posted on exChristian Testimonials on Oct. 27, 2006.

Mine was a double deconversion. One was deconversion from cultural religion, and the other was deconversion from theological religion. The first was more traumatic. I had never fully bought into the second. What I had bought into, and trusted fully and completely, was the belief that the church had the answer. My mother, other women of her generation, and the ministers all said at the time of my (believer's) baptism that as teenagers we could not understand it all but that as we got older we would get deeper insight.

When I was crowded out of the church at forty-odd years of age, I "knew in my bones" that the highest authority on earth--the OOM bishops, preachers, and deacons who claimed to stand before the body of believers in Christ's stead--did not have The Answers. Something snapped inside of me that day. I knew then that never ever again would I have such complete confidence in and respect for authority as I had all my life for those men in black clerical collars.

I stopped believing in the wrathful orthodox Christian god long ago. At least twenty years ago. I replaced that god with a mystical, force of the universe kind of God. I stopped believing in Jesus at least that long ago. But I didn't know it; didn't dare say it even to myself.

It must have been about the year 1989 when things came to a head. Of all times and places, it happened in a church service on a Good Friday morning when the congregation was singing plaintive songs about Jesus crucifixion. I was in my early thirties. All my life I had wanted to know HOW Jesus' death paid for our sins. Everybody refused to answer that question--I wasn't even allowed to ask it.

All anyone ever gave in answer to the question was Bible verses. I had read the Bible and found no answers. As the congregation was singing that song, I found myself rebelling and telling Jesus I have no pity for his execution because the whole thing was his fault. He didn't have to do it. He chose to do it so there!

So desperate did I feel that I had to either find an answer or throw Christianity out the window. The latter was not an option. I was emotionally in no condition to leave the only social universe I had ever known. Doing so would have meant dealing with extreme ostracism and persecution from my family and everyone else I knew.

For several days I meditated day and night. An answer began to formulate inside my mind. In later years I learned that what I had come up with was the Christus Victor theory. It came to me out of my own psyche, or from the Holy Spirit, as I believed at the time. I had nothing but the Bible to go by.

That allowed me to live with Christianity for quite a few more years. However, I was desperately unhappy on many levels because the community had by unanimous unspoken consent relegated me to the no-so-bright category and refused to allow me any fulfilling work. It was "God's will" and I was admonished to submit to it.

By about December 1997 I was desperate enough to challenge (in my own secret heart of hearts) the possibility of breaking with tradition and getting university training for a career that I would find fulfilling and satisfying. That was the first time in my life that I dared so much as to contemplate open disobedience.

I got accepted into the university, did well, and made lots of friends, but told everyone not to tell my people about it. After fourteen months of studying in secret (from my people) I decided to "come out." That was in Aug. 1999. The church had not provided any solution to my desperation, and when they found that I was finding my own they disapproved so strongly that, for my own emotional well-being I had to leave.

I spent about 48 hours (from Fri. evening to early Sunday morning) in deep mediation and prayer. I took time to sleep but sleep was not easy to come by. About 5:00 Sunday morning I had a "break-through." I knew what I would do. At eight o'clock I called a neighbor whose church I wanted to try. It was a modern Mennonite church.

Today I know it was a fundamentalist church of the purest kind. I lasted about a year and a half there--until I was formally accepted as a member. I tried a few more modern Mennonite churches. I kept clashing with leadership everywhere I went and eventually I just stopped going to church.

All the preachers and adult Sunday School teachers raised issues for discussion, or made promises, or addressed issues, that set me off. I demanded answers to my questions. I challenged their professions and promises for answers. They seemed very sincere about their faith and I did not understand why they refused to answer.

After spending some time on exChristian.net I realize their professions and promises were empty and that this is why they attacked me and sent me to see a counselor rather than just answer my questions. After suffering through several really severe clashes I got "church shy." I tried a number of other churches but always got scared after one or two visits.

I would plan to go to church but when Sunday morning rolled round I had no energy to go. I felt guilty for not going. There were people who insisted one had to go to church for real worship and fellowship. "It's different being with a whole congregation than just worshiping in solitude," they said.

After a few years of this I concluded that they are are. It is different. It's debilitating. Worship or meditation in solitude was soul-nurturing and valuable. It brought me peace. Many and many a time did I leave church feeling totally upset even though I had gone in feeling good and positive.

Always there was this fear in the back of my mind. I had moved to the city and it was through church that I found places to live and people to help me move. I felt I HAD to be part of a church simply for the basics of life. I missed community. Then unexpectedly I had to move.

It was a severe test of faith but I soon found a place to stay and in the last minute people showed up to help me move. I had not been to church in a long time. Finding out that it was possible to find a place to live and people to help me move even when not part of a church was quite an eye-opener for me. Maybe I did not have to belong to a church for the basics of life.

I still craved community. I still tried to twist my brain to convince myself that I was a Christian. But I was afraid of social or any informal get-together where I might meet people. Too many serious personality clashes because I was so desperate for answers and deep conversation.

I found myself siding with anyone and everyone who opposed Christianity. I did not know what it meant. I explored a few other religions--mostly other Christian denominations, but I also took a serious look at paganism. Talked with people, did some reading. It wasn't exactly right for me.

Then I found this site. It is a community that resembles the Christian community except for content of belief. This is where I found the strength to stand up for my beliefs and to feel comfortable with calling myself an ex-Christian, or not a Christian.

It feels honest. It feels liberating. It feels like what Jesus said life should be. Surrender, self-denial, taking up the cross for the sake of truth. Peace that passeth understanding. The entire bit. But without have to strain to believe in God. I think that more or less completes my deconversion from theological religion.

I don't anticipate fully adapting to modern culture where material culture is concerned. I did leave physically leave that community successfully, but there will probably be life-long scars.

I wrote this in response to the question: How much of what you rant about today did you do as a fundamentalist?

Regarding the question of this thread: Little or no respect for self and others. The person is of secondary importance to righteousness as dictated by God, i.e. religion.

After my breakdown in 1982, this began to change because I realized that I was just as bad as the people who were gossiped about in the community. My breakdown was caused by emotional stress but manifested with being unable to sleep and feeling physically ill. The feeling of physical illness is gone but the insomnia and related problems got much worse in the following years. My life has developed around these problems.

When I discovered books on self-esteem I saw light at the end of the tunnel. I think I read all the books my public library had on hand on the topic at the time. I analyzed myself and everyone I knew. Then I was introduced to Myers-Briggs and read everything on it that I could lay hands on. It gave me another tool for self-analysis and for analyzing my family and everyone I knew. I was beginning to get a handle on why I was feeling so unhappy. Perhaps the biggest thing I got out of it all was that it wasn't all my fault, as my family would have me believe.

Eventually, this led to university, where for the first time in my life I was accepted and respected by an entire community for who I was; my questions and ideas were welcomed and appreciated instead of condemned. I began to learn about self-respect. I took social work, sociology, religious studies, anthropology, theology--in short, I learned about other people, what they believe, and how they live. On forums like this I learned first-hand stories about people's personal life struggles, all of which fitted in with what I learned in school and about humanity in my community. The more I learn about other people, their circumstances, and what brings them to where they are, the more I can respect them.

Here's a rough timeline:

1982: breakdown
1985-1994: some positive experiences with real life people, read much about self-esteem; did much self-analysis
Christmas 1994: was given a book on Myers-Briggs; much analysis of self and others, esp. family
Fall 1995: located Myers-Briggs interest group; met with them for several years; met a counselor whom I saw for a while; he was a university prof; this didn't work out so I looked up another counselor who taught at the other university; that didn't work out either but I got information on applying to his university.
May 1998: started first university course; kept it a strict secret from the community; told my parents and a few siblings.
Aug. 1999: "came out of the closet" about my education; community disapproved so strongly that I felt a need to leave; worst ever experience of my life; when I got off the phone from talking with a modern Mennonite and planning to go to church with her the next Sunday I had a "new birth" experience, which tided me over the extremely rough persecution.
Sept. 2006: official deconversion; I'd never really known for sure if God existed; I'd never understood how the plan of salvation was supposed to work; I'd never thought of myself as a sinner; most certainly I never felt like I was saved by the shed blood of Christ; I trusted I'd get these insights when I got older, like I was promised at the time of my baptism but it didn't happen. Finally I concluded that if there were answers I would have found them and that god probably didn't exist; I looked into paganism; Christians happened to find out about this and kicked me out so I assumed I had deconverted. Not that my beliefs had changed all that much. I didn't have many beliefs to lose or change but they judged that I had been a good Christian up till that time. Funny how they judge people by outward signs such as church attendance and platitudes and dress.

Those are probably the things I rant about most in Christians; I really don't keep track. Depends how they treat me/us, what they bring to the table or battle. I think if they would only stop trying to be so good and just be who they are, then they'd be a lot happier and have much less need to preach to us. I think that way because that's what happened to me. When I stopped trying to be so good and had more empathy for others (which started back in about 1982 shortly after my breakdown) the pressure started to let up. I emphasize that it just started because I had a loooonnngggg way to go. I'm still working on it.

Here I wrote out in detail my thinking behind the Big Question about Salvation:

The major question Christians will not address, and over which I finally deconverted, is: What changed when Jesus died that made it possible for human souls to get to heaven but was impossible before? (I was taught that Jesus died so we can get to heaven and that if he had not died we would be condemned to hell for all eternity.)

I start with the presupposition that: a) God would have "just forgiven" if there were no more to it than that. Therefore, there must be more to it than that; there must have been a physical obstacle somewhere that was moved when Jesus died or resurrected. b) Jesus' death could not possibly have been symbolic (e.g. based on the Jewish understanding of sacrifice) because the price is too great for that to be ethical. An almighty, all-knowing God would come up with something far superior and far more useful than symbology. Therefore, Jesus' death had to serve a practical purpose; something must have changed at Jesus' death for his death to have been necessary. c) While faith may not be logical, Heb. 11:1 says it is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. To me, this means faith is more than hopeful or wishful thinking or blind faith. It means that faith or theology must make sense so far as the human mind is able to comprehend. Therefore, the Plan of Salvation must make sense to me and hang together for me today in the 21st century just as it did for the first Christians in the first century. An all-wise omniscient God would be able to come up with such a plan. Even I could come up with such a plan if I tried hard enough. I'd like God to be better at this kind of thing than myself.

That's basically my thinking behind the question. I'm sure it sounds blasphemous to a Christian but it's the cold hard facts I've had to struggle with for many decades. I conclude that there are no answers and that if there were a Holy Spirit to provide answers it would have done so long ago. No human teacher or parent would let his or her child struggle so long and desperately in such anguish for answers without lifting a finger. Nor would a real God if he existed.

Originally posted here.

Regarding the question of God's existence:

I've never seen a moutain or desert. I've lived all my life in a very fertile area of the country where the wild takes over any abandoned site in short order. Depending on the time of year and conditions, only a matter of weeks is required for the first greenery to appear. You can imagine what cultivated gardens and parks look like. Or conservation areas left to thrive at the natural pace.

Whenever I asked my mother how we know God is real she would insist all we have to do is look at nature. I did. I loved nature. I did not understand evolution and I assumed it's horrible and evil and ugly because that was all I ever heard. But never in my deepest heart of hearts could I convince myself that the natural beauty with which I found myself surrounded either in the lush green of spring or golden blue and white of winter that God was the reason for its existence.

This was in the 60s and 70s before powerfull electrical lights dimmed the stars out where we lived and I could see the stars in all their glory--what I could see with my very low vision. I loved the stars on a dark moonless night. I loved the naturally lighted moonlit nights just as much. I loved all the different moods and types of weather and seasons. But God wasn't in any of it. God just wasn't.

I went to church and learned all the right feelings that go along with the sermons, the singing, the prayers. I learned the Bible and other religious literature. But God did not manifest himself. The feelings did not bring God. Finally I read a book that told me the feelings were God.

Wow.

If that was true then I had known God for a very long time. But nobody had ever told me that God was a feeling. Somehow, it didn't really stick. Wasn't God supposed to be a literal Being who did things like smite the Egyptians' first-born of children and animals so they would let the Israelites go? Didn't he do material stuff for them like give bread in the wilderness and send hornets to drive their enemies out of the Promised Land?

And even in my own life, wasn't he supposedly responsible for stuff like making sure I saw that car zipping around the corner before I crossed the street? My mother said so. She was always saying "A higher hand must have been watching out for us." Or "This could not have been the doing of humans" when there was a fortunate coincidence. I made it my business to figure out whether or not she was correct about coincidences, but my point here is that she was talking about material real-life stuff--not just some mystical feeling.

Whether leading the Israelites out of Egypt or looking out for people today, or demanding the sacrifice of his own son, this God was more than a mystical feeling. And the beauties of nature somehow didn't cut it as evidence of his existence. Not that I ever thought it out in logical sequence like this but I "knew" that nature wasn't the evidence I needed.

Here is the story of that test. My younger siblings came home from school with a new song they had learned:

Some people say there is no God up in the heavens
They say he did not send his son for us to die
They mock his name and to their shame they live without him
But I believe in God and I can tell you why.

That's the first verse. I held my breath. Here was someone who could tell me why they believed in god! Oh how I longed for evidence! How I clung to every word of the chorus for dear life as they sung it out:

His hand created all the stars that light the heavens
His tender touch brought forth the beauty of the rose
His love so free he gave to us that's why I praise him
My God is real--is real to me all heaven knows.

My heart was crushed in bitter, bitter disappointment. I was devasted. Another broken promise. My siblings told me there were more verses. They would get them in the following weeks when the music teacher came again. I waited in suspence, not daring to tell anyone the intensity of my longing for an answer. Such deep, deep doubt about God's existence was simply not permissible. I had to bear it all alone, keep it all inside. And I pretended there was nothing wrong.

Time passed and they brought home the rest of the song. The other verses were more of the same. Just proclamations of God making the beauties of nature and the stupidity of anyone not believing it. Promise of explanation left devastatingly void and empty.

The most logical answer I can arrive at, given this serious lack of evidence, is that God does not exist.

I found a website with pictures of my home community. I recognized the farms and countryside before I saw the names of the places or the map also on the website. I have driven past these places so often in my forty-five years of living in the area that they are forever impressed on my memory. The details listed in the text are not necessarily accurate. For example, not everyone paints their roofs green and green trim is not used for all homes. The house in which I grew up had white trim and part of the roof of the house was black roofing shingles. The barn roof was tin-coloured until it got rusty and Dad had it painted green when I was about thirteen.