My Deconversion From Christianity
This is my story of how I deconverted from Christianity. I originally sent it to the ex-Christian discussion list I joined. I will update it periodically as time, whim, and my nit-picking nature strike me.
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Well, let's see...I think I was "saved" around age 7, though I never really questioned Yahweh's existence before then (of course not; I was only 7). Anyway, as I got older I lived a regular fundie Southern Baptist life, not really wanting to go to church on Sunday because I'd rather spend my weekend sleeping in or watching cartoons or something. Around age 16, there was a visitor to the grade school youth department whose message consisted of people who died in some bad way without God. Of course they went to Hell. One of his stories was about two or three guys committing the unpardonable sin and dying later that day. At least one supposedly died without apparent cause. He quite literally scared the hell into me, so, doubting I had really been saved the first time, I prayed again, and from that point on until I deconverted, I would always doubt whether I was saved, though that never prevented me from being as fundie as I could be for the Lard, when I wasn't pulling my hair out agonizing over my own salvation. Other people my age at my former church even had problems with the guest speaker I listed to at age 16, though their problems were more of skepticism of his stories.
After I graduated from high school and started college, my Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder kicked into high gear, causing me grief not only in simple things like how I took steps on sidewalks, but over "ethical" decisions as well. Around this time I also stopped going to church. I was able to drive my own car, even to church on Sunday by this time, and my college schedule was quite a bit different from my grade school schedule, so I'd end up sleeping in a lot, or just staying in my car and listening to the radio when I did manage to make it to church.
In 1998, I was suspended from college because of my GPA. I was trying to do the Biomedical Science thing for my major, but my life was too messed up to be taking chemistry and math classes that weren't my strong suit to begin with. I had even stopped praying by this time, because the rituals spurred on by my OCD, depression, anxiety, and Christian-based doubts were simply causing me too much grief. In the second half of 1998, I came to the realization that I didn't really want Yahweh to exist. Prior to this, I had been unhappy with arguments by Christians for Yahweh's existence, and arguments by atheists against Yahweh's existence. I started doing my own research on the Internet, and on one of the Pagan sites I was looking at (I had been looking at them for a little while at this point), it mentioned how the name "Hell" came from a goddess named "Hel." I did other research into the evolution of Christianity, and was eventually left with the knowledge that in all the ways that mattered, Christianity was nothing new.
Because of my dropping away from the church scene and prayer, this conclusion didn't hit me as hard as it has some others who deconverted, and to be honest, I'm quite relieved to know Yahweh doesn't exist, at least not in the all-knowning, all-powerful way I once believed. There would be one final lapse when I accidentally caused a small burn stain on the carpet of my room on October 31, 1998, shortly after moving into the house I live in now, but that prompted my final, or at least next-to-last, severing of any belief in Yahweh. I reminded myself that he simply doesn't exist, and delved deeper into atheism and freethought reading on the Internet just to be sure. Occasionally more doubts would surface, but they'd be disproven shortly thereafter.
To see more deconversion stories, there are some places on the Internet devoted not just to one person's deconversion from Christianity, but to posting the stories of all those who have deconverted and choose to contribute their story to the website:
exchristian.org.
Walk Away.
EX-TIAN Stories. This particular link is actually part of the Secular Web website, the main page of which I have linked to on my Atheism & Religion page.
Back to the Atheism & Religion page.
Back to the main page.