December 23, 2021
My writing both in my book and on this blog has been an effort to highlight the positive aspects of faith deconstruction as well as not shy away from (and give advice for) the challenging aspects.
I’ve written before about how your life ultimately improves after deconstruction, allowing you to proceed to a new life that is created for you and by you, and not in accordance to the desires of a pastor, the Bible, or an ancient god that doesn’t actually exist.
Part of the reason this happens is because when you deconstruct your faith, you can choose to proceed through your life in any way you choose, and as long as you’re not harming yourself or anyone else, that’s an awesome thing.
However, there are a few voices out there who hold very strong opinions about where deconstructing Christians should land. Some people think these people should “reconstruct” back into Christianity and believing in God. Others think everyone should become staunch, materialist atheists like them.
I’ve written before about the mindset that believes deconstructing people should reconstruct back into Christians. But what about the people who also think deconstruction has only one true outcome, albeit a different one?
Well, as with the other extreme opinion, I think this extreme opinion is also misguided. Let’s explore.
It makes perfect sense to me that someone who deconstructs their faith would become a materialist atheist. That’s the path I took after my deconstruction, after all. To quickly sum up my worldview at the time:
- There is no god, no higher power, and no creator of the universe.
- Humans evolved.
- The Truth can and should only be proven by science.
It’s a reasonable way to live, even more so for someone who just broke free from a bunch of religious dogma that has no grounding in science or history. But is this worldview for everyone? Of course not.
As I said above, the myriad of possible outcomes when it comes to deconstructing your faith is exactly what makes it so exciting. It’s also one reason why it takes a long time—there is no single final destination that you “should” arrive at. If there were, then everyone would get there much faster, and as we all know, deconstruction is a slow and careful process that can take a number of years.
- Some people leave fundamentalist Christianity and end up in a different, yet less overbearing world religion. Buddhism is a popular example.
- Some people leave fundamentalist Christianity and end up practicing witchcraft. Despite being demonized by the early church, these practices aren’t evil or wrong. Rather, the rituals are grounded in self improvement and express appreciation for nature.
- Some people leave fundamentalist Christianity and take on a more New Age spiritual worldview. They start meditating, focus on going within, and they study ancient teachings about the chakra system, the Tarot, Runes, and the Law of Attraction.
There are many other possible outcomes, but those are just three off the top of my head, and ones that seem to be quite popular.
Those three listed outcomes don’t harm anyone. Rather, they are more or less focused on internal development, self-exploration, and a gentle questioning of the nature of reality as it’s described by the mainstream scientific model. In my opinion, this is not a bad thing at all. In fact, in some ways, it may be better than a purely atheistic mindset, which more or less believes there is literally nothing that can possibly exist outside of five-sense reality.
Despite the positive nature of these things, there’s a small minority of people who have deconstructed and yet continue to evangelize atheism just as hard as they once did when they were Christians. And the entire time they’re doing so, they completely fail to recognize the irony.
Generally speaking, these folks think that anyone who believes in something that hasn’t been proven by science or is just outside the realm of mainstream science is somehow less intelligent, less developed, or less mature. That’s ridiculous. Even worse, I’ve sometimes seen this outlook develop into a superiority complex that causes someone to become quite hateful and intolerant.
Fundamentalist Christians have long been criticized for not questioning their realities—and rightly so—but I’ve noticed that there are a healthy number of atheists who also never question their realities either.
In my opinion, people who are willing to continuously question the limitations of the self, the internal world, the spiritual world, and the nature of the very reality that we live in are the bravest people there are. Why? Because this kind of work isn’t some airy-fairy woo-woo nonsense where people seek to develop “super powers” such as astral traveling or remote viewing. No. Going within is hard. The shadow self is scary. There’s trauma that has been buried and internalized since birth. The inner child can be quite wounded. On top of all that, it’s absurd to think that science is “done” and that we’ve discovered everything there is to know about our world, the universe, and reality. All the while, you may face ridicule for this kind of self-work and exploration—even from fellow Deconverted Men.
In the end, continuing on as a spiritual person after leaving religion is just another way to keep asking questions of yourself, your life, your nature, and your reality. It’s the continual seeking of answers, insight, and wisdom. Where you may have once thought those things came from God, you now understand that they came from within you. If that’s the case, then what else can come from within you?