February 22, 2021
If you spend a lot of time in the ex-evangelical community, you’re bound to hear or read others’ deconversion stories.
These are valuable. As I’ve said before, your deconversion story is your new testimony. Your deconversion story allows you to speak freely, openly, and honestly about your experiences within the Church—perhaps for the very first time.
Likewise, hearing these stories from others is helpful during your own deconstruction to realize that you are far from alone.
But sometimes these deconversion stories are hard to hear. They can be rife with drama, pain, and trauma.
Most people that have deconverted could tell you a story or two about Christians they knew who, despite claiming to be Christians, were absolute assholes.
When you deconvert from your religion, it’s common to leave some people behind. This is normal and usually a good thing. Here are a few examples:
- Sometimes you have to leave behind old church friends because they can’t see you the same way after you leave the faith.
- Sometimes you have to cut off toxic people, such as overbearing pastors.
- Sometimes, in more extreme circumstances, you need to distance yourself from certain family members.
However, what I’ve noticed doesn’t get talked about nearly as much are the people you lose that actually were genuinely good people that were trying to do the best they could within the context of religion.
There were several older people in my former church that I looked up to during my time there. These guys were kind, genuine, and always willing to help others. They weren’t perfect and never claimed to be, yet they never demonstrated glaring contradictions between the message they preached and their lifestyle.
At the time, I felt like these people were excellent role models, and perhaps they were for that particular stage of my life.
Now that I’ve grown and left the faith, it can be quite painful to think back on those guys and realize how far they’ve fallen off the pedestal I put them on in my mind.
They haven’t fallen because of any misconduct or scandal; in fact, many of them are still trucking along as they were fifteen years ago, preaching sermons and leading Bible studies. Rather, they’ve fallen off the pedestal that I myself placed them on because, over time, I’ve drastically changed what I look for in a mentor.
For me, it’s gotten to the point where even if you are the nicest, most respectful guy ever, who has his life together and is reasonably intelligent, but are still a fundamentalist Christian, I’m going to have a hard time taking you seriously.
Because if you’re a fundamentalist Christian, it presupposes a few things:
- There is certain knowledge that you refuse to look into or, if you’ve looked into it, you choose to ignore.
- The lens through which you view the world is very far from reality.
- Even if you’ve personally never hurt anyone, the doctrines, dogmas, and teachings you adhere to have.
And I just don’t want those above points to describe me.
When I think back on those guys in the church that I held in such high esteem, I realized that, at the time, I never actually had any true mentors—ones that would benefit my life in practical ways. These guys were mostly experts in telling me what I should think and believe spiritually. And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned there is much more to life than what you think or believe spiritually.
I think everyone who has deconverted has spent some time reflecting back and wondering how much further ahead in life they could have gotten (and faster) had they skipped the whole detour into religion. I know I definitely have. What would’ve happened if the mentors I have now were the mentors I had at age 18? My life would look completely different. In a way, I feel like I’m behind.
But I don’t think I would go back and change anything if I were given the chance. In a lot of ways, I do think my experiences within the Church were valuable on some level and definitely contributed to who I am today.