October 14, 2021
A common desire among Deconverted Men is that they want to help other people leave religion too.
It makes sense. After being deceived for so long, they don’t want to see anyone else caught up in the same lies that ensnared them. Many Deconverted Men also think that if literally everyone stopped being religious then the world would be a much better place. That may or may not be true, but that’s an article for another time.
But it quickly becomes apparent to most that you can’t help people deconvert. You can try, but often you’ll be met with resistance. Why is this?
Because people who deconvert must be ready to deconvert. No one else can make them ready. This only comes from within themselves.
While this is frustrating, there’s also a certain beauty to it. Leaving religion would lose all its meaning if someone were forced to do so. Leaving religion is only momentous when someone makes an autonomous choice.
On some level I intuitively understood this during my own deconstruction even though I didn’t yet have the words to articulate it. When I first started deconstructing, I had a good friend who’d deconstructed his faith about a year ahead of me. I’ve told this story before. He was eager to help but I refused to speak to him about it. I wanted my journey to be my own. I’d followed a carefully laid path into religious belief in the first place. I didn’t want a predetermined path out. I also didn’t want to feel like the only path available to me was to completely leave religion altogether, which brought me to my admittedly short Liberal Christian phase.
That being said, does that mean you should never help someone else deconvert? Of course not. You can, and you should if the opportunity presents itself. The key here is knowing who you can help deconvert. I’ll break it down from what I’ve noticed in my own experience.
It’s helpful to imagine faith deconstruction like a ladder. Say it has ten rungs. The first rung is the very first “hint” that something about fundamentalist Christian doctrine might be off. It might be the very first recognition of a contradiction in the gospels. It might be the first sense that perhaps a pastor isn’t actually practicing what he preaches.
The tenth rung, on the other hand, is someone who is totally done with religion and is now living a life free and clear of any religious influence.
The people who are most likely to allow you to help them in their deconstruction are the people who are on the rung directly below you.
A good way to recognize these people is if they’re asking questions that you once were asking and have since found answers to. That means the person’s mind and heart are open. They’re ready to receive. They’ve chosen to embark on the deconstruction journey.
Here’s an example from my own life. I was on rung two or three when I was reading authors who were putting forth the idea that it was still possible to be a Christian while having a metaphorical interpretation of the Bible. I’d technically begun deconstruction, but I wasn’t yet ready to let go of the Christian label. I’d moved on from some of my fundamentalist ideas, but I most certainly was not ready for a bunch of hard evidence on why the Resurrection never happened because I still needed that to be true to feel comfortable. If you’d tried to make me learn that stuff at that point, I would’ve put a wall up despite having started my deconstruction journey.
It can be tempting to think that if you can lead the strongest believing, most vocal Christians out of religion, then that’s the best thing to do. Maybe, but it isn’t going to work. The strongest believing, most vocal Christians just aren’t yet ready to hear what you have to say.
The heated, vile religious debates on social media are the ones happening between people on rung ten and those who haven’t even found the ladder yet. That’s the reason why those debates are heated and vile—they’re happening between two people on completely opposite ends of the spectrum.
When you find someone who is a rung or two below you in the deconstruction journey and is open to your help, remember to be gentle. Recall how you felt when you were climbing the deconstruction ladder and how difficult and life changing it was. Remember how leaving religion causes disruption to the seven life areas. Have some empathy.
I’ve likened faith deconstruction to the classic story structure of the Hero’s Journey. One hallmark of the Hero’s Journey is that after the Hero (in this case, you) has completed his story, he returns to act as a mentor for the next Hero, to give him the tools he needs to complete his own journey. Therefore, while I believe it’s better to err on the side of caution when it comes to seeking to deconvert others, there’s still a balance to be struck.