Those Who Leave Christ and My Own Story (Of Why I Could Not)

A few people (that I can honestly say I have real affection for) have left Christianity and I admit to having a wide variety of feelings about it.  The kind of Christianity we were all exposed to was all within the pale of your typical fundamentalist/evangelical (including charismatic) nature, of the sort that allows (or so it often felt) for only those questions that fit neatly on a workbook page and have one obvious answer.  It is an excellent fit for some people—even a very healthy fit.  But not for all of us, not for the some of the students and the thinkers, not for those who delight in asking questions and searching out answers.  What do you do when you have questions that aren’t on the “allowed” page?  And what do you do when the Official Teacher’s Answer Guide response isn’t satisfactory? 

I don’t blame them for leaving.  Yet I admit to feeling a deep sense of sorrow.  I am not going to pretend that I don’t have my own set of doubts.  In my own experience of leaving the particular paradigm of American evangelicalism, I did have to ask myself the larger questions.  Is this whole thing a big made-up sham?  Is there a God (or gods) at all?  What is this Bible?  While I roll my eyes at the Muslims or Mormons for believing in their holy books, am I just as guilty of ignoring glaring problems with my own “sacred text?” 

During some months of my deconstructing journey, I read books by atheists, by agnostics, by scholars and they shared their answers to my questions.  Some of those answers I gleaned wisdom from, others not.  Some of the thoughts presented were easy to put aside, others still reverberate.  I did not join the agnostic camp, but it was good to see their point of view.  I understand, now, how someone can think Christianity is vile, even as I stand from a different vantage point. 

Answering the question of whethor or not God Is (or is not), however, can’t come from books—not the Bible anymore than any other book, anymore than answering the question of whether or not I exist can come from reading a text.  I think that might be where I differ from my friends who’ve left following Christ.  My problem is that I am unable to leave, in the same way that, despite hair-pulling moments of extreme frustration, I could never pack my bags and leave my husband or children. 

The human mind is a strange thing.  I admit it, given the right circumstances, you could probably convince me that I’m actually in an insane assylum, that my family is just a figment of my imagination, as is this blog post I am typing.  I would have to admit that though it seems unlikely, it *is* a possibility.  The chair I am sitting on might just be a figment of my imagination.  (The Matrix authors took that thought and made a movie of it).  It’s possible, even Biblical, this idea that what we think *is,* may not *be* what is. 

So it is with the existance of God.  You could present an argument to me about how God is a human construct, and I would have to admit there is a chance that could be true.  But here is exactly where I am stuck.  In the same way that I delight in the faces of my family, so I delight in my God.  I know that I can’t see Him or touch Him physically, and yet in an internal way, there He Is.  I am unable to remember a time when He was not. 

Perhaps I am an easily deluded person.  It’s possible.  But I cannot leave God.  If He is a delusion, it’s of the impenetrable kind.  I can leave all the horse manure masquerading about in His name.  I can question systems and versions of how Christianity ought to look.  I can question doctrines both past, present, and future.  I am wildly enjoying being set free from the textbook/workbook version of Christianity.  But I would never want to be “set free” from Christ.   

So in that sense, even though I deeply understand why they would not find adequate answers in “the system” we were all apart of and though I am in full agreement with many of their conclusions, I am not able to understand fully how and why their journey took them in a different direction than mine.  So, the truth is, I don’t understand.  I cannot relate.  I only feel a deep sense of loss.  In my own deepest parts, whatever that place is down in the oft-avoided quiet recesses of myself, He has always been.