The Deconversion of Anthony-Part 2-The letter
"Okay man. I'll make you a deal. I'll look at that book, what is it?Mere Christianity. But you have to read this book, "Letter to a Christian Nation". And I mean really read it not just highlight areas where you can attack or anything. sound fair?". He extended his hand out to me. I take his hand in mine and at some few minutes past 11 pm on a Wednesday night, a huge turn in my life of faith had been made and I barely registered it.
My room mate was a pretty cool guy by all accounts. Never had too many parties and looked out for me [I was pretty much fresh from Africa and living in Louisiana and it was a bit much], let me use his bar bells now and then, introduced me to a few people and most of all, put on a display of womanizing that seriously deserves a medal. How the Nobel people recognized his talent and contribution to literary creativity and the ability to construct tales that had women fooled for the longest time beyond me.
Besides his amateur Casanova aspirations, the man was a great football player[Of the American variety and not the one of the rest of the world] and president of the law school. So I respected him. And I read the book he'd given me in one sitting. I remember being made very uncomfortable by it's content. It didn't hold back like many other books which were a critique on religion. It was dry and used humor in a sneaky way that often got me nodding along in agreement only to be shocked by my own reaction to this blasphemy.
“I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.”
I agreed with that. It made sense and as a liberal Christian, is why I found it harder to take claims of literal translation of the Bible too seriously. But then for some reason, perhaps as a way to stave off the pain of cognitive dissonance, perhaps as a way to not "over-think things", I never went beyond the old adage about God being mysterious and un fathomable to man was enough to curtail my curiosity.
Now perhaps it's the fact that I was a long way from home, and for the first time I was encountering people with very different view points to mine. People whose lifestyle's I'd only seen through the lens of the faithful brethren who painted them as depraved and in need of God' love. A perfect mix of judgmental piety and credulity. To think yourself humble and prostrate and those that simply don't agree with what it is you bow before, as well they're just sinful people, who are just trying to be good-but no one is good of course- started to reek something foul to me.
“It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.”
“You are using your own moral intuitions to authenticate the wisdom of the Bible - and then, in the next moment, you assert that we human beings cannot possibly rely upon our own intuitions to rightly guide us in the world.”
While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still holds immense prestige in our society. Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about. It is telling that this aura of nobility extends only to those faiths that still have many subscribers. Anyone caught worshiping Poseidon, even at sea, will be thought insane.”
These words just kept coming and I kept agreeing. As if trying to stop them from echoing in my considerably large cranium. I couldn't shake them. why did they make so much sense to me. Sweet Jesus help me in this trial. "I believe, help my unbelief ", I think is the prayer apropos.
Nothing. Scriptures and years of bible teaching and studying kicked in. Scripture came up to my mind but it still fell short. fear came next, the fear of being lost, of losing the race in this foreign godless land[Funny given how religious america really is]. It ached in me for over a year. This conflict between what I knew and what I believed. I spent it reading and reading and praying and fasting. Trying hard to cling on to what I had. The life that had given me so much. The joy, the friends,the love of an eternal father, the promise that one day it will all make sense.
I decided to sit in on a few theological and philosophy classes, learned the Ontological, Epidemiological , Cosmological and {insert Greek sounding word} arguments , as well as ate up everything from Hume to Hobbes to Kierkegaard to Spinoza to Augustine to Aquinas and Maimodenes and Ibn Warraq-Just to give Judaism and Islam a bit of airtime. The arguments went back and forth. And i just kept thinking, "why the heck did I read that blasted letter?"
Like the song says, It's indeed a slow fade. Slowly the fear of becoming the lost or lukewarm begun to fade away and suddenly there come something which to this day, I feel I wish, I hoped I would have understood when my father first said it to me. A willingness to ask why, to not just set my hopes, wishes and wants above truth..And now faced with the fork in the road, I decided to make a decision. And in part 3, well, I'll try and expound on exactly why Rapture ready gave up his faith.
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