B. Kildow
I’m sure my “deconversion” isn’t as dramatic as most since I’d never
been “converted.”
My mother and father (a Lutheran turned Methodist and a Methodist turned
Episcopalian) had never agreed which faith to bring their 3 children up
under. They made the (in my opinion) perfectly rational decision to let
us grow up and make up our own minds. We were all taught, “The Lord’s
Prayer” at a young age and said it every night and there was always a
King James version of the Bible in the house, but that was as far as our
religious training went. I had a vague idea about heaven, hell, Jesus
and God, but it wasn’t exactly a major topic of conversation at our house.
One summer, when I was about 12, I had read everything of any interest
in the house (and that was a *lot* of books) and no trips to the library
were forthcoming, so I decided to give the Bible a try. The language
wasn’t a problem–I really loved Shakespeare, especially MacBeth and
Hamlet–it was the stories. The two different stories of the Creation
made no sense to me (Okay…so what really happened?). I was already
into dinosaurs, especially trilobites and they never even got a
mention. It was the Garden of Eden and The Fall of Man that really got
my goat, though. The idea of creating a Garden, putting Man in it and,
after telling Adam, “Don’t touch that,” God’s surprised when Adam, of
course, does. Even as a 12-year-old I could’ve told God that was bound
to happen. Hadn’t He ever seen people touch a wall in spite of a “Wet
Paint” sign? This is an omniscient creator? This guy couldn’t reason
his way out of a paper bag. And what was with creating the nasty
serpent, giving it free rein to run around and tempt people? Why would
a loving, omniscient person do that? Didn’t He know what was bound to
happen? Wasn’t he supposed to know *everything*?? And everybody is
cursed because of what two people did? That prayer we said every night
asked for forgiveness “as we forgive those who trespass against us”, but
this God wasn’t sounding very forgiving. Hell, I forgave my brother for
shooting me in the forehead with a BB gun, but a loving, *forgiving* God
not only couldn’t forgive two people who made a mistake, but cursed
*everyone* for all time because of it?
It was really the Creation that did it for me, but the Ark (What?!??
You couldn’t get that many animals on one boat! What about animals in
North America? Wouldn’t all the sea life have been destroyed?), Moses
in Egypt (Hey! I read *everything* I could get my hands on about
ancient Egypt. The whole story of Moses was such a bunch of hooey.),
and all the killing, rape and plunder done by God’s direct command just
sealed the deal for me.
Now, after having been officially a total heathen for 36 years after my
“deconversion moment”, I’m just amazed at how many adults find the Bible
so convincing when a 12-year-old could see right through it. Hey!
Maybe there was a slight typo in that one Bible verse–” Except ye be
(de)converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into
the kingdom of heaven.”
[ratings]
