Jeffrey Handy
When I attended Saint Leo in 2003, I took a course on Western Religions. A big part of that was Christianity. That course began a whole new chapter in my life and paved the road to deconversion for me. I recall arguing with the instructor about reason for faith and trying to justify contradictions that kept coming up in the class. it was a painful time in my life. I felt as if a close relative had cancer and was dying quickly. It also came at a time when I was especially dependent on the church since I was going through the later stages of a divorce.
Letting go of my faith was the most chaotic time of my life. I felt I had no direction, no reason and no base. At first, I thought I was simply “slipping”. However, as I educated myself and read the bible more and more, I realized that I wasn’t simply slipping. I was being deprogrammed. I didn’t know any reality other than that which I’d been brought up within. Mine was a Christian home and lifestyle. I was losing my identity. I recall waking up one morning feeling completely liberated from my faith. The shackles had been unlocked and I was a free man. It was as if my life were just beginning.
I began doing more things to occupy my time. I started gaining a rekindled love of science and education. I started reading books that I would never have looked at before. Richard Dawkins was a very interesting and contradicting speaker whom I would have simply ignored before. I was also listening to a podcast called the infidel guy show. That podcast helped me along my journey of re-finding reason. I began to realize what Richard Dawkins was trying to do. His reason for living (at the present) is to spread the truth about the lies so many of us have grown up with.
I could never blame anyone for the indoctrination. When you are brought up that way, you know no other reality. I was never taught about Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, deism, etc. Once I began to learn those other religions, I could see that Christianity seems to be a mishmash of previous belief systems and writings. Further, I discovered that most Christian holidays were amalgamations of other holidays already established. Most of the traditions were imitations of past beliefs.
Most of all, I learned the importance of learning all I could about the basis of Christianity - the bible. Without that one book, the house of cards falls fast. That is where the complete breakdown happened for me. It would have been much more difficult for me to break from faith if the book was perfect as Jesus was meant to be. The book is not perfect and has one contradiction after another. The god of the old testament was vindictive and vicious. So, evidently, god thought “he” needed to change. I was always taught that god was perfect. Anyway, long story short, everything in and about the bible began to break down for me. That was the time faith began to die in me. And that is when I claimed my life for myself.
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