Becoming An Atheist: A Little Background

I was born into a "mixed" marriage of sorts -- my mother was a Methodist PK (that's preacher's kid, for those of you not hip to the slang), and my father had grown up LDS (more commonly known as Mormon), though he had rejected the faith. In 31 years, I still don't know why -- we've never discussed it. I just knew that my mom was a Christian, and my dad was not.

We didn't go to church often growing up -- sometimes, depending on where we were living, we want to a local Methodist church. I remember going to see my grandfather preach when we went to visit them. But mostly I grew up believing in God, but without much religion or ritual behind it.

When I was 14, we moved to SLC. And, if you have ever lived there, you can imagine what it was like for a non-LDS girl. I wasn't ostracized by any means -- but I also was not well-versed enough to fend off the attempts to convert me. And there were many! All of my friends invited me to church, which my mother vehemently objected to. Maybe because I was 14 and needed to rebel against my parents, or, maybe because I was 14 and wanted to fit in with my peers, or maybe because I was 14 and in love for the first time with an LDS boy -- but I found myself very drawn to the LDS community. I took it upon myself to read the bible from cover to cover (a feat I have accomplished several times since), and to read the Book of Mormon as well. My friends seemed to have reasonable answers to my not-very-deep questions, and I was never allowed to visit their churches and discuss the religion with adults. My mother never told me why she was so against it, she just was. I became convinced that, once I turned 18, I would convert and marry my LDS boyfriend and have a passel of children.

Instead, when I was just shy of 16, we moved to Podunk. Where, instead of being surrounded by the LDS and their very strong sense of community, I was an oddball. We didn't attend any of the mega-churches, and I wasn't a part of their youth groups. I clung to my version of Mormonism (which was by no stretch of imagination a very accurate version) for a while, but eventually teenage normalcy begged and I identified only as "Christian." I still read the bible, and I missed the community I had found in SLC. I searched for that for many years. When I was 18, I joined a local Methodist church. It was familiar, and it embraced all people. Even then, in my conservatism, I had doubts that any one religion was spot-on. I did believe some were more accurate than others, but had a very difficult time embracing the idea that people who hadn't heard about Jesus, or who were born and raised in a different culture, were going to hell simply because of an accident of birth.

I joined several small groups at that church, and continued to attend throughout my two years of college there. (I go back and re-read some of my college papers from back then, littered with conservative ideologies, and can't help but laugh. How self-righteous I sounded, and how much my liberal-arts professors must have hated me! :-) )

When I was almost 20, I moved Down South (even further south than Podunk). I finished college, met Mo. Got married and started teaching. We didn't attend church, though both of us wanted to raise our children in church. I was of the mindset that church attendance wasn't necessary for a relationship with God. After several years, and lots of struggles personally, Mo broke down one afternoon and said he wanted to call his childhood preacher. We did, and the next Sunday went to his small church. He had left the Assembly of God church that Mo had been baptized in several years earlier and started his own, non-denominational church that preached prosperity -- you know, God wants you to be rich, etc. They embraced us immediately, and I felt a sense of belonging that had been missing since we left SLC. We did things with their family every weekend, attended church together every Sunday. When Mo's dad died, Mo disappeared (metaphorically, at least). I won't rehash that time period, but it was the most difficult we have ever endured. I begged them for help, but they didn't know what to do. They tried, they prayed. It did no good. I stopped attending. I miscarried. They were nowhere to be found.

When we moved back to Podunk, my faith was shattered. I had prayed for years for a different outcome, to no avail. I had prayed, not for myself, but for another, and it did no good. I knew that God wasn't listening, if he was even there at all.

It took several more years, and an atheist friend, to help me become aware of my actual beliefs. To separate what I had been taught from my actual experience. To look for evidence, and find it lacking.

There will be some readers who want to blame my atheism on my bad experiences, to say that I am angry with God. I am not, because I do not believe that any gods exist. I am angry with the situation I am in, yes. That is real. For me, god is about as real as Santa Claus, and I feel just about as much anger toward him as I do that jolly elf.

What I hope that readers get from this over-simplified explanation of my religious background is this: I have spent quite a lot of time thinking about god. I have prayed daily for years. I have read the bible, in depth, multiple times. I have examined other spiritual texts. I do not take atheism lightly -- it is not a default position, nor one based on rebellion or anger. It is the logical conclusion that I have come to after examining closely my own life experiences, those of the family and friends that surround me, and even those in far-away continents that I will never meet.

For me, religion (specifically Christianity) was the default position, an accident of birth, if you will. It is cultural and geographical and, for the majority of participants, as easy as breathing.

It is only when it became impossible to breathe that I had to examine it closer.

What I found shattered my illusions, but has ultimately brought me peace.