Testimonial

Christians have what they call "testimonies," which are stories of how they became a Christian. I thought I'd share my testimony... although it is the story of how I became an Atheist. This took about two days to write, so it is long, but I thought it might be helpful to those who really want to know who they're arguing and/or speaking with. I apologize for grammatical/spelling errors. I'll keep editing them as I find them.

My Testimony

I was raised in a Baptist home (for those of you who don’t know, this is a denomination of Protestantism). My dad’s side of the family came from Italy, and of course, they were Catholic. When my dad met my mom, she had just recently become a fanatic of the Baptist faith, and so he left his Catholic roots behind to join her in her new found ideology. For the first 8 years of my life, I lived in Raleigh, North Carolina… a deeply spiritual, fundamentalist Christian, southern-bell part of America. I lived and breathed Christianity before I was even entirely aware of it. I attended a Baptist school which doubled as my church, and so I was frequented this place 6 days a week. Christmas/Easter plays, Awanas, Daily Chapel, Sunday school… that was my life, and my indoctrinated beginnings.

We moved to Seattle, Washington when I as about 9 years old and I entered into another Private school with the same routine as the old one. My mom also began attending one of the mega churches in the area—Overlake Christian Church—and thusly she had me tag along. It wasn’t until I started attending Overlake that I felt the presence of God in my life. I wanted to serve God in any way I possibly could, so I joined the church’s drama team, the nursery worker program, the homeless outreach program, prisoners for Christ program, the choir, and participated in at least 20 separate mission trips offered by the church (one to Santiago, Chile where I had my 13th birthday). I was also put in a youth leadership role while I was there, and loved giving sermons to audiences of over 300 people in my age group. I was convinced that God wanted me to become a missionary when I grew up… and, since I had always loved science, I knew he wanted me to become a scientist so I could share the word of God by helping poor countries invent ways to grow food, etc.

Out of all the various stresses and confusions my early childhood had (parents got divorced and a nasty custody battle that lasted about 4 years) the one thing I knew for sure was that I loved God. I had few concerns, as I knew everything was in God’s hands. He would take care of me no matter what hardship I went through. Church was a beautiful escape for me from that other confusing life. It made sense to me, and it gave me a sense of belonging I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else.

In 2001 my mom decided to move back to her hometown in Michigan. We left Seattle and our big mega church that I loved so much, and started over in the smallest town I had ever seen. The churches were no bigger than 50 people per congregation, and it was difficult for me to find my niche there. I joined a small Baptist Church in my town and quickly started working to bring kids from my public school into the youth program. It was also during this time that I became an employee of a large Baptist summer Camp in Lake Ann, Michigan.

This camp employed kids from ages 14 through 18 to come and work as either kitchen staff or maintenance staff at the camp. Our work schedule was from 630am-1130am, 1200pm-300pm, and 600pm-1000pm, making it a grand total of 12 hours per day of hard labor. Our compensation was about $13USD per day (which comes to a little over $1 per hour for our work). The times we were not working, we were required to attend Bible studies and chapel services. Suffice to say, we were never allowed more than two hour’s worth of free time. The people who employed us would say we were doing a great service for God, etc. They’d pull the “Jesus Card” on little kids and exploit them for cheap labor so they could save money. The camp pulled in millions of dollars every year, and the heads of staff were obviously well off, so I knew they could afford to pay their workers. But, instead, they brain-washed their children staff and gave us pennies for the most grueling, tiresome work I have ever done. I caught onto this at the young age of 15 and realized even then what they were doing, and how disgusting it was. I started to see what I had only noticed a few times in my past, which was how religious people used what I loved to exploit and take advantage of others. After that, I started to see the same attitude everywhere. I would get disgusted simply sitting in the pews during a church service and looking around at all the fake people. How I knew that many of them would go home and do the worst kinds of things, and yet judge everyone else around them who was not a Christian, saying that they were better than them simply because they had Jesus. I decided I didn’t want any part of that, and became embarrassed to call myself a Christian, since so many people were perverting what that even meant.

Though I was unable to attend church anymore, I still considered myself a Christian. I believed for a long time that everything in the Bible was true (that’s how we’re raised in the South). But, all of that began to change when I went to college. I changed. The thing that influenced this change the most, I believe, was math. The calculus classes I took reshaped my thought process. No longer did my mind jump to different thoughts or ideas… I was taught linear reasoning. I have never heard of calculus having such a profound effect on anyone else, but I know that it changed me… namely, the way I thought and reasoned through problems. Math IS logic, and is known as the universal language. It only makes sense that the rationalization taught in mathematics would flow over into other areas of life.

I slowly started to question the teachings of the Bible and the contradictions I saw between that and the rest of the world. I started wondering why religion had to even exist… why didn’t God love me enough to TELL me and the rest of the world, in a way that everyone unquestionably knew, that he did. And then, many of my friends and mentors started dropping like flies… so to speak. Five friends died within a year’s time. As everyone knows or could imagine, the loss of one close friend provokes many thoughts on the realization of how fragile life is, on where they could have gone, on how life would never be the same without them. Losing 5 amplifies that feeling, I think. My initial reaction was to get angry at God. Angry at why we had to be stuck in this trend, angry at how pain doesn’t make any sense coming from a God that supposedly loves us. This led to my realization that either God is here, working feverishly in everyone’s lives, or he’s not here at all… and things happen because that’s the way life goes. The former had stopped making sense to me. I felt that if God was as involved in my life as everyone says he was, I should know it. And, I didn’t.

It took about 3 years after those events to realize that I had lost faith in God. That I internally did not believe in the God of religion… the personal god, the one who loves us, existed. When I did finally realize this… I freaked out. I suddenly had to look at the world through new eyes… I no longer had a defined purpose… I had to find my own. I no longer had a place to go once I died… I had to confront my own mortality. It was like a total rebirthing, and it was a scary thing at first. I started to have anxiety attacks when I’d think about death. I felt for a time that life was meaningless… that no matter what path I chose for my life, it didn’t really matter.

That was a really hard time in my life, being introduced to such a huge level of uncertainty. And yes, it is hard to find meaning in your own life without someone just giving you an answer. But, it didn’t last as long as I thought it would. I have, in fact, found meaning again. I still find this world beautiful without attributing everything to God. I am getting more used to the idea of the finality of death… and am accepting mortality as just a cycle of life.

Because of my background in Christianity, I know I can see both sides of the fence clearly. I remember what it was like… it wasn’t very long ago. I can also contrast the differences between the values of an atheist and the values of a Christian (or religionist). I realize that most atheists probably won’t share a similar story… as I was heavily indoctrinated as a child and heavily believed what I was taught until later in adolescence/ young adulthood. Because of my upbringing, most of my friends are Christian, as well as my family. I can’t “come out” to them because I know, unfortunately, I will lose many of them in the process. My family would especially not understand. So, it’s lonely in my world believing what I do… the point I want to make here is that it wasn’t my “choice,” as many religionists will believe. I did not reject God. My thought process simply changed in a way that would not allow belief without evidence.