My Defining Moment of Belief

Okay... Here's my revised testimony. As I post this, I'm dedicating it to all of my friendly (and not-so-friendly) friends over at the Friendly Atheist. Yay! ;-) I read this to my fellowship yesterday (before I revised it slightly again). It was much better received than I had feared. I have re-written my testimony (about my 'moment') several times in the last four years, and this is my truth for now. I think it's getting close...

Anyone who knows me well knows that I’ve been conversing on-line with atheist bloggers in the past several months. Recently, a post on Friendly Atheist asked, “What was your defining moment of unbelief?” to which many commented with very honest and painful thoughts. For most, the reasons stated had to do with confusion, loss, disappointment, and rejection. They described many unpleasant experiences they’ve had with Christians. It made me think. I’ve had those similar experiences. I’ve had a few which almost destroyed me. But why haven’t I walked away? Why am I still a believer?

You may not know the term “deconversion”, but that’s what the atheists call the process through which they abandon their religion. Inspired from the thoughts of the atheists, I decided it would be good to write about my own ‘deconversion’ experience, as well as attempt (once again) to describe my defining moment of belief rather than unbelief.

I still remember it clearly, and I’m certain I always will. It was about 7:30 a.m., Friday, April 23, 2004, alone, in my bedroom. It was the single most significant experience of my life, yet it was the most insignificant in nature. I’ve attempted several times in the past to write about this, but I could never get it right… it never seemed quite accurate. I now see that I had been trying to put too much emotion into it; trying to make it somehow more dramatic than it actually was. I realized that I had been trying to mold my experience into a story that I thought people wanted to hear, and it always seemed lacking somehow. I’ve concluded that it was probably because I was still struggling to understand what exactly happened to me. I’ll try to stick to the facts this time and not go into the unimportant details. And no sob stories… no whining. I promise. So here we go.

Christianity, especially the kind presented to me by the evangelicals, had always made me, well… nauseous. The idea of God intrigued me, but nothing that the religious people preached made any logical sense. However, I did buy into the mindset of thinking that religious people were somehow morally superior to the non-believers. Thus, I called myself a Christian just to get the other Christians (and my own conscience) off my back.

Then 9/11 happened. I watched in horror as the Twin Towers crumbled to the ground on my television screen, and I felt something in me die. I saw my beloved city and its people covered in debris and ashes, and I wanted to know why. I started growing feelings of hatred toward religion. I wanted no part of any of it. Why were those people praying on TV? Stop it! I wanted to shout to them. Can’t you see that those who flew those planes were also praying to God? I wanted the whole world to stop praying and see what we are doing to each other in the name of religion – in the name of righteousness.

The days passed and life soon returned to normal. I did not attend church, but I continued on with my life as a pretend Christian. Living in the Bible belt, it’s difficult not to. But inside, I rejected the whole concept of God which was taught to me for 40 years by my culture, religion and society. I was determined not to let anything or anyone ever tell me again who God was. I reasoned: if God is real, then I should be able to know him on my own, outside of any religion. If He isn’t, then all the more reason not to waste my time on religion. Made sense to me…

In April of 2004, through a series of unlikely events, I somehow ended up in a week-long Bible study session held by a Korean missionary who only spoke Korean. First of all, it’s humorous to imagine a missionary from another country coming here to teach the Bible. Secondly, I’m not even completely fluent in the Korean language. Sure, I can converse adequately in everyday conversation. But in no way could I fully understand the boring sermons in Korean. Why was I even there? Bible study was the last thing I wanted to do at the time. Whatever the case, this kind, gentle Korean man taught me how to look at the Bible not as a book of religious dos and don’ts, but as a book of historical facts, symbolisms, and stories of real people with real human experiences.

I became intrigued and soaked everything in. It finally started to make some sense. I thought, okay… the Bible is not as much of a nonsense as I thought it was. But I still didn’t understand the spiritual nature of the whole thing. I didn’t just want to believe for the sake of believing. There was definitely something more to it than what meets the eye. Perhaps this time of curiosity would have ended as another “stage” I went through, and my life might have eventually gone back to the way it was, if the following had not occurred.

I cannot even begin to fully describe or explain it, other than to say that it was nothing that I did or said. I remember that on that morning, I woke up with somewhat of a frustration at not knowing, of being in a fog. I knew I had another Bible study that day, but I felt empty. I was overwhelmed by having to go on pretending about this phantom God/being that now seemed too big to dismiss, yet not real enough for me to be convinced. The mere thought of remaining in this spiritual limbo was enough to make me insane.

Then… there it was. I didn’t consciously DO anything. But there was that… flash? No. It was more like…a blink. It was a blink of the mind. That’s what I’d call it. In one very insignificant mind-blink moment, everything was illuminated. The frustrating fog suddenly seemed to have disappeared. It was a moment of… shall I say, absolute perfection? No sound. No vision. No thoughts. Nothing. Nothing at all. Yet everything was perfect. Supreme clarity. Then the moment passed. Or did it?

I looked up and saw a picture on my dresser. A gift from a friend. A picture of Jesus in front of the cross. The words read: “I asked Jesus ‘how much do you love me?’ ‘This much,’ he said, then he stretched out his arms and died.” The next thing I knew, I was curled up into a fetal position and weeping for what seemed to be hours (which probably was only a few minutes in reality), but I didn’t know why. I just felt… no pain. No fear. No baggage. I just felt like none of that matters and everything was okay. I didn’t know it then, but looking back, it was then that I suddenly understood grace.

I got dressed and went to the Bible study as planned. On that day, I willingly walked into the welcoming arms of religion. Because that’s all I knew. It was the quicksand that I found myself sinking into for the next three years. The religious and legalistic teachings of Christian leaders big and small, along with my own conditioned thoughts of what being a Christian looked like had me in a stranglehold that was squeezing the very life out of me. The harder I thrashed to break free, the deeper I sank.

The “deconversion” process, as the atheists call it, for me was just as hard and painful as they describe. But somehow, I was able to break free from the grip of religion and right back into the arms of grace. I grabbed a hold of the outstretched arm of my current pastor and the fellowship (appropriately named Second Touch), and I was slowly pulled out of the quicksand.

We are a body of believers, with many of us having run away from the laws of religion in search of grace. Day by day, we are learning (at each of our own pace) our true identity as we were meant to be. The very reason why Christ came into the world is so that we could have life. I believe with all my heart (and mind) that he wants us to be free to breathe deeply with him with no restrictions. When my time here comes to an end and I have to leave this body, I will be able to continue walking with the full knowledge of exactly who I am.

A strange phenomenon, the most ironic thing that I cannot figure out for the life of me, is the close connection I feel to the atheists that I’ve befriended in the last several months. They helped me heal from whatever residue I had left in me of the disease of religion and, at the same time, strengthen my faith in Jesus Christ.

Through my conversations with them, I have come to know them as real people, and I consider them my friends without agenda. Their refreshingly (and sometimes brutally) honest thoughts and opinions help me to look at everything through a clearer lens and from a much wider angle. They have somehow become a vital part of my freedom. The differences in our beliefs aside, I have great respect for their views. I would have never imagined that I would be standing here today boldly announcing my friendship with atheists; and to borrow a phrase from a speech given by a well-known atheist Richard Dawkins, “The universe is queerer than we can suppose.”

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Cara Barer Photographer