The following is an excerpt from a delightfully insightful article posted by DagoodS at his blog, “Thoughts from a Sandwich.” The article is entitled “So Your Friend Is Deconverting…”, and gives advice to Christians how to interact with and converse with friends who are leaving Christianity.

How much water can you fit in a one-gallon bucket? No matter how much you pour and pour, the most you can fit is one gallon. After that, all the pouring in the world makes no difference—no more water is going to fit.

After interacting with theists on-line, your friend the deconvert has certain buckets that are full. You saying it again will make no difference. The following buckets are full:

“You really know there is a God.”
“You hate answering to authority, so you hate God.”
“You want to be God.”
“The wisdom of the world is foolishness.”
“You were never saved in the first place.”

Frankly, deconverts have heard those phrases time and time (and time) again. He knows you think it. He knows that it these are truths that are so grounded in your being they make “2 + 2 = 4” possibly more inaccurate. But he doesn’t need to hear it again.

Interestingly, you can still get the point across, but in the form of a question, rather than an accusation. Instead of saying, “You really know there is a God” you could say, “When you were a Christian, you thought Romans 1 was divinely inspired. As you know, it indicates that all humans know there is a God. How did you deal with that?”

You may not like the answer. But it comes across so much nicer in question form, rather than indictment form.

He knows you cannot fathom the concept that another person can believe, to the very core of their being, there is no God. He knows that you must question his sincerity in saying that. But rather than blurt it out, keep it to yourself. If he calls himself a former Christian, there is not a single ounce of harm to agree.

Yes, you have a duty to speak truth. Yes, you will choke on the words that state he was a Christian. But do you really want to argue “truth” with someone that you are convinced is lying to themselves? What is the gain? Let it go.

Stow the assertions; ask questions instead.

Valerie Tarico wrote the following comment to my article, Bursting the Bubble; my response ended up being extremely lengthy, so I decided to post it as a separate article instead.

Valerie Tarico writes:

I once spent a week reading testimonials at exChristian.net. Almost always, the re-calc that allowed someone to shed Christian beliefs was triggered by some kind of emotional discomfort. The discomfort could be anything from being molested by a pastor or rejected by a snobby youth group to a grinding discomfort with the hypocrisy in the church or family. Sometimes it was a very personal life crisis or sometimes a believer couldn’t ignore the suffering in the world around them.

And yet you seem to have made the transition without a clear emotional trigger. So I’m curious what opened up the possibility of reconsidering your beliefs.

Hi Valerie, thank you very much for taking the time to comment on this post.

You are right that the shedding of Christian faith appears to be very commonly tied to some sort of emotional trigger. After I first announced my change in beliefs, it took my Dad (who, as I’ve already said in the original article, is a completely devoted pastor, and also a rare example of the very best sort of Christian) a while to recover sufficiently to even be able to write a response to me about it (as this comment from my Mom suggests). When he was able to write to me, he wrote that, essentially, he did not believe that it was any of the intellectual difficulties that I had described that were the root cause of my decision to leave the faith, but that it was issues of the heart, that had caused me to desire intellectual justifications for decisions I already wished to make, or had secretly–secret perhaps even to myself–already made.

Of course, I cannot prove him wrong; for who can judge my heart and mind, unless they know it thoroughly? One can’t even know his or her own heart and mind with that much certainty, that they can claim to have proved such a statement to be false, even to themselves–I know from my own experience that the heart often can be very persuasive in directing the mind to whatever conclusions are desired. I have only my own memory to serve as testimony–and that only to myself, and perhaps those who actually witnessed my anguish and despair, such as my wife Sara. The memory of arduously wrestling to reconcile the problems I could not resolve in the Bible, with my own experiences as a Christian, my love for many aspects of the faith, and my indescribably strong desire to continue in what was safe, what just “felt” true, and what had been the most defining aspect of my life for 28 years–this is mine alone, and I cannot haul it out to display for others to see and bear witness to. Continue reading →

This article was originally written as a response to a comment attached to an article at exchristian.net. But it says several things that have been rolling around in my head for a while that I would probably eventually want to say here anyway, so I’ve edited it slightly and am posting it here. Unlike my previous posts regarding Christianity, which were written with family and friends in mind, this was originally written for an audience of primarily former Christians; it’s somewhat more direct in tone.

Leaving a life of Christian faith is extremely difficult. Especially if you were raised in it. Those fortunate enough to have converted to it, lack the indoctrination-from-birth aspect that tends to make deconversion very difficult. I’ve noticed that, among those whose parents raised them in The Faith (Dawkins’ “Christian Children”), the vast majority appear to come from families who are abusive, or who are otherwise obvious in the inconsistency between their practices and their preaching.

I’m frankly amazed that I was able to free myself from it: I come from literally the most loving, caring, and nurturing family I know. Their faith really worked, as far as consistency between their beliefs and their actions went, and as far as having a truly happy and productive life goes: we had that. My Dad, a Calvary Chapel pastor for over a quarter-century, is by far the wisest person I know, in interpersonal relationships, emotional and mental stability, and balanced perspectives (despite a very evangelical, Bible-literalist faith). Continue reading →

I had always known about them. They were always there, lurking in the corners of Scripture, waiting for discovery, waiting to become catalysts of ignorant doubt; of the questionings of God and His Word.

Problem passages. Those passages that, at first, and even second glance, seemed to pose real, spiritual problems: doctrinal difficulties, or contradictions of known facts about the world, or even of other passages in scripture! But always, there’s an answer, for those willing to look below “just the surface;” for those with the mustard-seed faith to trust at least enough to ask God: “Lord, show me the answers I’m not seeing.” By responding with the humility to seek God and have faith that there is more to these seeming difficulties than first meets the eye, I allow God to open His vaults of wisdom, to grant me a mere kernel of insight, of greater knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of His Word. Rather than becoming jaded and disillusioned, I will instead become a little stronger, a little more secure, in the knowledge that God’s Word is perfect. God’s Word never fails. Continue reading →