Why do people leave the Christian Faith? What is it about Jesus and the Bible that makes people either never believe or “unbelieve”? This Deconversion Story helps to shed some light on that issue.
What to me is so discouraging is the fact that many of the things she mentions (literal 7 day creation, conservative political views, views on women, etc) are not essential Christian doctrines. Unfortunately though, many Christians hold them with a firm fist, as if the only people who will rise to meet Jesus in the air are those who believe God created in 7 literal 24 hour days. Count me out. Frustrating.
The other thing about this story that was discouraging to me is that she was not given the freedom to doubt and question her faith with her fellow Christians. Tim Keller in his new book The Reason for God encourages two things. Keller says this:
I commend two processes to my readers. I urge skeptics to wrestle with the unexamined “blind faith” on which skepticism is based, and to see how hard it is to justify those beliefs to those who do not share them. I also urge believers to wrestle with their personal and culture’s objections to faith. At the end of each process, even if you remain the skeptic or believer you have been, you will hold your own position with both greater clarity and greater humility.
For many Christians, questioning their faith is something that is simply unthinkable. There are two unfortunate parts to that. First, Christians are then very ill-equipped to answer valid objections from those who do not believe and might otherwise believe if their objections could be answered (assuming of course the work of the Holy Spirit). Second, this leaves many people just waiting to experience what Karen has experienced. She believed in Jesus at age nine in Sunday School but was never permitted to question and doubt her faith in a healthy way. As she grew to become her own person and question her faith (a process that leads many to “make their faith their own”), she was never permitted to do it. She was basically told by the Christian world to shut up and believe.
May the skeptics have the courage to doubt their alternate belief system (even a system of unbelief is a belief system) and may Christians have the courage to doubt their faith. May both be welcomed into a community of Christians that understand the difference between what is essential to the faith and what is not, may they be welcomed into a community that gives good answers to good questions, and may they know that an unexamined faith is much more dangerous than a doubting one.
I followed your link back from Off the Map. I couldn’t agree more that people, whether religious or not, should question their beliefs. Anything that has been accepted and never examined can be frightening when it is challenged. Challenging it yourself removes that chance for someone imposing fear on you and gives a you the opportunity to see yourself as a stranger might view you. A sobering thought perhaps but valuable nonetheless.
As a mom, nothing scares me more than thinking about one of my kids rejecting Christ. As hard as it is though I know they have to “make it their own”… experience Christ in their own way and find answers for themselves. My faith, and the way I live it out, is not and should not be theirs. Terrifying, though. So I grip the steering wheel a little tighter when my daughter turns to me in the car and says, “Mom, what if the Bible isn’t true?” What if, indeed. And there starts her own journey of discovery, just as it should be.