Christian apostates obviously are an extremely varied group of people, but one thing we can pretty much all agree on is that certain arguments that Christians use constantly are very ineffective. For example, it’s incredibly invalidating when people use the “you were never really saved” argument. I’ve touched on that a few times now, such as here: https://apostateturtle.com/?p=301 and here: https://apostateturtle.com/?p=467 . Today I want to talk about the claim that “You secretly hate God/ are afraid of God/ otherwise somehow believe in God but you can’t acknowledge it because somebody hurt you.” I feel like a lot of Christians might actually believe this when they say it, but this is what happens when you think that you know better than someone else what their subjective experience is. I’ve never heard of anyone being won over to Christianity this way because if the Christian’s claim does not match the apostate’s experience, it’s hard for them to then take the rest of what the Christian says seriously. Hence we find validation from other apostates on YouTube instead.
But back to my point. I didn’t know how better to explain this than with a diagram so I drew one:
I personally have experienced all of these except C, which is why it annoys me when Christians insist that I’ve spent my entire life thus far in box C. My life up to this point has wound its way through three stages.
Stage #1: The Fear and Admonition of the Lord
I’ll be honest: I have no idea what admonition means. But every time somebody in our church had a baby, the whole community including the parents talked about the importance of raising their child in “the fear and admonition of the Lord.” I assume my parents attempted to do the same thing because some of my very earliest memories are of them putting the fear of sudden and instant death and damnation in me. Seriously. They wanted a tiny kid not only to know what death was an an inappropriately young age, but also that it applied to me, it could happen at any instant (or Jesus could return), and if I died I was going to HELL. Well, the good news was that there was such a thing as salvation, but a lot of people apparently thought they were saved and actually weren’t, so I was never really safe. Reasons why people’s salvation would turn out to not be real included but was not limited to: believing that one was saved by works instead of “by grace alone through faith alone,” believing that one was worthy of and/or deserved salvation, taking credit for making a decision for Christ instead of believing that God chose who would be saved “before the foundations of the world,” emotionally putting something else first in one’s life instead of God, believing that one had saved oneself by putting God first, etc etc. So it was a lot of long nights of terror until I was about 12 or 13 years old. That was when things kind of turned a corner.
Stage #2: Learning to Trust
I wrote a lot about this in my “Divine Catfish” post which is available here: https://apostateturtle.com/?p=429 But basically, I got to a point where my concept of God was distinct from the concept that my parents had instilled in me and it became a source of comfort. When I joined a church in my twenties we all had to share our “testimonies.” I said that although I had a lot of doubts and questions, I knew that I intensely loved God, and I felt that it was biblically impossible to love God as I did and not be saved. I based this on several Bible verses but especially John chapter 10. Note that the only evidence I had of my salvation was my own experience of loving God and having a relationship, which is a subjective experience that I cannot prove I ever had. Jesus’ recommendation that true Christians would be recognizable by our fruits/aka good deeds (Matthew 7:16) is largely ignored my parents’ Protestant community, so if I were to point out that I’ve lived a mostly upright and honest life, I would immediately be pounced on for sounding like I believed I was saved by my works. But, whether anyone else wanted to believe me or not, I knew that I loved Jesus.
Stage #3: The Proud Apostate
Some would admonish me for my “pride” at not currently being worried about my eternal salvation. But, arrogance or otherwise, I still feel the same peace with the Divine that I did as a Christian. I believe that I previously met the criteria to be “saved” but I don’t stress over whether or not I still do, because I think that the concept of salvation is silly. Why would a loving god allow any of their creatures to be “unsaved”? I’ve been through some incredibly horrible experiences in the past few years, including ones that were influenced by dissociation and symptoms that aren’t even in the medical literature. Let me tell you, I was extremely angry at my doctor for about 36 hours but I never felt like God was angry with me. When bad things happened to non-Christians, my mother used to say (in her ominous voice) that it was probably a warning from God. Even in the worst of times, I have felt zero concern that I was being given a warning from the Divine and I assume that an omnipotent god would be good enough at communication to clue me in if that’s how they meant it. Part of this sense of calm is because I think that in all likelihood there is no god. But at the same time, I feel strongly that if there is a god, then the being who I knew so intimately for so long would never leave me or forsake me. I may be mostly atheist, but my remaining spiritual side has not lost its ability to trust. And when all things are considered including how abysmally awful my ability to trust normally is, the fact that I feel such total peace with the Divine is nothing short of miraculous.
