Taylor Yoder: In the Trenches of Deconstruction and Deconversion

Atheism, Autonomy, Deconstruction, Deconversion, ExVangelical, Podcast, Purity Culture

This week’s guest is Taylor. Taylor grew up in a small church in a small town, surrounded by Christianity. She had family devotions at home and a private-Christian-academy curricula at school.

By twenty-one, however, she moved out and stopped attending church completely. Her “personal relationship with Jesus” was more important than church-going.

While watching a loved one live with cancer and then face death, Taylor’s faith gave her hope and meaning, until it didn’t. Depressive episodes came for a while and Taylor knew she needed to get mentally healthy.

Once her head was “out of the fog,” and she began reading the Bible again, she was shocked at what she read. It had been there all along, but now she could see. “[People said,] ‘Well you just need to dig deeper in the Bible.’ It had the complete opposite effect.”

Now Taylor has let go of many childhood beliefs. She doesn’t have all the answers. but she has peace—a peace that hasn’t come from supernatural help but from doing her own inner work. She is her own savior, no one else.

Links

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/skeptical_heretic/

Recommendations

Watching online debates

Encouraging myself rather than praying

You are Your Own by Jamie Lee Finch

Genetically Modified Skeptic

Religion for Breakfast

#AmazonPaidLinks

Quotes

“I feel I am currently in the trenches of deconstruction and deconversion.”

“While digging deep to heal my trauma, it got really hard and it is strange to say, the happier and more at peace I became with my healing the more I doubted my faith.”

“This is such a hard time for me but I have found that talking about this out loud is very helpful to me,
as I can not do that often since every single family member I have is a serious Christian.”

“It felt like I really didn’t have to deal with [death and grieving] because I was given this idea that life is just very temporary and the big part of life is going to be after we die…”

“The second I started healing and unpacking stuff, I had the motivation to really look into my faith and my religion and start asking questions…I was like, Wait. I did this on my own. I helped myself, and that’s the only reason I got better.”

“[People said,] ‘Well you just need to dig deeper in the Bible.’ It had the complete opposite effect.”

“Well, that makes sense why [Christians need apologetics] because some of the stuff is awful.”

“I started looking at my earthly father versus my heavenly father, and I was like, The stuff that God is doing and threatening to do, my dad would never do to me.”

“[Not having to have all the answers] gives me the opportunity to keep learning about stuff and also learn from my experiences.”

“Taking all my morals and thoughts from the Bible stopped me from growing as a person.”

“I wasn’t willing to give up my true morals and values just to stay part of that community.”

“Religion really pushed me to be critical of myself…and I was doing that to others.”

“I can mess up as a human without it being this inherently evil thing. I can just mess up and make mistakes and that’s okay.”

“For me, if the Bible wasn’t correct, everything else was just done for me. Whether there was a god or not didn’t really matter…”

Interact

Heather Wells interview mentioned in Taylor’s interview:
https://gracefulatheist.com/2022/11/06/heather-wells-trustworthy/

Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!

Deconversion
https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/

Secular Grace
https://gracefulatheist.com/2016/10/21/secular-grace/

Support the podcast
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Paypal: paypal.me/gracefulatheist

Attribution

“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats

Three Yous

Blog Posts, Deconstruction, Deconversion, Secular Grace, Thought Experiments

Imagine a genie walks (floats? sidles?) up to you and says, “See that guy over there? Yeah, the 80-year-old that looks like he’s having a great time. If you say yes, I’ll make him sad and lonely, riddled with guilt, obsessing over the past. So, shall we?” How would you react?

Assuming you react with disgust or shock, why is that? Seems obvious: It would be awful to do that to someone.

Or try this: someone walks up to you on a playground and says, “See that mom over there? She used to yell at her kids, like super angry stuff. You should go over there and tell her to undo it.”

That’s also inhumane, but why? Again, seems obvious: she can’t do anthing about it. Plus, she’s doing better now. It’ll do a lot of harm, and what good would it do?

Now imagine the 80-year-old guy is your future self, or the mom is your past self. We do those things to ourselves all the time. We beat ourselves up over the past, even though we’re doing better. We shortchange ourselves now, laying the foundation for sadness and loneliness in the future.

For that reason, I like to think of myself as three different people: past Jimmy, Jimmy, and future Jimmy.

With past Jimmy, I try to be kind. An arm-over-the-shoulder, kindly uncle to my past self. Sure, past Jimmy screwed up, but he knows it, and he’s working to do better. Plus, you see how much progress he’s made? Cut him some slack, present Jimmy!

With future Jimmy, I try to be kind. I invest in friendships, knowing that friendship is key to human flourishing. I try to do healthy things, knowing that future Jimmy is the one who’s going to pay for today.

In the end, all we have is right now. The past is unchangeable and the future is unknowable.

I like how James Clear put it, though he’s coming from a self-help perspective:

Be forgiving with your past self.
Be strict with your present self.
Be flexible with your future self.

Being forgiving with your past self sounds pretty healthy to me.

– Jimmy

PS – I literally speak in the third person about past and future Jimmys. (Jimmies?) Try it! it’s weirdly helpful.

Bryan: Ex-Apologist

Atheism, Bloggers, Critique of Apologetics, Deconversion, ExVangelical, Podcast

This week Arline guest hosts, interviewing Bryan the Ex-Apologist. Bryan grew up in a deeply fundamentalist church. Not only did they believe they were the True Church…they were the Only Church.

Bryan spent his teen and young adult years preaching, evangelizing and heatedly debating others. He was convinced he had all the right answers and other people needed those right answers. He sees his younger self as a “jerk for Jesus.”

Realizing he was wrong about a single theological issue, he began to wonder, How do I know what’s essential and what’s not? If there was absolute truth in the world, Bryan was determined to find it.

He has come a long way from the fundamentalism of his youth, and you can find his current counter-apologetics research and writing at T he Ex-Apologist blog.