You Can’t Change the Past

Blog Posts, Deconversion, Philosophy, Purity Culture

Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see.
Meditations 3.10 (Hays)

One of the hardest things about deconverting is coming to terms with the fact that there’s so much time already spent: time spent doing what now seems like a complete waste; time spent not doing the things that seem to actually make up a life. So frustrating. Such a waste. Why did purity culture have to happen when I had youth and energy? Why did I spend that youth and energy building up hangups and trauma around sex? Why don’t I know how to have friends?

It’s like Plato’s allegory of the cave was somehow tangled up with that urban legend about waking up after a party, missing a kidney. Or does that metaphor only work for me?

And it’s harder the later in life you deconvert.

One of the most helpful things I’ve found is to accept that the past is gone. Nothing I can do about it, nothing I can do to get it back.

Easier said than done.

First, why is it helpful? If I know I can’t do anything about the past, I can shift my focus on the present moment. The present moment is something I can do something about. Sure, I can learn from the past, but when it comes to making choices, what matters is the here and now.

Even better, if I accept the past as unchangeable, I can be kind to myself, cutting myself some slack for the road ahead.

A thought experiment to take away: What if you were dropped into your current situation? What if you were unceremoniously plopped into the body, memories, life, history, and family of someone else in this situation? What if you knew it wasn’t your life? What would you do? Would you do anything differently? Would you feel differently about the past? How?

– Jimmy

PS – I asked one of these new AI programs for a suggested title for this post. My favorite: “From Kidney Theft to Puritan Lessons: Surviving Unappreciated Time.” …success?

It takes time

Blog Posts, Deconstruction, Deconversion, Hell Anxiety, Religious Trauma

Say you’ve realized you no longer believe, gone through some of the typical stages of deconversion, and are ready to move on with your life, when, Whammo! You’re blindsided by some old feeling from your previous life.

“Why do I still fear Hell?” “Why am I still afraid of being Left Behind?” “Why do I still feel guilty when I stay home from church?” “Why do I still feel guilt around sex? I’m a grown-up, for crying out loud.”

This is one of the hardest things I’ve found day-to-day about being deconverted. I don’t believe any more, but my body doesn’t seem to have got the message.

There’s a lot I can say on this topic, but number one is this:

It takes time.

It takes time to deprogram what took decades to program in the first place. It takes time to get used to who you are today and who you are becoming. It takes time to figure out how to navigate a world where you don’t have a book (or a publishing industry, church, etc.) telling you how to think. It takes time to find new art, new music, new friends, new habits, and new…everything.

I don’t say these things to be overwhelming, though I know from experience it can be. For now, I hope you can be patient with yourself. Be kind. You’ve been through a lot, and it’ll take time.

It’s been several years since I realized I no longer believed, and I can tell you: it gets better. There’s a wide, wonderful world of truly incredible people, experiences, places, ideas. This whole world is now open to you.

– Jimmy

Come to the Edge

Blog Posts, Deconstruction, Deconversion, Secular Community, Secular Grace

Come to the Edge

by Christopher Logue

Come to the edge.

We might fall.

Come to the edge.

It’s too high!

COME TO THE EDGE!

And they came,

And he pushed,

And they flew.

The edge—the brink, the threshold, the end. The edge is where you may, with one false step, plummet to your death. The edge is where uncertainty lies, and that’s terrifying.

When we get to the edge of nearly anything, our limbic system kicks in and screams, “You’re about to die. Stop! Turn back!” We want to run away. And if staying alive is our highest objective, perhaps we should. But is there not more to life than simply surviving?

If I leave christianity, where will I go?

If I keep asking these questions, who will be there to answer them?

If I no longer have faith, what will I have?

The thing is: you don’t know. Everything about standing at the edge is uncertain. But, if you’re honest with yourself, wasn’t life uncertain back living inside the fences?

Still too much outside your control. Now, at least, you can acknowledge that truth and move forward. Do it.

Do it, scared.

Do it, full of doubt.

Do it, seeking help along the way.

But do it, move forward toward the edge. Let yourself be pushed and then fly. You may be pleasantly surprised at the trip.

–Arline

More confident than you think

Blog Posts, Deconversion

You are probably more confident than you think.

I recently heard a friend, a fellow deconvert, talking about how she’s not very confident, and my jaw fell open just a little… she always seemed confident to me. Pretty sure she wasn’t saying, “I’m never confident in any area of my life,” but still: Why did I feel the disconnect?

People have different abilities. It’s common for someone like me–one who spends most of his time in his head and sometimes making music–to be in awe of a dancer, creating beauty in a way I couldn’t with my stilted clumsiness. Similarly, I think you can have different levels of confidence in various areas of life.

In this case, my friend was talking about having the confidence to speak up in a conversation where an authority figure (A pastor, I think.) was throwing his authority around. I think I under my feeling of disconnect. It seemed like she was shortchanging herself. She had stared down the reality that what she had believed for a big chunk of her life, realized it was bogus and, more importantly, she had done something about it.

Facing reality can be hard, hard, hard. Why not stay with what’s comfortable? Why not avoid the realization that we’re wrong about some things–that we’re not the center of the universe; that the cognitive dissonance we’re feeling will be explained when we get to Heaven; that God isn’t answering our prayers?

So, be encouraged! Don’t sell yourself short. Even if you can’t face down an apologist and call his bluff; even if you don’t speak out for justice in all situations, you are probably more confident than you think, and that’s a significant step toward reconstruction.