This week’s guest is Nora. Nora grew up in Argentina, the granddaughter of Italian immigrants, and Argentina still has her heart.
When Nora was in middle school, her father believed God wanted him to become a missionary to the US. The family’s move to California was all loss, culture shock, and homesickness for Nora.
Between church doctrine on divorce, enduring an abusive marriage, Christian Nationalism, and questions that kept coming, Nora stayed in Christianity as long as she could stand it. She truly tried to make it all work.
“I did it on my own…I can say, for sure, God was not there for me, not emotionally, not spiritually, obviously not practically.”
Nora is now “allergic to spirituality.” She’s an atheist, no longer needing any god or religion to dictate her life. She lives out secular grace, aligning her life with her deepest values.
Recommendations
Bart Ehrman
Books
https://gracefulatheist.com/2023/04/09/bart-d-ehrman-armageddon/
Mega The Podcast
https://www.megathepodcast.com/
Seth Andrews
https://www.thethinkingatheist.com/
Quotes
“I spend the next ten years praying for my marriage. I’m begging God and begging God…trying everything.”
“I laid hands on people, and I felt things. I will admit it. I felt things. I think the brain’s a powerful thing, and when you’re in the midst of that environment, you get sucked in.”
“The crazier it got, the more skeptical I got.”
“This time, is God there for me? No. I had to save myself.”
“I did it on my own…I can say, for sure, God was not there for me, not emotionally, not spiritually, obviously not practically.”
“You cry, and you feel feelings [in a worship service], and you think that’s the presence of God. You tell yourself that that’s God’s presence.”
“The first thing that went for me was Hell. I just couldn’t believe in Hell anymore.”
“You start asking questions, and then one question leads to another question.”
“2016…it was horrific to me, watching the Church. I felt betrayed. I felt lied to. I felt like everything they told me that they stood for didn’t matter. They were willing to throw it all away.”
“I used to think people were bad Christians because they had bad theology, not that the whole system was bad. Now I feel like the whole system is bad. It’s not just theology; it’s all of it.”
“I’m actually making a difference in people’s lives. It’s very fulfilling and God has nothing to do with it.”
“Nobody needs to hear about Jesus. They’ve all heard about him.”
Interact
Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!
Graceful Atheist Podcast Merch!
https://www.teepublic.com/user/gracefulatheistpodcast
Support the podcast
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
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Deconversion
https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/
Secular Grace
https://gracefulatheist.com/2016/10/21/secular-grace/
Attribution
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.
David Ames 0:11 This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios Podcast Network. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David, and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on the Apple podcast store, rate the podcast on Spotify, and subscribe to the podcast wherever you are listening. If you're going through doubt, deconstruction the dark night of the soul, you do not have to do it alone. Join our private Facebook group deconversion anonymous and become a part of the community. You can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion Remember, we have a T public merch site. If you want your graceful atheists or secular Grace themed items, you can find them there and you can find the link in the show notes. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show, Arline inner interviews community member Nora Nora grew up in Argentina until her father felt called to be a missionary to the United States of America. This was incredibly disruptive for Nora. Later due to purity culture, she got married very young had children relatively young, in a marriage that ultimately ended. She was part of very charismatic environments. And she says that the crazier things got, the more skeptical she got, eventually the Christian nationalism and the questions piled up and was too much as she could no longer believe. Here is our lien interviewing Nora. Arline 1:59 Nora, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. Nora 2:02 Thank you so much for having me. Yes, I'm Arline 2:04 excited. We have finally connected and we're gonna make it work. Yes, you are a member of our private Facebook group, the deconversion anonymous Facebook group. And you have been a listener for how long? Nora 2:18 I'm gonna guess. 2019 I think is when I started listening. Yes, Arline 2:23 that's fabulous. Well, I'm so excited that you are ready to tell your story and how we always begin, tell us about the religious environment that you grew up in. Nora 2:32 Okay, so I am Argentinian. I was born and raised in Argentina. My background is a little bit different than most people's. My parents let me go a little bit about my parents because it does affect my faith journey as well. My mom is the daughter of Italian immigrants. Like a lot of Argentinian czar. And yeah, where 85% European people don't know that. So my mom was Baptist, her father when he moved to Argentina and the I believe it's the 1930s he right off the boat. There was a Baptist pastor Italian Baptist pastor and he would welcome the immigrants in. And that's how he got him into the church. Okay. So because most Italians are Catholic, but he converted when he moved to Argentina, and he had a girlfriend behind who was my grandmother. And she somehow converted at the same time as him in Italy. So he brought her to Argentina, and then they had their kids so they raise their kids in a very, very strict, legalistic, Baptist environment. My mom wasn't allowed to wear pants. She wasn't allowed to listen to secular music. She can watch TV, she can watch movies, you can listen to secular music. So she grows up in this environment, right? And she's not happy about it. And she's the fifth child. Her siblings were all 1015 years older than her. Her parents were much older when they had her. They basically told her if she they hadn't been Christians, they wouldn't have had her so she has all this trauma. Yeah, she has all this trauma growing up. My dad on the other hand, he his mother was Italian as well, his father English, but he grew up in a non Christian home, just not religious home. He grew up speaking English bilingual in his own house. But somehow when he's a teenager, his parents sent him to church camp. I don't know why. They just do and that's where he meets my mom. So my mom is attracted to my dad because he is more free spirited, right he's he doesn't have this religiously. realistic. My dad went to the movies. He went to the theater he, we grew up in Argentina, okay, it's a big cities. I grew up in New York. He went to the opera he went to, he did all these fun things. So my mom wanting to get out of that environment. Mary's my dad. Yeah, of course. And so my parents were in a Baptist church together. But my dad was very open minded, wanting to explore things. So apparently, I was born, you know, within a year. Apparently, when I was a baby, they got kicked out of the Baptist Church, because my dad dared to pray for someone's healing. And the pastor pulled him aside and said, you don't have the authority to do that. You're not a pastor. We don't believe in that. They got kicked out. Oh, wow. Okay. So they spent three years not going to church. I'm a baby, so I don't remember. So when they went back to the church, they got invited by a friend to go back. They didn't kind of want to, they spent a lot at they spent three years just my mom was loving it, you know, going to the theater, doing all the things she couldn't do as a as a child. So they got back into church, and now it's a charismatic church. So I have spend most of my Christian life in charismatic circles. So I even though my mom was Baptist, I did not grow up in a Baptist church. I was always in a charismatic church. It started with some home church. And then my parents were very, very, you know, they dove right back in they're totally, totally dedicated to the church, but my dad is able to explore the spiritual side are things which he loves, is speaking in tongues, the laying on hands, he he's always been just a curious person, he still is. The cool thing my parents did, is that they did not indoctrinate me as a child at all. Because my mom's background, they did not want me to grow up as a kid. Knowing about how, you know the things that are the guests talk about, I had an amazing childhood, I was just a kid I, I didn't know about hell, I didn't, no one forced me to do the sinners prayer. Nobody. You know, my parents took me to church, but I actually could do whatever I wanted. I remember reading comic books, or they didn't want me to make that decision as a kid. They didn't think children should. That's also kind of typical in Argentina and in Argentina. In evangelical circles. They're they're not really about, you know, homeschooling is not a thing. You know, there are Christian schools, but it's rare. They don't need it don't indoctrinate their children from the very beginning. They believe that that's something you do later, right, as a teenager. So have an amazing childhood. In the last couple years in Argentina, my parents, through some context, join the Catholic Charismatic Movement, which was a big thing in the late 70s. I'm older. I'm in my 50s. And that was also an amazing experience. Because Catholics are not as legalistic either, especially when they've been, you know, in a traditional Catholic Church. And now they come into the charismatic side of things. It's like they're discovering Jesus, and they like the praise and worship, and they're happy people, but they still drink and they swear, and they're normal people. And my brother, and I loved being part of that. It was a real community. And again, as kids, the parents are doing their thing, we're running around playing, we're not in kids church. But my dad in that movement of the last couple years, he started preaching a lot on the weekends. Okay, so he had a business. He had a company that recorded cassettes and tapes a long time ago, very successful. And on the weekends he would do, he would preach, so he fell in love with preaching, right. And then he met American missionaries, and he met people and prophetic people, and they told him that he had to come to America to be a missionary here. Arline 9:31 Ah, that's interesting. Nora 9:35 Ridiculous. But just as a background, my dad because of his company used to go to America all the time. And he loved it, right. He just loved it here. He bought a lot of equipment for his company. So how much was God? How much was his own life for Arline 9:53 America? Interesting. Nora 9:56 I think it's his love for America, but it's So one day we were going to move to the US and give up everything to be missionaries. So at the age of 12, I was 19. At my parents sold everything, everything. He sold his business house, I don't even have anything for my childhood. And that's when my life turned upside down. So they took us to America. I was 12 years old, we moved to California. I don't recommend it to anyone moving to another country, not knowing anyone. It was the hardest thing. Yeah. My dad didn't have the support of a church. He went on his own. Like he just did it on his own dime. Right. And we had a tourist visa. And he just thought God would work it out. Yeah. Yeah. So we land in the only place he knows, which is California, because he's digital, our business there. His business context, said, you're on your own buddy, right? We don't have a church or anything. So he tries to figure it out. And he tries to go where he was comfortable, which is the, the Catholic charismatic thing. He found a couple churches, they were mostly Mexican. I hated it. I, I wanted nothing to do at church at this point. The Culture Shock was so hard, you know, our family just, it was a hard time for our family. My mom fell into a deep depression. She didn't speak the language. I'm thrown into, you know, going to school, trying to adapt while my parents are basically checked out because their entire life was about the ministry and trying to figure that out, get that off the ground, right. And because he doesn't know anything about immigration, he just overstayed our visa. So we were undocumented, essentially. Yeah. Because he sold everything we can go back. And once you're undocumented, you can't go back either, because you cannot come back in. So we're stuck in limbo. We don't have you know, the, the ministry is not working great for him. And somehow, a couple years into it, he hooks up with a church and American church, where the senior pastor had been a missionary to Argentina, through a friend. So they welcomed us in. So this age, I'm I think I'm around like, 14 or so. So, um, I'm still trying to adopt to middle school in America, you know, trying to make friends, seeing my country missing my huge Italian family that was really loving, you know, my entire life back there, I missed everything about it. So my dad through this church, got a bit of sponsorship, not financial. Apparently, my dad made a lot of money because he lived off of his savings for a good 10 years. I don't even know, anyone that I just knew, you know, we had a place to live. So he gets support from this church. Okay. And what I what I mean by that is that they give them the fellowship hall to start his own ministry. So this is what he thinks he's being called to. Right. So he starts a Hispanic ministry in Spanish. He's still there. It's been 40 years. Yeah, he's still there. And aside from that, this entire ministry that he'd built is really, like 30 people, like it's been. It's really ironic that he turned our entire lives upside down for like a little group of people, that 30 people, you know, our lives upside down so I didn't want to go to church, I was not into it, you know, I guess, at the time, I was kind of resentful about, you know, the move and just having a tough time. So he introduces me to the youth pastor, and the American Christian, you know, on the English side, and tells my brother and I just go to this youth group here, you know, not gonna force you to go to church, but try the youth group. And they got me that they got me that's when I got totally, like, totally indoctrinated. And I started going to, you know, youth camps and retreats and, and I got deep deep into it. And I think part of it looking back is that I just wanted to fit in, you know, I just wanted a group of people to accept me, because I'm new to the country still. And they were pretty accepting but like in most American churches, they really like talk down to us, you know, because we're not an American. And I always like to joke that they treat me like a like a pagan peasant. Because they think I live in the countryside because it's Latin America. Even though I lived in a big city, like New York, a big city with like 30 million people, and, you know, I took the subways. And they think that I'm a pagan, because I'm from a Latin American country, you know, even though grew up surrounded, surrounded by Christians and Protestants, you know. So they talked down to me, they tried to do save me, you know, all that stuff. But I, I dove deep into it. And I liked having a community. But what happened when I was 15? is a one of the guys in the youth group, he was 24. And he wanted to date me. And my parents said, Yes. And I was 15 years old. Arline 15:46 Oh, my heavens, Nora, that's, it's wrong. Yeah. Nora 15:52 Yeah. I would never allow my kids to do that. And I looked at my parents, and my parents were like, well, he's a Christian. So we trust him. But he's 24 When I'm 15. So that made me grow up too fast and put me in a position that I shouldn't have been in. I dated that guy for a year. And then I dated the next guy who ended up I ended up marrying eventually. And he was also older than me. So I was 16. And he was 21. And he was in the worship team. And he was cool. And he was fun and talented. And he was interested in learning Spanish. So I ended up dating him. And things were not great. From the beginning. He he pressured me into having sex right away. So I'm 16 years old. I'm having sex with an older man in church. The guilt is killing me. Yes, killing me. I mean, my entire life revolved around me repenting and crying to God, and saying, it's not going to happen again. But you know, looking back, I'm a child. I mean, how can I blame myself, I'm a child. He's much older than me. And I have to keep this big secret, right? And I can't tell anybody at church can tell my parents come to find out many years later, this was a pattern for him. And he, yeah, he had done it to other women. And the senior pastor knew, and he had told my dad, and my dad did not do anything about it either. So I don't want to bash my dad, my dad's a great guy, my dad really, really practices. What we the best of Christianity, you know, he truly does love people. He truly cares about people. He's generally a really great guy. But during these years, I think is my parents were having their own troubles, you know, being new to the country, and and they just, I don't know, I don't know what to say. They just, were not parenting me. So I can say. So, obviously, I'm still in the church. I'm dealing with all this guilt and shame. And it's just such a huge problem. So how do we solve that we get married, right? Soccer player 20. And I didn't go to college, because again, my parents didn't know what to do. I was totally alone in high school, managing High School in America, which is a cultural shock High School in America is completely different than other countries. But I mean, I am a deep, devout believer, I, you know, the guilt kill me. So we get married. I'm 20. I think he was 25 or something. Marriage is bad from the beginning. Bad, bad, but I felt like I had to marry him. I already already sins, right? I gotta make it right. So it's bad from the beginning. We had our first child, four years later, I to remember when I got pregnant thinking, oh my gosh, I am stuck with this man now. Yeah. So I had my doubts even then, but he turned out to be verbally abusive, sexually abusive, controlling. What I thought he was, you know, he thought I thought he was a good Christian. But he was kind of faking it. He was very cruel to me. A few years. Then he told me he didn't love me anymore that he had marry me because it was his obligation, because everybody at church was pressuring him. But of course, I'm married for life. You know, I'm a Christian. I am They don't Arline 20:00 feel lonely options are sinful. Nora 20:03 Yeah, exactly. Divorce is sinful. I'm committed, I'm going to make it work. So I spend the next like 10 years, just praying for my marriage, right. So I'm like, begging God and begging God. And I mean, I would get up every morning and just pray and listen to my worship music and trying everything. And then we got involved, we're still going to church. He's he kind of pretends he's the perfect Christian man and very charismatic person. So everybody loves him. Extremely talented. So everybody loves them. So pastors overlook any flaws because he's an amazing guitar player. So we're in this church. And at this time, through a long series, I, I left that church where I was a teenager, where we met and we went to a bigger charismatic church. And then we ended up in a church where we were out for about seven years. And in this church, he's in the worship team. I am too. We have another kid, I'm a stay at home mom, because you know, that's the right thing to do. And your Christian woman my mom went back to school. And she actually has two degrees and she became a teacher. So she finally pulled herself out of the depression and made a life in America. And she's she's done very well, my dad, you know, still same church. My dad was not traditional, you know, my dad did not raise me to be a stay at home mom and all that he he actually is a feminist. He's also very liberal. So I'm getting this you know, I'm as I'm getting deeper into this church, I'm getting the Christian nationalism and the you know, you got to be a Republican and all this and I didn't like that because first of all, I was an American, so I didn't get it. Even though it's been years, I didn't agree with any of that. But I kept my mouth shut. I did my duty. I was a stay at home mom, I tried to be the best submissive wife. I truly thought that if I submitted more, you know, God would bless me, my marriage would get better. Of course, it got worse and worse and worse. So we're in this church and this church is extremely charismatic. It became like cultish. Okay, we're like, rolling in the river. We are it's like rolling. You know. We're getting eggs. We get the we get all out. Oh, yeah. Falling in the spirit that people with the sheets, raising, you know, I even tried it. I laid hands on people and I felt things. Okay. I will admit it. I felt things. I don't know what. I think the brain is a powerful thing. Yes. Yeah. And you're in the midst of that. Environment. Right. You get sucked in. I heard people talking like chickens barking like dogs laughing uncontrollably, you name it. I've experienced it. Oh, yeah. The whole spirit. The whole fun stuff. Oh, yeah. And I thought it was fun, right? Like churches boring. At least this makes it fun. That's what I like. And then like my dad, I want you to explore like, what's out there. And when you're charismatic, you absolutely think that other denominations just don't have the whole picture. Right? They're missing out. It's not that they are not true believers, but they don't have the Holy Spirit. They don't have the power. They can't pray in tongues. Arline 23:42 And then I'm over here like, Yeah, we were in the Calvinists world where, like, we we weren't cessationists like, there were still miracles. We just didn't see them. But we thought you guys had gone off. Yeah, gone off the deep end and believe we were things that weren't that weren't biblical. We, we had our own versions of very, like terrible doctrines that just looked completely different, you know, Nora 24:09 phrase, yeah, no, we thought that everybody's just needed to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, and then their life would be transformed. And then you'd have miracles. The thing is, the longer you're in that, you don't really see those miracles, right? People fall under the Spirit and they cry, and they have this moment, but their life is still crap. Like, things don't get solved. And that's what I was experiencing. My marriage wasn't getting any better. My problems were not being solved. I could, you know, have these amazing, emotional experiences. But I started to question them. So I started to say, Well, God, why? Why am I why am I feeling these things? But it's not making any difference. It's not really working. And the crazy we got the more skeptical I got. So some things I wouldn't try like they were At the time, when the church everybody was rolling down the aisle, for healing for emotional healing, it's all about emotional healing, right? It's all about emotional healing. And there's a lot of pressure to confess things and pressure to confess your emotional problems and, you know, emotional, spiritual healing. And none of that works. None of it works. But I tried it. So, so what happened is we're in this church, it was my life, this church was my life. I, there was a time we went for seven weeks, every single night, to church for seven weeks. Oh, my gosh. And they're, of course, constantly beating us up that we're not doing enough for God, we're not giving God enough. If only we just did more. And I remember thinking at the time, what more could I possibly give? I am here every day, I am sacrificing my family life. I'm doing nothing by being at church. And all I'm getting is a preacher telling me, I'm not doing enough. If I wasn't given God enough, then I don't know what giving enough is. I gave everything I possibly could my time, my money, all my emotions, you know, I closed myself off from the rest of the world. I was deep into it. But yet my life was still not great. I'm still in this terrible marriage. So it all blows up. When my husband, my then husband, has an affair with my best friend. Yeah. And I find out, I have this feeling, right, I have this feeling. But again, you're told to ignore your feelings, right? ignore your intuition. Ignore what your inner self is telling you. For some reason, I decided to give in and listen to that. And I had him followed. And I found him in my friend's house. This friend was using all the information that I was given her about my marriage and using it to get to him. And they were just so I would complain about how sad it was, how sad I was how my husband didn't love me, she go to him. Anyways, they had this secret relationship, which wasn't the worst pandemic, actually. In a way it was. It was the way I got out of that, you know, we're going on with about marriage. So she kind of did me a favor, in a way but going through was horrible. So you can imagine the church, what do they do? Obviously, the worst they could possibly do. They call me in for counseling. And they told me I have to stick stick it out with him, because it's the right thing to do. And they called him in and he was in the worship team, right. So they called him in and the discipline was, while you're going to be off the worship team for a couple of weeks. Couple of weeks. Arline 27:59 That's like, like at school, you, you just get in a little bit of trouble for this huge thing that like I don't even Nora 28:07 Yeah, and the worst part is they told me not to tell my parents because they didn't want me to taint my parents relationship with my husband. So I can't tell anybody. The penile UI through. I cannot explain. It's physical, like you feel like your stomach hurts. I'm just a broken, messed up. And by then I've been taking so much verbal abuse from him that I I was a beat down. I was a doormat. I was a doormat I had been. They also involve me that church and you know, discipleship, where you're discipling with an older woman. And she gave me again, the worst advice and they were always telling me, Well, he doesn't love you, because you're just not doing this, you're not doing that. You're not submissive enough? Well, I have a strong personality, you know, I try my best to squash it down. I was a doormat and I had zero self esteem at that point. So I was willing to stay with him. Even if he didn't love me, even if he treated me badly. I didn't have the strength to stand up for myself. And the church of course said okay, they all covered him because he's a man and he's gonna get punished for a couple of weeks and, and the church told me we're gonna have your friend not attend church, so you don't have to deal with that. Because they were her parents were big, big donors in the church gave a lot of money. So yes, so she was in one of that. You know how there's always a hierarchy in the church and the people that give a lot of money are close to this pastor. She was one of those people. She was married by the way and had kids our kids were friends. It was a mess. So as I'm trying to go through this, you know, they told me to just not they told me not to bring it up to him. because if I, if I accused him or brought him any pain, he would just bolt because he was there just because he was doing the right thing for God. And he didn't really want to be with me. So I had to shove it all inside, shove it on inside. I had one friend that stayed with me, and she's still my friend to this day. But basically church, of course, did the worst thing they could do, which is covered up. Let's forget it happened. Deal with it. Stay with him a few weeks later, my and then I lost my best friend to the same some betrayed by two people. Couple couple weeks later, my my, my husband is back on the worship team. I was on the worship team too. And I was singing and I look out and she's there. The best friend, and I went to the pastor and said, you told me you're going to protect me. You told me that I didn't have to deal with seeing her. And I said this quote, This is a free country. She can come whenever she wants to. Yep. Wow. That's when I left that church. Arline 31:06 Yeah, that like, the basic like minimum shepherding ability of a pastor. Yeah, not done. Like, Nora 31:14 they just did not take care of me. I was the last person everyone else got taken care of. But not me. Still, I believed still I you know clung to God. So my ex and I told him at that time, I'll give you a year. Or know where I got that from, I'll give you a year. I want things to improve with us. I want to have a real marriage. And I I said one of the conditions is I want to move to another city because I don't want to be around these people. I don't want to be around the church. I don't want to be around people that know everything that know all our dirty business, right? I don't want to know, my parents still don't know. So we moved to Colorado. So this whole time I still live in California, right? We moved to Colorado, and we bought a big house. And I kind of kept myself busy with his house, getting my kids in schools and kind of distracting myself. Again, I'm not dealing with it, I'm just shoving it under the rug. Right. And, you know, we went to church, we never got as involved as before, but we would go I still 100% was clinging to God. And you know, he was everything to me. So the year passes and nothing really changes. My, my husband and I are just he's just distant. He's working from home. And I noticed that he was spending all his time online, you know, after work all night, all night. And so I started investigating. And that's when I found out that so we're talking three years later. So instead of a year, game three, I found out that he was involved with women online. So he was doing horrible things, with cameras with women who got really ugly. And that's when I discovered a whole world that didn't even know existed out there. And yeah, I kind of became a private investigator. I got to, I guess I started to feel stronger, you know, and I got to a woman to spy on him. I got him to admit all kinds of things. And I found out that this problem had, I knew the tip of the iceberg. He had been doing this kind of stuff for ever. He had been with other women, I mean, just a huge mess. And I went I went to New York with a couple girlfriends and I remember being there and thinking, I can't do this anymore. I just can't be married to this man anymore. And my plan all along because I felt so bad. Divorce was so wrong right to sin. I just my plan all along was I was gonna wait till my kids were grown and out of the house. And then I was gonna leave. Take my chances with God, right? If he hates me, he hates me. But my kids at the time were like seven and 11. I believe. That's a long time to wait. So I stayed in the marriage about 16 years really bad, right? It was a long time to wait. I can't make it. I can't and I really truly felt like I am going to lose my mind. I'm going to be my kids are not going to have a mother either. Because I really felt like I'm going to have a psychological breakdown. I just can't take any more of this. I can't can't do it. So I decided to tell him I want a divorce. took every bit of strength in me again at this time. Is God there for me? No I had to save myself. Right? And the Christian friends that I still had, were like, Don't divorce him, God can heal your marriage don't give up. And at this point, I just said, You know what, I rather be divorced and be in sin. I just I decided that that's what I was going to do. I'm just gonna be insane and deal with it. So I asked him for divorce. His reaction was, okay. Okay. Didn't try to fight for it and care. I mean, long he'd long been checked out of the marriage. And he denied everything. I had proof. I had printed scripts of what he had done. I had proof. That's it, you know? So he goes, Okay, so we actually had to live together for a whole year he lived in the basement, we had to sell the house, I decided I wanted to move back to California to be near some kind of family. You know, my brother, my, my parents were in California and like, I'm not going to be stuck here in Colorado or have no support. Being a divorced single mom and I hadn't gone to college. I hadn't worked in years, I had no income. So had to figure all that stuff out. And I don't know how but I did it on my own. I pulled up the strength. I did it 100% I can save for for sure. God was not there for me. Not emotionally, not spiritually, obviously, not practically, I had to somehow pull it together. So we sold the house, I moved back to California, I took my kids with me, he actually followed me to California. And then I spent the next 10 years being a single mom. And working bike back to work. I was a retail manager. I went back to college. I had to deal with my ex and the kids and life. It was rough. It was rough. But But I made it. I'm still believing at this point. 100% Believing but I was uncomfortable going to church. And the reason for that is because I attempted it a few times. And when you're a single mother, when you're divorced woman going to church, all the crap you get from people, people would pray for me that my marriage would be restored. I'm like, no, no, thank you. Don't pray for me. Do not pray for me. I told multiple people that then you know the divorce men were interested in dating. I was just just Yeah, it was icky. I'm like, Pina divorce woman in church. I don't recommend it either. So I didn't feel comfortable. So I kind of stopped going I still believe still 100% believed in God. 100% believed in everything. Jesus everything. I just felt like, I felt like I couldn't ask God for anything, because I was already divorced and insane. So he didn't you know, God was not on my side. So I stopped asking for things. I would pray for other people. But I wouldn't pray for myself anymore. Plus, it didn't work. And I didn't put those two together, right. So I would pray for people I would believe but I just could not be in church number one, and then I could not ask for me because I felt like well, God doesn't love me. I'm insane. Anyways, so I'm a divorced woman. So I'm no intention of getting married again. But I reconnected with somebody from that church where the whole mess happen where where we were where my ex husband was all that I reconnected with a worship leader who was divorced himself. And we had a lot in common, right, because we both gone through that crazy cultish church. And he had been the worship pastor and I'm like, watch your divorce. We met up. So 15 years later, we struck up a friendship. And then we got married nine months later. Oh, yeah. So married to an ex pastor. So we're married 11 years. At the time, he had like a home church. And so of course, he wanted me to go with him. I was very hesitant. They're not gonna like me, I'm, you know, second marriage. How are they going to deal with that? So we had to struggle through all that, right. And at this, so this was the been like, 2012 are in there. But at this time, so we're going to his, we're gonna his home church. Like he's the he's the pastor. It's just a group of people. They're really warm. They're really nice. But I had such a hard time at this point with theology. I started to question everything. Because I hadn't been in a church where I was getting preached at in a While I was kind of just living my own faith, but not listening to it day in and day out, not listening to Christian music not listening to sermons, right. So when you get out of it, you'll go back in. Right? Arline 40:16 Yes, yes, you can see and hear things. So Nora 40:19 still be like, Wait a minute. That doesn't sound right. So I'm struggling, so I'm going to church with him, but it privately I'm like, I am struggling with the theology. I can't even sing the songs. Some of them. I have a problem with theology in the songs. Yeah, I don't like this. It makes me uncomfortable. Arline 40:36 Singing is a big way to like indoctrinate people because you memorize that stuff. And it stays Nora 40:42 and singing. We both were in worship teams, right? And we were in for worship teams together. We know the emotion that worship brings out in you, and you cry and you feel feelings and you feel that's the presence of God. That you tell yourself, that's God's presence. So I can't deny it. I? Yeah, I have my doubts about God. But I feel His presence. charismatics are all about the presence and the feelings are still like, wow, okay, I have my doubts, but I feel it. So must be true still. But I started questioning things. And as we were in that church, I just really started diving into what do I believe? And why do I believe it. And the first thing that went for me was how I just couldn't believe in Hell anymore. And I never spoke about this out loud in this home church, but I can no longer believe in hell. And I started thinking about, Well, I'm a parent, and my children have their moments of teenagers. I would never send them to hell no matter what they did. And I started thinking if I'm a better parent than God, right, yes, yes, that was a big for me, how can I be a better parent than God? That's not doesn't make sense. And of course, you start asking one question, and then leads to another question. So for the first time in my life, you know, I'm married again, my life is more stable. I'm not dealing with a bad marriage anymore. I'm not in survival mode, because so much of my life was survival mode. And I think that allowed me the space to start really questioning things. And luckily, I'm married to someone who also was questioning things. So we absolutely went on this journey together. Arline 42:22 Oh, that's wonderful. It does not happen often. So I Nora 42:26 know. It was. So we start I mean, we're each other's best friend. We start bouncing off each other. And he'd been a pastor me, he went to seminary, he, I would question him about the Bible. And like, did you learn about this in seminary? Did they tell you that? So we really, really deconstruct it together. Okay. He basically, I'm going to say from 2012. I'm gonna say, by 2016 or so he was, he's fully atheist. Atheist, I know. And I had a harder time getting to that point. It was slower for me. But I started reading books I started reading, Rachel Held Evans was a huge influence on me. Arline 43:08 Yes, yes. She was part of my, my deconstruction. I didn't know it at the time. But yeah, me Nora 43:12 neither. I started reading the book, because for me, it was a matter of, I can't believe American evangelicalism the way it's presented to me anymore. Yes, I got to that point. Right. So I guess I did go through the progressive Christian. Right. And, and I wanted to find a faith that I could work with that I, you know, that was accepting of, you know, queer people that was open to women being in leadership positions. I'd always been a feminist secretly in church, which was hard. Always. I've always been a feminist. I remember fighting with God that like, I don't want to be a housewife. Why did you give me a brain? If I have to just change diapers like I want to do with my life? Why this is unfair? Why do I care about other things? You know, I always was curious, I wanted to learn it was so hard for me. Anyways, I saw this time i Rachel Held Evans was great. I mean, there was a book where she talked about how come where she thought it was unfair for God to send a little girl that was born in a Muslim country then ever heard about Jesus, and if she and she got bombed, and she died, and she's supposed to go to hell. And that's not fair. That just, again, blew my mind. So from there, I went to Rob Bell, you know, to book after book after book. And in 2003. So, of course, 2016 happens, Trump. Yep. And that was the final nail in the coffin for me. I really was watching to see how Christians were going to react to it. I was appalled. The whole time. I was just appalled. And I still have friends from church at this time. And of course, I got into those Facebook fights and I was like, I can't believe You can support this man, I cannot believe it. And that's when I lost the other half of the friends that I hadn't lost the divorce. I lost the remaining Christian friends because I still believed 2016 I just could not support that. It couldn't. And my parents are liberals. My parents are Democrats. My parents didn't raise me that way. This is the one thing I have in common with my parents still, even though I'm not a believer. We talk about how can the church do this? You know, my father as a pastor, his he lost his pasture friends over it. Yeah, yeah. Thank God, my parents are liberal because I don't know how I would have done. I would have lost them probably. Arline 45:44 Yes, that's incredibly difficult. I have found my family is not super devoutly religious. They're just kind of like go to church religious. But when we were Christians and voting Democrat and being very, like, anti police brutality, anti whites party, that was much more difficult for them, than when we became atheist and agnostic. I was like, well, at least I can see the true God here. Like the real the real thing that's worshipped. But continue. Nora 46:17 Yes. So. So my parents, you know, my husband, my kids, my kids, by the way, tangent, I send them to Christian schools, and neither one of them is a believer. Oh, wow. My older one literally lost her faith in Christian High School. She is very smart, very analytical, very logical. And she, the more she got into Bible study, she was like, i This doesn't make sense to me. I can't believe it anymore. Both my kids stopped believing before I did. And I remember feeling like oh, no, my children are gonna go to hell. And then I stopped believing and help. But yeah, 2016 was a final I. It was horrific to me. Just this watching the church, I felt betrayed. I felt lied to I felt like everything they told me that they stood for didn't matter. They were willing to throw it all away. And I felt like deceived. And for me, it was the last, the last straw. You know, it's just, I can't believe in a God that would allow his people who are supposed to represent him, who's supposed to especially the Holy Spirit is supposed to convict you of sin, the Holy Spirit supposed to God, you're supposed to be the best people on Earth, because you have the Holy Spirit. And at the same I saw my old pastors, I saw old friends just totally turn and go down this rabbit hole. And I'm like, Okay, I can't believe in God. But it took me a few, you know, took me until probably two or three years ago to really fully accept that I don't believe in God at all. First of all, let go of angry Old Testament God. Which I always had a hard time with. A hard time. Always I always felt like there were two different gods, you know, and I'm like, I kind of tried to ignore the Old Testament because I really like it. You know, I'll focus on Jesus. He was a cool guy. I was all about Jesus. I thought people were bad Christians, because they were they had bad theology. But no, because the whole system is bad. And now I feel like the whole system is bad. Yes, yes. It's not just the ology all of it. I can't solve. I couldn't salvage any of it at that point. And of course, I got into Bart Ehrman. Right. I started like, because I'm the kind of person that needs to figure out why I believed what I believed. Even though I no longer believe I still reading those things. I want to know where it came from. I want to know where that theology came from. It's fascinating it is. And I started to read the history of the Church of the Catholic Church. I swallowed a book of like, to me your 1000 years of church history. Wow. History of evangelicals in America. Ooh, that was something then, of course, I got into Jesus on John Wayne, power worshipers, all of that stuff. And how did I find that stuff? I found it by first Twitter. I got into extra angelical Twitter and I think that's where I found this podcast. I mean, David, they're just in conversations, and that really helped me. And then I started listening to this podcast and I have to say that when I started listening, I was still probably believed in God, but I wasn't sure anymore. So we moved to Las Vegas in 2019. We moved here just to just for economic reasons. You know, I love California. My family's still there, but Our kids are everywhere. We have six kids in there all over the country. So yeah, everywhere. At that point, it didn't matter where we live. So we moved to I live in Henderson, which is south of Las Vegas, very quiet community. My husband's a teacher now he's been teaching for 10 years. He teaches science. So that so he had to, like rethink everything that he used to believe to write, he went back to college, learn, you know, got a master's in education. I work in I have a great job. I work in a nonprofit that helps people with vocational training so that they can get jobs and we work with like the poorest of the poor and immigrants and people who come out of prison and who've come out of drug addiction. And like, I feel like I'm actually doing what I wanted to do. When I was a church, and it's much more effective. Church never did what we're doing. I'm actually making a different people's lives. And it's very fulfilling, and God has nothing to do with it. Crazy, amazing. You can actually help people without God. Because I had all these crazy beliefs. My mom had completely told me that good things happen to you because you follow God, bad things happen to you because you don't. Right. And that means, like, why, like so like and why she still believes that way. She still does. And it's really hard. I still have can have conversations with her about it. But anyways, I started listening to this podcast. And I have to say it helped me so much. Every peep, I love the stories. I love people's stories. I love them. And the more I listen to it, the more so when I moved to Vegas, I started listening to my commute to work. And I was like, Oh, wow, that's how I feel. Oh, wow. That's how I feel. Oh, so little by little by little. I lost all of it. I've given up all of it. We are not out to our family. Oh, my dad, it would break his heart. He's 81 years old. You know, we've been in America 43 years, he's still clinging to his. God brought me here. I have a hard time with that because I didn't want to come here. Obviously, it can't leave now have American children have a whole life here. But I still, especially now that I don't believe in God anymore. He turned our lives upside down to bring us to a country I didn't want to be in because of a prophecy. Right. And it didn't even turn out that great for him. He lost everything. He's 81 years old, he still has to pasture because he needs the income. My mom had to support them teaching. We lost all our family. You know, we don't have a family. We came from a big family. We don't go back there very often. My heart's still in Argentina. I do not appreciate the Christian nationalism here at all. I grew up in a pretty secular country where your faith was your faith. But it didn't it didn't mix in politics. I missed that. Yes. There are a lot of things I don't like about the way things have turned out, especially since Trump. And but yeah, we are not out to our family. So I have not told my family not planning on it. My parents, however, because they are very liberal on all that we discuss church issues day and night. And they don't have a clue that I don't believe it. And I don't even have to lie. It just I'm honest. They think I go to church, because I just don't like to be around Republicans. And that's true, too. So there you go. Arline 53:38 That was something that we were surprised about when we stopped believing was how much our values stayed the same things that had already that were already important to us. We're still like there are certain black Christians that I follow on Instagram that I can talk to, like our our values align. Our beliefs are very different. But I just saw someone shared in the deconversion anonymous group, a woman whose name I can't remember from the Baptists, like some kind of something. She's basically trying to get white Christians to stop following Christian nationalism. Well, she was on the atheist the Thinking Atheist podcast I follow. Yeah, talking to Seth Andrews. And I haven't listened yet. But I just it's like, when people's values align like it's, it's fabulous. It's people helping people and people changing the world. Yeah, like you said, Without God, and without all the foolishness that goes along with it. Nora 54:33 Yes. And obviously after I after I fully just embrace being an atheist, and I don't believe there's a God, I don't believe in any gods. I don't believe in anything spiritual. I am allergic to spirituality things you know, and other people go to those things. And the crystals on this and that I was so deep into the Holy Spirit BS that I can't even touch any of that, you know, I just can't It turns me off because I knew how manipulative it was. So I don't like any of it. I don't want any spiritual. I don't want to try to align my chakras or anything, I'm just not into any of it. If that's what your thing great, enjoy it, but I just I just don't believe in any of it. I'm just so turned off by the Uber spiritualization of everything you know, and the charismatic everything is the devil if it's not the devil, it's not God's timing. If it's, you know, God's testing your it's the devil, everything's the devil, right? Or everything is God, you know, you find a penny on the ground. And it was God planting that penny to, you know, I mean, I heard some testimonies that I was like, Are you kidding me? But my life now doesn't have all that guilt and shame. And yes, I still have the same values. Like you said, I still believe in goodness, and I still want to help people. And I still care about people. And I did when I was in church, and it broke my heart all the time that I saw people's lives not get better. I saw the church fail, I guess recently said that the church failing people. I saw that for 40 years. I saw it as a pastor's kid. I saw the dirty stuff that happened behind the scenes. People were horrible. I'm I'm surprised my dad's still a pastor. People betrayed, I'm left to church members, gossips. It is ugly back there. Behind the scenes, if you're, of course, married to my husband, he tells me these horrific stories. You got fired for preaching about love, you know, he get fired for wanting to have black kids in his church, you know, he get fired for good stuff all the time. And he hung on forever. And now he can't, he can't. One of his gets a pastor. I mean, we don't tell her I just don't. I no longer have any church friends, except for the one that stayed with me through that divorce. And everybody else has gone from my life. And then I've had to make new friends, you know, and, again, I've helped people outside the church to be kinder. I hated that idea of the unchurched, the, the unsaved, or the last I hate calling people have lost their last or no loss. And nobody needs to hear about Jesus. Everybody's heard about him. I just laugh at that Arline 57:38 point. Yes. in some form, or fashion. People have heard about Jesus the entire way, especially in the United States, Nora 57:44 Thai Western Hemisphere. By the way, Latin America, they've all heard about Jesus, we don't need one thing I have to say I I do not like mission trips. The irony of my father bringing me here as a missionary, right. But my brother says he's a missionary kid, I guess I am. But I don't like mission trips. I think it's insulting to the locals. I was involved in a couple of times with people that went to Argentina and two people are in Argentina as well, Christians, there's so many churches, they have their own pastors there. They don't You don't need to go. You don't need to go. We also went to Rome a few years ago, and we're blown away by the Catholic Church and where all the theology comes from, right? It was like eye opening. You know how my dad likes to say my dad's funny. My dad likes to say that American Christians think there are two countries in the Bible, America and Israel and nobody else exists. And then America is like literally come descends from Israel. We have nothing to do with Israel. Nothing, nothing in common with that country. Arline 58:56 Nora, thank you so much for sharing your stories. This has been so much fun. You told it so beautifully. Oh, thank you. Is there anything? Yes. Anything I should have asked that I haven't wanted to talk about. We have a few more minutes? Nora 59:08 I don't think so. I mean, I just I just wanted to say about the missionaries. I know. It's just a big pet peeve of mine, especially short term missions, I really feel that people do it to make themselves feel better and think that they're doing something. But it's really hurting locals. It's really disrespectful to other cultures. I experienced it myself, you know, or Christians would talk down to me in America. You know, they look at me and they think that I'm magically brown because I come from another country, you know, and I'm, I'm 75% Italian. But I'm Latin American, so I must be brown and I must be indigenous and I must be you know, ignorant of Jesus and all this stuff. And I've had that kind of prejudice happen to me a lot. So, you know, I know the people that listen to this podcast are all cool and understand On the very first anything I want him to know, is if you meet people from other countries talk to them. Don't assume they don't talk down to them. Just talk. Don't talk down to them, please, if they don't speak English to them. Well, it's because we're bilingual. Okay? It's not because we can't hear you. Let's because we're bilingual. I am a hardest for immigrants. Because I went through it, I went through a horrific immigration story, and that's a whole other story. But be kind to immigrants, most of them and I work with them every day. Most of them are normal people who just want to have a life and that also disgusts me about the church, the treatment of immigrants just even when I was in it, just disgusting. We're not stupid or less intelligent or backwards. We do have toilet paper, you know, in our countries. I've been asked a million TV. I was asked if I DB I was asked if I lived in Eagle who I was asked all kinds of things by Christians up anyways, Arline 1:01:03 even though I'm no longer part of American Christian white American Christianity, I'm like I am so sorry that the Sikh Nora 1:01:09 continue to do that. Yeah, continue to do that. Yeah. Arline 1:01:14 Okay, have recommendations, any you've mentioned multiple books, Nora 1:01:18 but like, yeah, so, right now, our ermine is my life. I need someone to explain to me why believe what I believed I know. Why should I care at this point, but I do it. I need my brain needs it. Yeah, I love his books. I feel like they're understandable even though he's so smart and educated. Love his books. This podcast of course, I've been thanks to this podcast. I've recently gotten into mega that comedy one. And I'm yeah, I'm laughing so hard. It's so good for the soul. Arline 1:01:50 I'm glad I'm glad that my husband Nora 1:01:52 and I have both been in church. You know, ministries we love so hard. We love that. Yeah, just a lot of I would say I guess Bart Ehrman is my main. My main guy and I listened to Seth Andrews, too. And I've read his books as well. And I've gotten a lot from the people in this community. You know, anytime somebody suggests something. Thank you, everyone. And thank you to everyone, because your stories did make a difference in my life. And I am free now. And life making more makes more sense outside the church. Yeah, all the bad people, the good people, human behavior, all of it makes more sense. Because I used to be like, Why, why? Why? It makes more sense. Arline 1:02:40 I love it. No one again. Thank you so much. This was wonderful. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thank you. My final thoughts on the episode. It breaks my heart, thinking about the way Christianity forces people to stay in marriages, especially women forces them to stay in marriages, where there is overt abuse happening. Even just having in some churches to like, define what that abuse is, in order to possibly find a way out. Or as a Norris case, like just continuously being told you have to stay in this marriage, God can redeem it, God can do this, God can do that. And like there isn't a god, he's not doing a thing. And yet, you have to stay, you stay stuck. And it's just heartbreaking. So many marriages are like that so many marriages, where people are just having to continue to stay in an abusive place. Because they're convinced that the God of the universe wants this for them, or that he's going to do something about it. And when a God has said something, you're not supposed to argue with it, and there's just that breaks my heart. Another thing that she mentioned, that I had not thought about until she said it she talked about how like being part of the charismatic church, it's all about feelings, but having that experience with God, the music, the emotion. And at the same time, you don't trust your feelings. You don't trust your intuition. You don't. You don't trust that gut feeling that tells you something's not right. So out of one side of their mouth to use a little Bible phrase. They're like, it's all about emotion. It's all about that experience. And on the other side, it's like, but if this feeling perhaps causes any doubt, then don't trust it. And like how do you live in that? How do you live in my religion is telling me but it's all about experience and emotion. And at the same time, I should not trust my emotions. It's just, it's just thing after thing of cognitive dissonance that we have to figure out how it works. And I'm, yeah, I'm so thankful, Nora that you told your story, that you're willing to come on here and share everything, and you told it so beautifully. And I'm glad we made it work. Thanks so much for being on the podcast again. David Ames 1:05:34 The secular great start of the week is, Trust yourself, trust your instincts. This theme has come up with a few guests recently, including Nora, maybe, particularly for women. But all of us who lived in the bubble of Christianity were taught to not trust ourselves to not trust our gut instincts, that somehow trusting our intellect and our instincts would lead us astray. And that is hard to get over. But on this side of deconstruction and deconversion, to trust your instincts to trust your your own intellect, even when there are those who disagreed with mitre church experience was similar to Nora's and that it was very charismatic. And that the more that things were emotional and demonstrative, the more doubt that I had. But it took me years to trust that instinct, and to recognize that it was because it was just humans being humans, and not because of some spiritual entity. Trust yourself. Next week, I interviewed community member Jordan, you won't want to miss that conversation. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist join me and graceful The beat is called waves by MCI beats that you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show, email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com. This graceful atheist podcast, a part of the atheists United studios Podcast Network Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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