Godless Guy 
When I was 7, before bed one night, I wrote a simple note and left it on my nightstand:
“Dear God,
Are you there?
Yes or No”
As isn’t much surprise, the following day, I eagerly awoke and opened the note to find-Nothing.
That should have probably been the end of the story, but it was just the beginning. I don’t recall why I felt the need to write the note asking the question; we’d probably talked about how God answers prayer or something. I always said my prayers before bed. My parents said them with me after I wrote the note that night (as they always did). I was really disappointed by the lack of reply to my note, but my parents reassured me, “God just doesn’t work that way.”
I didn’t think to ask how he does work then or to question why they didn’t point that out when they watched me write the note. No, I just accepted it. Why wouldn’t I? God was real; he was just too busy to reassure a 7-year-old kid. He can show up on toast but can’t circle yes or no. I just accepted it.
I was 12 or so when this preacher at a West Virginia church invited me to his house to shoot bows. I’m pretty sure my parents accepted the invitation for me. Still, I had never shot a bow and arrow before and didn’t have a lot of friends, so I was looking forward to it. The day came, and I spent probably a couple of hours at the preacher’s house in his backyard learning to shoot a bow and arrow. It was fun, and I remember thinking how cool it was that he didn’t talk church. We just talked about school and sports. He was in jeans and a T-shirt—just a regular guy. I don’t remember his name, but he looked every bit like a preacher. He always wore suits at church, had blondish hair flipped and feathered back and seemed to have that preacher smile permanently stuck to his face. I went to his house a 2nd time with a few other boys and it was much the same. Just casual and fun. The third time over to shoot bows was just me again. I was shooting and he asked, “Has anyone talked to you about being saved?”
I explained to him that I had been baptized at a church when I was 7 or 8. He looked at me and said, “Oh, well you’re good to go then.” And that was that. I guess I felt a little comfort having confirmation from a bona fide preacher that I was “good to go.” Most impactful, though, was that the invitations stopped after that. I felt hurt and betrayed. He hadn’t been interested in being my friend at all. He was just “winning souls for Christ.”
Fast forward a few years, and I’m getting into the groove of being an angsty teen. I pierced my ear and grew my hair to my dad’s constant disapproval. All I wanted to do was listen to music alone in my room. My parents thought it would be a good idea for me to see a counselor. But it was, of course, a Christian counselor. I don’t remember going for long or why it stopped, but it was pretty useless. Some time a little later, they tried again but at a professional Christian complex around South Bend, Indiana, as opposed to the woman counselor’s house. I don’t remember anything about this other than the size of the place and being pissed off that I was dragged there. I’ve blocked it all out for some reason. This was also short-lived and I don’t remember going there more than once. As I started driving and discovered girls and booze, my interest in church drifted away. I wouldn’t say I was ever interested in church, it was just something we always did on Sunday and I never questioned it. But now, as I began to express my disinterest in church and voice the idea that I might like to skip it now and then, my parents weaponized it against me. Now instead of just being something we did, it became do this or you’re grounded. So if I didn’t get up and go to church Sunday morning and go to church, I wasn’t allowed to use the car or go anywhere for the week. More often than not, I’d drag myself out of bed and go so that I would have some freedom in the coming week.
The best one was the day my parents and I took a trip to LaGrange, Indiana, and stopped at a little church in the middle of nothing. Great, another Christian counselor, I thought. But no. To my surprise, I wasn’t there for him to counsel me; I was there for him to honestly attempt to exorcise demons from me. I was shocked. I didn’t think anyone in the early 1990s actually did this sort of thing, but my parents had somehow found someone and here we were.
He sat me in his tiny, cluttered office and sat across from me. My parents stood behind me in the corner of the room. He started casually, just asking questions, but soon his voice rose, commanding the demonic presence to make itself known. We stared at each other for what felt like forever, half of me thinking how ridiculous this whole thing was, but also half of me expecting a scene from The Exorcist to erupt at any moment. I mean, why wouldn’t it? Something was obviously wrong with me. My mother would drag me out of bed every time good ol’ Pat Robertson and the 700 Club talked about heavy metal or teens and devil worship and make me watch. It made sense.
While we stared at each other, I thought how screwed this Lutheran preacher would be if the devil suddenly did leap forth. I’d seen enough movies to know it’d take more than him to hold back anything that might have been lurking within me. I wasn’t even strapped down, for Christ’s sake (sarcasm).
Once I realized nothing would happen, I only wanted to yell “Ooga-Booga” in the guy’s face. The visual of doing it and scaring everyone, of the preacher and my dad shitting themselves and my mom passing out made me chuckle out loud, though. Haha. Good times.
I didn’t do it, though, at which point they prayed over me for the forgiveness of all my sins, Dad made a donation to the church, and we were on our way back home in silence. Sitting in the back of the car on the hour drive home, I thought this didn’t necessarily prove I wasn’t possessed; maybe my devils were just too clever for some hick preacher. Something was still wrong with me after all.
Throughout my 20’s into my 30’s, I mostly avoided church. I would go when I was in the Army to avoid guard or kitchen duty. I allowed my mom to take my daughters to church when they were young. At least I didn’t have to go (sorry, girls). At some point, attending church became a thing for me again, and like my parents before me, I expected my kids to get up and go also, although I don’t believe I was as strict or adamant about it. I had a spiritual moment and I was baptized again. I really threw myself into it this time, studying the Bible and becoming especially interested in Bible prophecy. I switched churches for one I believed to be “more in tune with the Spirit” and eventually became an elder of that church. My wife at the time and oldest daughter sang on the praise team, my youngest daughter would help run the slide projector during service, and I was one of those guys that walked the streets “spreading the good word.” Through all of this, though, so many things about the Bible and what I was preaching didn’t make sense. I had a lot of doubts and questions, but it never really occurred to me that it all might not be true. I just didn’t get it; I wasn’t “Christian” enough to understand and felt guilty about it. No matter how hard I tried, how much I studied or preached, I couldn’t seem to get “filled with the Holy Spirit” like everyone else seemed to be. Maybe because of my doubts, I wasn’t a true believer. These are things I told myself.
The preacher at that church up and left for another without a word. Again I felt betrayed by a preacher as we were reasonably close and also friends. I ended up leaving the church on bad terms after disagreements with the new preacher. Not one of the other elders I had served and preached with for years ever called or stopped by to check on me and my family. Christian love. I decided then I would never attend church in any capacity again. I did, however, still believe in God. It wasn’t His fault these other so-called Christians weren’t following His word. (Every Christian thinks they are more Christian than the rest of their brothers and sisters.) Besides, I didn’t need them to study and worship.
Looking back, it wasn’t the devil or demons – I just had really poor mental health that went unchecked because no one talked about that stuff in the 80s and 90s. I ignored it well into my adult life. It wasn’t until I felt on the constant verge of suicide that I reached out for professional, secular help.
I say that to say this – as my mental health improved, my doubts and questions about God increased. As I conquered my “demons” and they went away, so did God. Things I had read in the Bible dozens of times and never gave a second thought about now jumped out at me in different ways (i.e., Abraham being told to sacrifice his son Isaac to test Abraham’s obedience.)
God: “Abraham, kill your son for me.”
Abraham: “Uhhh, okay.”
Last second, God: “Just kidding. I’m proud of you, though.”
Me: “WTF, God? Not cool.”
The idea of the virgin birth suddenly seemed as absurd as it sounds. Along with things like this, I also began to notice the sheer treachery and cruelness of the Bible, not to mention its views and treatment of women. As a father of two daughters, it’s appalling. Then there are the contradictions we’re told aren’t there and to just accept without any real investigation (Spoiler alert – contradictions do exist in the Bible.)
Suddenly the nagging doubts became raging voices, and they all screamed the same thing:
“It’s all bullshit.”
For the past two years, I’ve considered myself a non-believer and it’s still hard to let go of some of it sometimes. The chains of religious indoctrination are thick. I feel a little angry and cheated that I broke these chains later in life. I’d love to go back and retake college biology with this mindset, for example.
I am thankful, however, that my girls are still young enough to undo the things they were taught as children and make their own choices as adults.
I don’t blame my parents for my own indoctrination. They were just recycling what they were taught as children by their parents, their parents before them, and so on.
Christopher Hitchens once said, “If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.“
Indeed.
“If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.”
Some Useful links
Freedom from Religion
Recovering from Religion
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