I’m a former ELCA Lutheran who left my faith at the age of 38. I won’t go into that story here. There were two years I spent alone agonizing on some days and rejoicing on others to be free from dogmatic control over my mind, consciousness, and life. I began reading atheist articles and books and watched a ton of youtube videos and listened to hundreds of podcasts and many audiobooks.
In my social life, I changed environments. I went from attending churches to attending meetup groups in bookstores and halls. They offered me a safe place to vent and make new friends experiencing a similar break from their family religions. I learned a lot from these meetings and met friends that have lasted after all these years. I lost friends and family members, as well, which was awfully painful.
Something I wanted and expected to happen in those open spaces was growth. At the time, none of us really knew what non-religious growth looked like, but had enough sense to know growth was an individual process that the rest didn’t have any right intruding upon. There was no creed in atheism. Anyone was welcome to join the meeting to listen and participate if they could stomach the harsh criticism of religion and even some innocent blasphemy with a lot of curse words mixed in to make strong points. It could get hot in that room quickly depending on the issues.
Some people hated religion. Many were abused by humans claiming to be servants of God and had a good reason to be angry. Some hated religion because they felt it was the source of all the unnecessary wars, torture, and slavery in our world. Some were apathetic toward it. The apathetic ones were typically the ones who escaped being raised in religion and had no negative experiences. They just had a lack of belief. Most of us were deconstructing our religions by tearing them apart limb for limb in a bloody frenzy. I think we got the most out of the meetings.
At first, I was afraid to be out about my atheism. I thought people would hurt me for it and I wouldn’t be able to stay gainfully employed if people or employers found out. Over time, as the meetings allowed me to vent all my grievances, I got comfortable being free to be who I genuinely was. It was so liberating. I had never had the luxury of ever feeling like that in the past.
It took a couple of years until I was able to just come right out with stating my position on atheism to anybody. The fear fell away completely, yet I still was acting carefully at work and around those who took their own faiths seriously. My intention was never to hurt anyone, my intention was to find the truth and to be vulnerable and honest. I was sick of being lied to by religious sources and I wanted to devote the rest of my life to an ethical approach to discovering some truth for a change.
I believed that if by chance a God did actually exist, He or It would be delighted about what I was doing. There was no fear of god for being an apostate because I literally felt that my true mission was also in line with what a God would want if God was real. It was a win-win in my mind because my intention was to act with morality and honesty without fear.
As I became more literate about science and philosophy, I was able to engage religious folks in deep conversations which expanded their views regarding issues they never thought deeply about before. I thought it was fun getting to know people at a more psychologically intimate level. I liked picking their mind and loved sharing knowledge and links to further understand and crush myths and misconceptions about people they consider “other” to remove biases and prejudices. I felt this was also ‘godly’ work.
I thought I was doing something worthwhile but didn’t really know how. I lacked the higher education others in our circles had access to. I felt undereducated compared to them and tried to work hard studying in my free time online to keep up.
Over the last several years, I have learned concepts and then realize just how much more there is to learn about them. It was often overwhelming to commit to learning as I also suffer from migraines and exhaustion from work and single parenting. I daydreamed about being a scholar who could devote entire days to study.
My atheism evolved as I educated myself further. It began to look more like agnosticism and then I began to snuggle up with mysticism, which I just naively called, “cosmology.” I didn’t know what mysticism was and frankly wasn’t interested in it at the time because I called stuff like that “woo-woo.” So, I was careful, however, because I was skeptical of BS and didn’t want to be swooped off my feet by any cult-like ideologies or practices. While I watched many of my friends become curious about new-age witchcraft, magic, tarot, and astrology, I walked strongly in the opposite direction. I was often harshly criticizing these practices and people would wonder why I had such a strong opinion about it if I was non-religious anyway.
I couldn’t answer that back then. I just felt strongly what they were doing was wrong somehow and also felt it was narcissistic. Magic, in my mind, meant they thought they had special powers others don’t have. I thought they were delusional because they wanted to be respected and admired for being able to control things they technically couldn’t. I felt like they were wrong to want to have influence over the course of other people’s lives. I felt only the ‘creator’ has the right to do that, not humans, and they were jerks for thinking they had any say over somebody elses’s fate or destiny.
I didn’t know anything about anything, but I thought it was worth exploring some of the things I was passionately opposed to and that’s how I got where I am today. It made me wonder if my atheism was really a very orthodox way of conceiving God. Maybe I was actually a strict monotheist and while criticizing how humans are expressing their beliefs in this world, I was really scolding them for getting God so wrong!
I had some ideas of what I thought God was, but there was no way to prove it. My concepts did not match with the teachings of my Lutheran faith, yet somehow, it’s like I fundamentally had a concept of God but didn’t realize it and couldn’t articulate it. After all, I thought I didn’t believe in God anymore because I didn’t believe in what Christianity defined it to be. I supposed I really was an apostate to Christianity but was not an apostate to God completely.
I think this is how I got to this place in my life. I was not religion shopping, what I’ve been doing is trying to understand how people experience God in their religions by actually trying to also experience God as they do.
I think we cannot explore god concepts from books entirely and we cannot expect to be able to have a credible opinion about anything God related if we didn’t even try to connect as others have done. I don’t think my faith of origin gave me good enough tools to ‘connect’ with God. However, when I began praying in a mosque, I began to understand some things.
In the process of experiencing being a receptor to connect with God, I feel like I have become a devotee of all religions all at once. In the process, I have learned some concepts which have elevated my state of mind and made me feel like I truly understood the power and mercy of God, as stated in Holy texts. Sometimes in the same room, I wonder how I can feel God's connection, but others have expressed they pray and pray and never feel anything. For them, they just fulfill the minimum obligations to stay within the ‘fold.’
I think it’s a shame to live like that. All of that work and devotion to get nothing out of it seems very sad. I’m coming to this perspective as a person who for years has lived ‘God-free.’ Now, I have a way to feel God’s presence if I need it and it doesn’t have to matter to anybody else. I realized just how private it can be. I felt how wonderful it feels to have that for myself. Problem is, some religions have really sick and hateful ideas and if you happen to be gay, a woman, or from the other religion, you better watch your back.
I’ve overheard things said about Jews I can’t forgive. Things that are wrong. I’m so tired of the hate from every direction. I decided to be a student of all religions because I only believe there is one God anyway. To me, all religious observers are trying to connect with the ultimate reality. I believe that reality is only one and we are all living inside of it. Perhaps my religion doesn’t match with the big 3. I still don’t know. I’m trying to find out, though. I’ve put myself in very uncomfortable places and have done unusual things to try to get the answers.
In the end, It’s not religion shopping. It’s God observing but in every religion. Imagine if none of the world religions got it right yet. Imagine if there is one reality, but humans still haven’t figured it out. This would mean every human devotee who ever lived and died, worshipped in vain; or did they? Maybe, the ultimate reality exists and we have human minds wired to connect to it in whatever way we can. It would mean, nobody is wrong, because at least some humans tried and the rest were fine as they were. In this philosophy, there is no “us vs them.” It’s more like, “everything as it was meant to be.”
Experiencing many religious observances has been a blessing in my life. I don’t feel like a hypocrite or apostate for doing it. I feel like a God worshipper who is seriously hungry to connect with God and his creation with the full intention to attempt to understand what the heck has been going on. I want to understand more so I can be part of the conversations for peace. I hope you do too.