Deconversion stories from Biblical Errancy
LL
Letter #801 from LL Via the Internet
I was raised a Roman Catholic - very Catholic, was married in a church, and so on. We had a bible on ourcoffee table at all times. One day, while visiting my in-laws, I discovered that my father-in-law was an atheist. How could that be? I found a copy of BE in the magazine rack! I devoured it! Then, I devoured all of his back issues of BE! I then tore into whatever other publications he had on hand (I was pretty anti-social for the remainder of that visit!). When I got home, I did something that I, like so many other Christians, had never done - I cracked that book on the coffee table and actually began to READ it. My wife and I read the bible aloud EVERY NIGHT, and marveled with shock and dismay at the atrocities in the so-called "good" book. We didn't even make it through Judges before I knew that something was terribly wrong but not with my faith. I lost that near Ex. 4:24 (Zipporah was pretty quick with that stone, eh?...). There was something wrong with the millions of people who believed that (Expletive Deleted--Ed.)! So, I subscribed to BE and a few other publications. I started looking into other sources as well. I read Paine and Jefferson.... I watched "Inherit the Wind!" I picked up "The Layman's Parallel Bible," in Nashville, Tennessee, wearing a Charles Darwin tee-shirt and drew wicked stares from the cashier who was obligated to give me a free coffee mug for making such a large purchase! I, too, began the long task of combing the book and writing down all of my questions, problems, and objections. But even more importantly, I began TALKING ABOUT IT to others. I talked to my uncles, two born- again Christians who once believed that the world would end in the year 2000. I talked to my mother, who was still scarred from the humiliation of excommunication. I talked to a friend who was writing his final term paper for a religion class. The priest teaching the class filled the back of each page (and had to add two more) with his rebuttals! I talked to another friend, who was getting ready to send a letter to a TV network to protest a show he had never seen, just because of what Dobson said on "Focus on the Family." One person I talked to formed a bible study group just to answer my persistent challenges! All of these people have been exposed to BE. Did any of these people become atheists? No. Will they? Perhaps, because now, with literature like BE, they are now doing the things that so many Christians don't do - and the things that made me an atheist - they are READING the book that they hold in such high esteem and are THINKING while doing it! For me, BE is a tool. A very, very useful tool that I would use even if you doubled the subscription price!
Put me in the "keep the change" category. And be sure to expect some orders for back issues. If BE won't be published in the future, I'll just have to work my way through its history to get my monthly "fix!"
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