Deconversion stories from The Skeptical Review
Mark Wenneborg
A Familiar Story...
As a former fundamentalist Christian turned skeptic, I continue debating and talking to my Christian friends and family. When I present to them reasons for my unbelief, they will invariably evade these reasons and postulate that some internal condition is to blame for my current skepticism. In other words, they will accuse me of being angry with God because he's not who I want him to be, or they will say I never truly understood what salvation, i. e., being "born again," means, or they will claim that in the past I had some bad experiences that turned me away from God. In most cases, this evasion is not purposeful, nor is it maliciously done; instead, I believe that these people just cannot accept that someone actually left the faith because of a rational examination of the claims of the Bible.
Others accuse me of leaving God because I harbored sin in my life, or they theorize that I've allowed myself to be "brainwashed" by "the world" because I was not grounded firmly enough in the Bible and in fellowship with God's people. Such evasions exasperate me, especially when I try to redirect the topic back to my rational objections to the inerrancy of the Bible. Most fundamentalist Christians just do not want to be bothered with the facts.
My more intellectual Christian friends (who insist they are not fundamentalist but evangelical) try to "counsel" me to open my heart to God, give him my anger and doubt, and he will open my eyes. "Seek and ye shall find," they firmly believe, and God will finally touch my heart. But they insist I've got to rid myself of my anger and pride first.
Few of these people, no matter how intelligent, can imagine a life outside Christianity. That is why they continually insist that the problem must be within me. But realizing how much better my life has been since I cast off the chains of dogma, I continue to try to persuade my Christian friends and family to listen and honestly think about the issues I raise.
That is why I am writing this letter to you. I am requesting first-year subscriptions to The Skeptical Review for two of my friends whom I believe may be open to critical thought. Both are in the ministry and both are committed bibliolaters. (I have their names and addresses listed below.) Because I believe so firmly in your work, I wish to pay for their first-year subscriptions. You have my permission to let them know I requested these subscriptions.
I also would like to purchase the videotape of the Till-Dobbs Debate. Enclosed is [a check] for the subscriptions and the tape. You have my permission to apply anything left over to other free subscriptions, overhead, etc.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Probably any ex-Christian reader who has tried to discuss the Bible with friends and relatives who are still believers could have written this letter, because it tells an all-too-familiar story. It sounded just like a page out of my own past. I don't know how many times people have asked me what terrible thing happened that made me hate God (as if I could hate something that I don't believe even exists), or why I don't open my heart and let God lead me back to the truth. The fact is that nothing "terrible" has ever happened to me. My grandfathers died not long after my "conversion," but they were both 75 at the time, so there was no reason to consider their deaths as horrible tragedies. My father died much younger, but at the time, I had already decided that the Bible was not at all what I had grown up believing. I have had a life rather free of events that could be called tragedies, yet friends and associates of mine who remain Christians seem convinced that something "terrible" happened that I am not being honest about. As Mr. Wenneborg noted above, people with this mindset just can't accept the possibility that a person would rationally examine the Bible and conclude that it is not "the inspired word of God," and so they have to find some way to explain people like Wenneborg and me. Thus, they conclude that we have experienced some untold tragedy or disappointment or that we were unable to live up to the standards of biblical morality, and so we claim not to believe the Bible in order to have some justification for living "ungodly lives."
I was glad that Mr. Wenneborg agreed to let me inform his friends that he requested the subscriptions to TSR that they will receive. Many times, Christians who are added to the mailing list at the request of friends who want them to read TSR will write or call in anger demanding that their names be removed. Those who know that friends or acquaintances made the requests on their behalf are less likely to do this.
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