Deconversion: Why I Left Christianity

I trace the beginnings of my adult spiritual journey to a time over 30 years ago when, as a young teen, I began to take interest in the great questions in life and was frequently distracted by a desire to understand how I fit into the big picture. Living near the beach, I often took advantage of the opportunity to sit and contemplate on the shores of Huntington Beach, California. I felt a palpable sense of peace and belonging at the ocean and I often would retreat there for solace during times of distress or confusion. My answers to life’s great questions remained ill defined at this point in my life, but my own native religion was nature-centered and non-theistic.

In my later teen years, however, I came under the influence of several enthusiastic Christian friends. At first, I was very resistant to the Gospel message and to some of the content of the Bible. But over time, my attraction to the welcoming fellowship, the high moral standards, the reassuring divine promises, and the ready supply of answers to my deepest questions, overcame my misgivings. I accepted Jesus, in standard Evangelical Christian style, and embarked on a 20-year sojourn in the world of contemporary American Christianity.

From the beginning, my experience of Christianity was focused around an intense interest in experiencing personal communion with God, understanding the Bible, and living a life of service. Over the years, this resulted in innumerable hours spent in private prayer and worship, contemplative retreats into mountain or desert, two college degrees focused on Biblical studies, and ministry pursuits that included a youth pastorship, home bible study fellowships, hospital visitation, street witnessing, and soup kitchen work just to name a few.

Christianity was always an uncomfortable fit however. Unseen by most of my closest Christian friends was a fierce inner struggle to make sense of the full Biblical message and to live a life of integrity consistent with that message. Gradually, serious misgivings about the Bible mounted. Rather than alleviate my doubts, the more I learned about the Bible, the more I encountered intractable problems on every hand. Tension and struggle eventually reached such an extreme that I knew something had to give, yet I felt trapped. Certainly, I told myself, something was wrong with me or my apprehension of the faith. By definition, I thought, nothing could be wrong with Christianity or the Bible itself.

A watershed moment arrived one day when a Christian friend of mine casually suggested that all one had to do was place any stumbling stone on the shelf and just continue along the path trusting that, in the end, God would take care of everything, including any doubts. The advice was a well-intentioned bit of standard Christian counsel; the timing however was all significant. My immediate response was to ask what should be done if those stumbling stones should become so numerous and heavy that the shelf were to break. The point was lost on my friend, but it was a self-revelatory moment for me. I was at that breaking point. Cognitive dissonance had built to a point of crisis and I could no longer take refuge in pious evasion. At that moment I decided that none of my assumptions were beyond reappraisal, that I would rethink everything and follow the truth wherever it led, no matter the cost.

The process was nothing short of traumatic. Not to mention lonely. But in the end, I re-emerged wiser and with new focus, and a sense of peace that I had not known for a long time. I was also no longer a Christian.

Through it all I seem to have come full circle. Once again my religion is nature-centered and non-theistic (at least in the traditional sense). Rather than relying on an invisible, imaginary deity, looking for a savior from the beyond to rescue me, I am now living life to the fullest, here and now, in this marvelous body, on this glorious planet, alive to all the wonders that surround me.


Most basically, I broke from Christianity because I am convinced that it promotes more error than truth, more harm than good. The specific reasons fall into two general categories: bad ideas and false claims.

Bad Ideas

Because old sacred texts cannot evolve, religions that rely on them keep the people that read them and swear by them, living in the mindset of the times they were written. This creates the dual problem of perpetuating primitive or even barbaric thinking, and impeding progress. Over the last 2000 years, Christianity has been guilty of both offenses.

1) Accepting the bible as inspired revelation from God requires one to embrace as moral acts the barbarisms which ancient Israel committed against their neighbors—including the brutal massacre of men, women, children and nursing babies--at the explicit mandate of God: “Thus says the Lord of Hosts: …attack Amalek…kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child….” (1Sam. 15: 2-3) No matter what kind of rationalization is used by the believer, the chilling fact must be faced that because of Christianity one is compelled to justify genocide.

One must also accept as ethical, the divine pronouncement that a master could beat his slave within an inch of his/her life and, as long as the slave didn't die, the master would suffer no penalty. The divine justification given for this ruling: the slave is the master's property! (Exodus 21:21) Pro-slavery advocates in our own country used OT passages such as this one to defend their practices during the debates that raged in the 19th century.

2) Hell: The Old Testament knows nothing of a fiery underworld place of never-ending afterlife torment. This concept grew in popularity during the great cultural intermixing that occurred during the intertestamental period. Active volcanoes, spewing molten lava and smoke from the depths of the earth, were thought by the ancients to lend credence to this notion. Not surprisingly, intertestamental Jewish theologians contacted and adopted this idea of hellfire. So did Jesus and the writers of the New Testament. This mere accident of history still saddles us today, some 2,000 years later, with the idea of a divine torture chamber, one of the most abhorrent, sadistic concepts ever conceived.

The concept of Hell is actually so toxic that few modern day Christians really believe it. Most believers, out of necessity, employ various kinds of coping mechanisms in an attempt to live a consistent Christian life with Hell as part of their belief system. These coping mechanisms typically take the form of avoidance—the concept of Hell is simply put out of mind—or re-definition—Hell is watered down to be a metaphor for a more palatable concept like "separation from God."

3) Anthropomorphic deity: Egocentrism is a hallmark feature of immaturity. Mankind in its childhood supposed itself and its world to be the literal center of the universe. All heavenly bodies were thought to revolve around the earth. The sun existed to give light to the day, the stars and moon, light at night (Genesis 1). Every tribe thought that its central place was the center of the world; not surprisingly, the Jews asserted this honor for Jerusalem. Cut from the same cloth is the notion that the ultimate mystery of the universe and ground of all being is a person just like us. "Men create gods after their own image...." (Aristotle) Just as mankind has outgrown the notion of an earth-centered universe, the time is long overdue to put off this childish notion of a “great parent in the sky.”

4) The denigration of women—seen both in overt statements, such as "it is a shame for a woman to speak in church," and in the complete lockout of women from any positions of leadership—is clear testimony to bias on the part of the Bible's all-male authors. Human bias of this sort is inconsistent with the notion of divinely inspired scripture, but is exactly what one would expect from male religious leaders in the ancient world.

5) Human sacrifice was commonplace among ancient peoples (e.g., Aztecs, Incas, early Greeks & Romans, some Middle Eastern tribes, early Chinese & Japanese). Unfortunately Christianity, through its central idea of the sacrificial death of Christ for the sin of the world, has perpetuated this dreadful concept. Unadorned by its social acceptance, developed theology and other trappings, Christianity at its core is a primitive religion based on appeasing an angry, invisible deity through human sacrifice.

6) Divine-human relationship: Mirroring the authoritarian political structures of the time, Judeo-Christian patterns of worship/prayer follow from a primitive view of God as despot to be placated, appeased and flattered. The similar master-slave depiction of the divine-human relationship, featured prominently in the Bible, is equally degrading and outmoded.

7) In Christianity, this earth is a temporary stage that God will soon destroy, this life a brief passageway to a world beyond death. These sentiments may have made life more bearable to the downtrodden Jews of the first century who despaired of life under foreign domination, and who despised a world wracked with war, famine and injustice, where life was often short and cheap. But this emphasis upon the afterlife and the denigration of life in this world is wrong and perverse in its effects. At its very least, it prevents the full participation in and embracing of life in this world with all of its joys and sorrows, triumphs and failures. There is also the tendency to create a mindset that discourages improving life here and now. Sure the Bible exhorts one to help a neighbor in need, but no attempt is made to correct structural evil because this world is considered beyond hope. From a strictly biblical point of view, working for the long-term betterment of mankind would make as much sense as trying to establish a social program aboard the sinking Titanic. The only true hope in Christianity involves escape from this doomed world and resides in a salvation process wherein one is placed on god's salvage list for those to be spared when the current world is incinerated.

This belief also tends to inhibit the progress of science and the natural curiosity that motivates it. Consider this revealing quote from St. Ambrose (a 4th century church father): "To discuss the nature and position of the earth does not help us in our hope of the life to come." St. Ambrose was not unique or unusual in his sentiments—biblical theology directly breeds this kind of value system. Christians who hold to different priorities only come to do so when they begin to think independently and/or come in contact with non-Christian influences.

8) Christianity demands an extreme, unrealistic ethic. In large part this is due to the emergency-mode nature of the NT outlook; that is, one must live as if the world were coming to an end at any moment (e.g., 1Cor. 7:29-31). This sense of emergency created by an impending apocalypse is further intensified by the "high stakes" involved: the threat of being sentenced to eternal torment and losing eternal bliss. If the choices made in this lifetime really do determine an eternity of either torment or bliss, then saving oneself and as many others as possible isn't just the pre-eminent concern, it is life's only concern. If taken seriously, this perspective renders any kind of normal life impossible, and promotes crippling anxiety and guilt.

The extreme nature of the NT ethic can also be seen in Jesus' unqualified prohibition against divorce (Mark 10: 11-2). This simply does not work in the real world—and everyone knows it. The fact that exceptions for unfaithfulness (Mat. 5:32) or abandonment (1Cor. 7:15) had to be added later by apostolic writers reveals the untenable nature of Jesus' blanket proscription. Witness also the Catholic Church and its annulment practice, or many Protestant pastors who, through theological artifice, attempt to stretch the stated divorce exceptions to deal with life's inevitable tough cases.

9) Biblical inerrancy: the concept, at its base, arises to answer that human longing for a voice of certainty in an uncertain world. But certainty in this world is not possible, and probably not desirable: not possible because life in this world, if it is anything, is ever-changing and unpredictable; not desirable because the adventure of living is in great measure the challenge of forging a meaningful life in an ever-changing world where the end result of one’s efforts cannot be known. Those who seek the certainty of inerrant revelation are both demanding a guarantee on life which doesn't exist and short-changing the life that they have been given.

10) Revealed religion--that is, religion built upon revelation from god—carries within it a terrible, built-in danger. Followers of revealed religion believe that they possess the final, ultimate truth of god, which leads to the tendency to impose that "truth" on others, justified by the belief that they are acting according to divine mandate. To compound the problem, the NT commonly refers to unbelievers in the most disdainful manner—“wicked evildoers,” ”unholy,” “of the darkness,” “lawless,” “sinners,” “of the devil,” “under the wrath of God,” “damned,” bound for hell, and “dead,” just to name a few. The result is a truly dangerous mix which has the potential to go far beyond mere judgmental attitudes, intolerance and divisiveness. One could predict that a revealed religion of this nature would inevitably lead to all manner of abuse: everything from witch hunts to wars and inquisitions. History has more than born out this prediction. In modern times, this same unholy cocktail of incendiary ideas—inherited in part from Christian theology—currently drives the wave of religious-inspired terrorism that sweeps our world. "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." (Blaise Pascal) "Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion -- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight." (Mark Twain)

11) Faith is a trusting commitment not substantiated by reasoned proof. To make the ultimate life commitment required by the Christian salvation experience, without reasoned consideration of the issues and ramifications, is foolhardy and dangerous. This is the means by which millions become trapped within absurd cults, sometimes with lethal consequences. What may start with an admonition to "just let your heart guide you" may end with a final taste of funny Kool-Aid.

False claims

1) The New Testament's claim that Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled many Old Testament messianic prophecies doesn't withstand scrutiny. Virtually every example of fulfilled prophecy exhibits abuse of the original OT context or the facts.

Matthew's 14-generation scheme (a prophetic scheme of sorts) in Mt.1, whereby he attempts to show how Jesus is the grand culmination of OT salvation history, is a classic example: he left out a handful of generations in order to make it fit.

Mt.2:18—the NT writer contends that Herod's decree to kill the male children at Bethlehem fulfilled a prophecy of Jeremiah (31:15) which refers to "Rachel weeping for her children." Jeremiah however is addressing the problem of Jewish dispersion caused by Babylonian captivity. The "children" referred to are obviously the Jewish people, the descendants of Rachel, and they were neither the victims of a massacre, nor even dead, for they, as Jeremiah stated, would "…come back from the land of the enemy (Jer.31:17)." Jer.31:15 has everything to do with the Babylonian captivity and nothing to do with Herod killing children at Bethlehem. Only by doing violence to this passage can Mt.2:18 assert prophetic fulfillment.

Mt.21:4-5—here the NT writer commits two fouls in first misinterpreting Zech.9:9 and then manipulating the Jesus story in order to match his misunderstanding. He misunderstood the obvious parallelism of the OT passage to mean that both a donkey and a foal were being ridden at the same time, instead of the donkey and foal being parallel references to the same animal (a very common Hebrew literary device). Then he, unlike either of the other two gospel writers who retold this story, portrays Jesus stunt-riding on both animals simultaneously. At best this is an embarrassment; it certainly isn't divinely inspired predictive prophecy.

In historical context, the NT writers were employing the same technique used by their contemporaries at Qumran (the community that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls) who likewise wrested numerous OT passages from their context in order to use them as prophetic credentials for their leader, the "Teacher of Righteousness."

2) In a religious environment where predictions about the end of the world were common, Jesus also explicitly promised to return to his contemporary generation, an event which he said would usher in the end of the world (Mat. 10:23; 16:27-8; 24:22; Mark 9:1; 13:20, 30; Luke 18:8; 21:32). The NT writers repeatedly expressed their belief in this promised Second Coming to their generation (Rom. 13:11-2; 16:20; 1Cor. 7:29-31; 15:51f; 2Cor. 10:11; Phil. 4:5; 1Thes. 1:10; 4:15-7; Heb. 9:26; 10:37; Jas. 5:8-9; 1Pet. 1:6; 4:7; 1John 2:18; Rev 1:1, 3; 22:30). When it became apparent in the latter half of the first century that this prophecy had failed, the apostles, rather than admit that they or Jesus had been mistaken, attempted to salvage the situation by resort to theological spin doctoring (e.g. 2Pet 3). These efforts at damage control remind one of what religious groups throughout the ages have done when prophecy fails. Rather than learn the lesson that failure attempts to teach and rethink basic assumptions, the sacrosanct assumptions are shielded from all true reappraisal and the prophecy is salvaged through the use of spiritual fulfillment notions or other creative theological recasting.

3) NT miracles: These were very superstitious times wherein people believed that miraculous events occurred routinely. Mankind was only beginning to mature out of its childhood at this stage in history, and many processes in nature were still "explained" by resort to supernatural explanations. The miraculous was also frequently used to adorn momentous occurrences and revered individuals. The writings of both Jewish and Roman historians attest to this practice. Suetonius, a Roman historian, claimed that the Roman Senate witnessed Augustus Caesar ascend into heaven. Both Suetonius and Tacitus, another Roman historian, assert that the emperor Vespasian healed a blind man by putting saliva on his eyes, and a crippled man by touching him—miraculous events which purportedly were witnessed by many people. Josephus, a Jewish historian, claimed that during the time of the First Jewish War (with Rome) a heifer being led to the temple altar gave birth to a lamb, that the temple gate, which took some 20 men to open and close, opened of its own accord one night, and that chariots and soldiers were seen in the clouds around Jerusalem. He further states that the latter miracle was seen by too many people to doubt it.

Evidence from within the NT, and from the extra-biblical Jesus tales that followed, reveal a myth-making process that began with the earliest apologists (the first disciples) trying to make the case for Jesus as Messiah. As the NT repeatedly affirms, the "Jews seek [miraculous] signs"—and that is exactly what the NT writers gave them. Yet close inspection of the parallel miracle stories they wrote reveals evidence of growth and accretion. Just like the proverbial fish story, the miracle story has a tendency over time to become more miraculous. The non-canonical stories that followed grew ever more fantastic and attempted to fill in the gaps left by the NT accounts, such as miracle stories from Jesus' childhood. But despite the fact that the church has attempted to distance itself from these later stories, they form a continuous line of tradition with the officially sanctioned tales. There is a very great difference between accepting assertions about impossible events made by a few people in superstitious times two thousand years ago, with no corroborating evidence, and accepting the results of modern experiments repeated hundreds of thousands of times under rigorous controls, always with the same results.

4) Virtually every major aspect of NT theology and the story of Jesus Christ can be found "off-the-shelf" in the religious milieu of the day. This reality inflicts irreparable damage to the claim that Christianity is a unique religion that was divinely revealed in the first century.

The early Christians behaved like every other group in every other era -- they adopted and adapted ideas from the culture around them. What Paul, Mark, John, and the other early biblical writers had wasn't on their tables, it was in their heads. What they had were the same general notions of divinity, cosmology and humanity, and how those things worked together, that everyone had in their time. They knew how gods worked, so when they wrote about Jesus, they made sure he worked like a god. Not only did Jesus do the same miracles the earlier pagan gods did, but the gospel stories of His miracles are told using the old pagan formula of an “aretalogy,” listing the miracles and great deeds of the god. Jesus is depicted as the son of god who suffered, died, and was reborn. But He wasn't the first son of god who suffered, died, and was reborn. He brought salvation, but He wasn't the first god to do that either. His mother was a virgin; he wasn't the first god there either. It's the same with miracles, baptism, the Eucharist, heaven, hell, prophecy, eternal life; the list goes on and on. The pagans had them all, and generations before Jesus.

Like Osiris, Dionysus, Attis, Mithras and many others, Jesus was a god, shaped like a man, walking, talking, eating, but still having magic god powers. Like the other pagan god-men, Jesus was a subordinate god, son of the great universal god, miraculously conceived in a mortal woman, living for a while on earth rather than in heaven, helping people. Jesus was not a xerox copy of one particular pagan god. Jesus was new in the same way the first Honda Accord was a new car. But the Accord wasn't the first car. The Accord was a new arrangement of old ideas, some new, but mostly old. So was Jesus.

5) The Resurrection: Five reasons why rational people cannot believe the New Testament accounts: (1) Resurrected savior-gods were common-place in the pagan religions that flourished before, during, and after the time Jesus of Nazareth lived; (2) Typical of very superstitious times, residents of 1st century Palestine were prone to believe resurrection stories (see, for example, Mt.14:1; 27:52-3); (3) The claim that a dead man was restored to life is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof; (4) The only biblical proof in support of the resurrection claim is hearsay in nature; and (5) The NT accounts of the resurrection are both contradictory and incredible.

6) Biblical inerrancy: The NT writers of 2Peter and Jude were guilty of serious errors that reveal the all too human, very fallible nature of their enterprise. Both Peter and Jude placed heavy theological weight upon an intertestamental tale about angels during the time of Noah who had intercourse with women resulting in evil, giant offspring (2Pet 2:4; Jude 6). To aid in combating enemies of the church, Peter and Jude both used this tale as a key, authoritative example of divine judgment against wrongdoers. It is plain by their usage of it that, in their estimation, these sinful angels were as historic and authentic, and the lessons to be learned as revelatory as, say, the story of Israel in the wilderness. The chief intertestamental source of this tale, IEnoch, was quoted as inspired, holy writ by Jude (Jude 14-5). Jude also mistakenly believed that the ancient, antediluvian Enoch actually wrote IEnoch (Jude 14). Peter, one of the apostolic leaders, conferred the ultimate seal of approval by incorporating almost all of Jude's letter into his second epistle.

These problems cannot be dismissed as incidental or unimportant; they strike at the heart of Christianity’s credibility. Regarding IEnoch, it is plain that Jude didn’t understand the true nature of the very source materials upon which he so heavily relied. He naively placed his full trust in this very contrived, highly fanciful writing which scholarship universally agrees was produced in the two centuries preceding the time of Jesus. Most modern-day Christians, if they only knew, would be horrified to read IEnoch and to realize that this was the type of material from which the NT writers derived their inspiration. Peter, a leading apostolic writer, is thus found engaging in fundamental theological reasoning about God and his character from a tradition which is so grossly mythological, a story which is so obviously fictional, that his reliability on spiritual matters must be seriously questioned. Thankfully, examples such as this one exist wherein the sincere seeker of truth can sweep back the curtain of mystery that surrounds the production of the NT and gain a behind-the-scenes look at how the NT writers worked and from what sources their ideas actually derive. If, when we are able to put them to the test, the apostolic writers are found to be untrustworthy, why should they be trusted on matters that cannot be so readily scrutinized critically?