I wrote the rest of this post before I got an email in which Chris broke up with me. So, I don't care to edit it anymore or add anything to it. I don't really feel like saying anything more than that right now.

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This blog post is about me. And yes, Nata, I had mostly forgotten about you too, and it did seem when we were friends that you would become (admit being?) an atheist and I would be the pastor, but that part got mixed up. Now you're the one who loves Jesus and I know he couldn't be real.

However, my journey out of faith wasn't quite like this: "First you find yourself doing laundry on Sundays, next you find yourself doubting if any spiritual experience you'd previously testified to was the result of anything but the bad cafeteria food you'd been trying to digest."

Yes, I let certain things slide as I realised they didn't matter. Legalistic things. Unreasonable things, like the ban on swearing, which I've been meaning to address in this blog. But I fought to keep my faith, and it was terrifying, and I hated it, and I didn't get a lick of help from Mr. 'love you so much and am always calling out to you' God. And my previously-testified-to spiritual experiences all happened long before I encountered the horrors of bible college cafeteria food. All of them. Also before the women we prayed for so hard were killed by cancer or Lou Gehrig's or CF, before I was in a car accident and realised that none of the people in my church actually gave a shit, before I realised that gay people were just like us, before I realised that the Promised Land already had inhabitants in it and they were killed in a mass (fictional) genocide.

I thought that going to bible college was my last hope, that it was either that or losing my faith, and I was sure that meant depression and probably suicide. But bible college sealed the deal. Systematic theology said, hey! Look at these "tensions" in the Bible and how people have tried to deal with them, and then let's poke holes in all of their arguments! Look at all these problems that you haven't even thought of yet! Look at how there are some verses that say that God will keep you forever, and others that say that he'll abandon you and deceive you so that you can't come back (1, 2)! What a swell dude.

And, you know, I tried to reconcile it, but the only answers I got were "you can't question God's character!" (even when he's commanding genocide), and "I just KNOW that God is good, you should have faith, pray about it."

I guess all I'm trying to say was that I didn't just gradually get lazy and slip away from the faith. I fought for it. Also, I didn't leave because of tragedy or people being assholes or any of that. My faith left me because I realised that God wasn't good. Not at all. Of course, that was a time of losing Christianity, not theism.

What I didn't expect out of all of this was the position I would end up in. I am happier with my thoughts on the universe and "spiritual" things and moral codes than I ever was. It is not threatening to realise that other people -- similar people -- disagree with me. I don't have this constant worry that maybe I'm not doing precisely what God wants me to be doing at that moment, a worry that I never truly noticed until it stopped. I do what I want, and what I want to do is generally what keeps me and other people happy, and not to harm people, and there is no Ultimate Expression of that, no Right Path, and so I can relax about it. I still like the fruit of the Spirit, and that's enough reason to pursue them.