A Short History of Apostasy

What follows is what will one day become a long essay on my deconversion. Right now I consider this to be notes that deserve a good bit more attention. I post them here for posterity, and to remind myself that this is still outstanding.

While riding in the backseat of a car a young male child says, “I’m thirsty.” It was me and I really was desperately thirsty. The kind of thirst that grips you until you can think of nothing else, like after eating an incredibly salty picnic ham. I was so young that my mind still didn’t do very well with abstract concepts such as the answer that my mother’s sister gave me, “Would you like some living water? Its water that is so potent that when you drink it you never thirst again!” I was, of course, delighted to have some of this living water. That is the end of my memory, I don’t recall if I ever got the concept or not.

A First Glimpse
The year that I read The Fountain Head by Ayn Rand was a banner year. I was stationed at K-2 Air Base, Taegu, Republic of South Korea. I started the book in the summer a few months before I would be leaving the country and going back to a state side assignment in the Air Force.

Memories of how that book influenced my thinking are mixed with memories of painting the Squadron area, mowing the lawn and performing honor guard duty down at the port city of Pusan, South Korea. Out of these mixed memories one important concept comes to the forefront every time I think of Ayn Rand's philosophical book. A memory of talk about a heroic man-- a human being who finds his own self worth in what he or she is able to create with his own hands; an independent and totally responsible and finite man. I have since studied Objectivism a bit more and am not totally convinced, but in those days, the categories and the new way that reality was laid out for me was exciting; for the first time in my life I can remember being truly inspired by the fact that I was a human being. I was a human, a creature with the potential to master the earth, to be creative and to produce with my own hands.

On the other hand, religion had taught me that I mattered and was loved, but that my creativity, intellect, etc. came to me by the grace of God and that everything that was inherently me was evil and I believed that I was essentially bad. After all, I had been told that I was evil by word and through deeds done to me since I was in diapers. Not all of the messages were cruel, but the foundation of that message I heard and experienced, from both those people who abused me and those people who loved me, was that human beings were inherently and essentially bad-- or full of “sin,” to use the religious term. So the idea that human beings are essentially good had a profound effect on my psyche, especially at a time in my life when I was looking for a way to sow wild oats and not feel so guilty about it.

Nothing Noble about It
Yes, the truth is that my time in Korea was spent in bars, drinking and hanging out with prostitutes. I felt guilty about it, but not enough to quit doing it while I was in Korea, despite that fact that I had boarded the airplane in 1989 after having just received my preaching certificate from my home church in Victoria, Texas. That church sent me there to be a representative of the Gospel, but the attraction of sin and guilt was far too strong to for my young sensibilities to overcome.

On the subject of guilt, I have been told my entire life that guilt is a normal, natural emotion that is used by the Holy Spirit to persuade us to do right. I think that it is true that our sense of guilt or conscience does persuade us to do right when it is functioning correctly. Some of this guilt is likely a product of biology while some of it is learned feeling based on what we have been taught is right and what is wrong. We’re told, for instance, that sex before marriage is wrong… how else could we feel the slightest pang of guilt about such a basic and utterly human endeavor when we engage in sex in or out of marriage? It’s because we have been given guidelines about this particular behavior that we feel good or bad about it. But in regards to other behaviors that are less natural, murder for instance, most people don’t require explicit rules; instead, there is a kind of natural aversion for murder, even when in a time of war.

Not that there is anything at all wrong with having rules about behavior, I rely on quite a few in order to be able to live my life in peace and prosperity. It’s the preponderance of rules laid out by the Church that had me, at the time, in an almost perpetual state of guilt. The problem was that I wanted to drink, smoke and hang out with girls that do! I don’t have the slightest idea why I wanted to, but I did, and that desire created a tremendous internal conflict for me as a young, religious man.

The consequences of my internal conflict were what I call the roller coaster effect. I was sometimes at the top of the roller coaster “serving God” and sometimes at the bottom of the drop-off “serving mammon.” So my pursuit of vice while in Korea was not a new problem for me, just a continuation of the basic pattern of my life to that point. All through junior high and high school I had done the same thing. Metaphorically, about every 6-8 months I would either up-shift to God or down-shift towards the Devil. The “things of the world” were delicious to me but also were the “things of god”-- the two simply could not be reconciled under the constraints of my semi-fundamentalist Baptist religion. It was a wild ride, but I love roller coasters.


Back Home
I returned home from Korea later that year and, of course, visited my parents who are devout Baptists and had sent me to Korea with my preaching certificate. What a surprise it must have been for them to hear I had now rejected the Christian faith-- but only for a time, and they knew it. It was a first rejection; the rejection of the prodigal son, wanting riotous living and having only a small piece of a reality beyond sin, guilt, and religion—that piece, my parents quickly identified to me as “Humanism” after I explained to them my newfound enlightenment about what it meant to be a human person. But at 19 I had really never considered what the term “Humanism” meant. So I began to study a little bit about the subject and came to the conclusion that it wasn't all that bad to be somewhat humanistic. I even began to incorporate some humanistic philosophy into my life as I slowly drifted back into the arms of the Church on account of the gentle persuasion of my conscience or my parents, or both.

If it was my conscience that brought me back, it was because the moral teachings of the fundamentalist Church have always been a strong theme in my life. If fact, one the most important principles that I learned from my parents was that obedience was better than sacrifice-- this is in the Old Testament somewhere. They had learned this and understood it as a first principle along the way, and over the years of attending our fundamentalist First Baptist Church, had passed the knowledge to me. I was never sure what sacrifice was, but I knew precisely what obedience was. Obedience boiled down to the Fundamentalist cliché': “Don't smoke, drink or chew, or go with girls who do,” also, don't do drugs or dance.

In reality, because my moral base was so inextricably connected to the moral teachings of the fundamentalist Church, I had no choice but to return to the arms of the Church when I wanted to assuage my conscience. And to a certain extent I still grapple with the issues related to morality as a non-Theist. So certainly at age 19 I was in no position to sit down and write down my own system of morality as Benjamin Franklin was able to do at a young age, I simply did not have the capacity for such things at the time. Looking back now on this re-conversion I surmise that I didn't have the scope to find real answers for myself given the emotional pain I was working through, thanks to my not-so-good early childhood experiences. And yet, this primal de-conversion opened the door to my mind and my conscience for the first time.

The folks that I call my parents in this essay are actually my Aunt and Uncle who raised me from the time I was 11 until I enter the Air Force at age 18. I found myself living with them because my biological Mother and her boyfriend had gotten themselves into trouble in the early 80s by their involvement in the drug culture. My life before going to live with my Aunt and Uncle was not good. It wasn't the worst abusive situation that I have heard of, but it was painful enough to shape most of the rest of my life and certainly make me a defensive and needy adult. To make a long story short, for the purpose of staying on topic, I will say that the move from my Mother's care into the care of my Aunt and Uncle changed my life story significantly. From age 11 to the present, my life has been inextricably wed to the Church and her mythology because of this move.

Once I moved in with my new family, I went to Church at least three times a week. All of my new friends were deeply involved in the youth group at Church and every social activity was centered on the Church. They were happy days living with my aunt and uncle and the Church became the center of my universe: my friends, emotional support, entertainment, moral instruction, salvation; all there in the Church, neatly packaged and dispensed to me three or four times a week.

And that was a good thing because when I first went to live permanently with my Aunt and Uncle I was an emotional wreck. The years of crazy living and abuse (all for another story) had taken their toil on my young psychic self. I was gaining weight, having trouble with school and generally socially inept. In other words, I was especially receptive to anything that promised hope, salvation, health, friendship and prosperity-- the religion of my aunt and uncle became my medication. It wasn't a pain killer, although it did that most of the time; instead, it was a long term anti-biotic that did a lot of good for many years. I can't say with any confidence that I would have been able to get as far in life as I have without the presence of the Church.

Still at Home
So there I was, about to turn 20 and back in the loving arms of my one refuge: The Church. I was becoming a humanistic thinking Christian and although I wasn’t very committed or devout, at that time I was thinking that I would be entering professional clergy one day. It is puzzling to me that I always assumed I would go into the Christian clergy as a profession. Looking back on it, I realize how thoroughly my own goals had been paralyzed by the influence of my adopted parents. This coupled with the fact that I was desperately (at least subconsciously) trying to self-medicate the pain of my early childhood. I think that in my subconscious I believed that my parent's expectation for me was that I become a Christian minister, although I realize now that their power and perceived expectation of my future was not as important to them as I thought. All they really wanted from me is to be a good convert and a respectable adult no matter what profession I chose. Nevertheless, I always knew I would enter the ministry; after all, the most devoted of Christian were the ministers.

I was standing in the kitchen at my uncle’s house in the fall of 1993 talking about my failed relationships. My uncle told me at the time that when I went to New Orleans to go to seminary in the spring that I would meet someone. I did meet her at Orientation that January 1994. She was wearing a longer skirt, but still her slim body and her legs caught my eye. I was wearing a suit with suspenders, which was my style for a time as a Churchman. I was behind her one spot and to the left, she turned around and offered me some gum, either out of interest in me or common courtesy I am still unsure. At any rate I turned down the gum, but I was interested. It was one more “chance” meeting in the coffee shop of the student center and we were dating. The rest is the history of our family…

With regard to my marriage I have found that the reality of my relationship is far superior to the fantasy that I had created in my mind regarding whom I would eventually marry. But being in a committed, loving relationship has been difficult for me and my journey away from the Church has exasperated and changed the rules. Frankly, I believe that it was much easier for me to be a husband while I was a Baptist Preacher-Chaplain. I mean, I was by title the model of a good husband. And even if I failed to live up to the standards of being a good husband and father there was always that title, and the hope that the Faith would continue to make me a better person, a better husband and father. In retrospect, that was a fantasy on my part and, I believe, in the mind and heart of my wife who tends to romanticize the past by hoping against hope that I will return to the faith.

A Clergyman
So becoming a part of the professional clergy was one of my childhood assumptions that did happen because I had total control of it. The Seminary degree, the title, and even the big salary came, but the things that my aching psyche were searching for never did come, despite the good things I was sure that all professional ministers received: emotional health, respect, and happiness. My choice of a profession was a by-product of years of trying cope with my own personal pain coupled with the strong implicit influence of my devout parents. Religion and the professional clergy was, for me, a sophisticated system of self-medication. Nevertheless, I understand this now in retrospect and at the time I sincerely believed I was “called” and that overshadowed misgivings about my suitability-- mine or anyone else's.

think this is why, as I matured in both age and in the ministry that it began to strike me as odd the number of people in the profession who do a truly bad job at it. It also made me more sympathetic towards those “bad” ministers whom I don’t believe for a minute are specifically malicious in their intent when they stay in the professional clergy, I just think that they are unaware of their incompatibility and totally committed to the doctrine of “calling.” That was certainly my experience as a “bad” minister. I just had a strong sense of “calling” from an early age and it never occurred to me that I might not have the proper personality to be a minister. Well at least it would not be easy for me to be a proper clergyman given my personality, both the healthy parts and especially the unhealthy parts.

In the Desert
It took a while but I eventually live-out my childhood assumption of becoming and minister. I went to Seminary, started churches, and then joined the military chaplaincy in both the Air Force and the Army. I followed that path for 10 years until one day in the desert I finally got it: I could never be a minister and should make myself a path to stop when I go back home.

I wrote a poem on that day:
I fell with a thud, thud, upon the cement of my own personal existence here in this dusty land of savage and stupid men. This ground broke my body once more and there is no doctor save myself. But my own instruments are rusty crosses and medicinal confessions which lost their power to heal me while I was busy sleeping with my head between mammary books, still stacked beside me tall-- and dusty covered with the dust of Genesis and the Stoics. The Ghost of my vocation still haunts me though. And everyday the familiar routine of that work distracts me from the reality that I have traded my religion for my life, just as the persecuted Christians did under the brutal Emperors of Rome. That Emperor came to me as well and offered pleasures or alienation and death to my existence in this time and place. A better man would have traded his existence for something so beautiful and true. But I am not a better man, I am the Lapsi; and my unconfession is true.

But losing my profession was only a by-product of the real thing that was happening to me in the desert. I was losing my religion altogether and it’s easy now for me to recall that day out there in the desert when it finally occurred to me that I no longer believed. A place and time like no other that I had previously experienced: It was an Existential revolution of the mind, emotion, and some would say the spirit!

I was nine years old when my Aunt and Uncle took me and my mother the First Baptist Church Houston Texas revival services at Rice Stadium. This was the dawn of contemporary Christian music and on stage that night would be the Imperials singing Sail On and Ole' Buddha. After the Preacher gave his message I felt deeply convicted of my sin and wanted to make Jesus the Lord of my life more than anything else in the world. I was deeply and emotionally converted as I walked forwarded singing, “Just as I am without one plea, but that his blood was shed for me.” I was crying as the preacher said words over us from the platform and then prayed. I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior that night, without a doubt. My bio-mom had come with but she was not so moved. She asked, “Why are you crying”? Maybe she didn't get it...? I did.

Can losing your religion be a spiritual experience? I know that my existence at the time was harsh, and yet, I felt the passing of each day more vividly than I had ever felt before. Existentialism was on my mind because I was studying the philosophy of Sartre, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and others; what was on my conscience was the people of Iraq and the war. The whole experience was real and “in your face” and there was no way to reject the verdict that the experience of Iraq demanded in me. What was that verdict? Religion is not true. It was a complete existential revolution, a contradiction of the meaning I had made a foundation for my life in ‘78.

This existential revolution came in pieces and parts. One day while traveling down a highway in Iraq I came to the conclusion that there obviously was no grand design to life. Sometimes I would travel down a road and be safe, the next day someone else would travel down the same road and would be killed. It was all random and made a plain case against any form of Providence that any person could readily appreciate. On another day, it occurred to me that my own personal devotion to the Christian religion was hard not to compare to the devotion felt by my enemy towards Islam. We were the same then, them and me. We were both so convinced of the other's error and our correctness-- we were both wrong.

A curious thing started to happen, as the religious foundations of my life were beginning to crumble, I began to sense that I was becoming more at peace with myself for some reason. At first I did not realize why I felt this way, but as I began to question and then put aside many of the doctrines that I once held dear it became more obvious.

For the first time in my life I gave myself my Reason to use free of the restraints imposed on it by the Christian Church. The answers became a lot less simple but the search started to become my passion and my real medicine. Where Christianity had been a blinding patch, Skepticism became a liberating and true seeing. I am a better man without Christianity, and I am glad to leave it behind.

I’m 14, in the main sanctuary of our Church, my refuge, familiar to me in every way. The kind older gentleman leader the congregation in song is Gary, the music minister for more than 20 years. How many songs did I sing under his direction? Only god knows. I sing during the invitation, I feel that conviction both in my “heart” and my hands once more! I must do something. I love music and feel this overwhelming calling from an unseen motivation. I believe that I am “called”! I feel so special! So grateful to be one of the few chosen for a life of ministry and service to God! I walk forward, joyous and surrounded by the approbation of all the adults in the congregation.


The Aftermath
The first several weeks after my return from the Iraqi wilderness were tenebrous for me-- would I start to believe again or would the overwhelming doubt and forlornness continue?

The wind increased to a howl; the waves dashed their bucklers together; the whole squall roared, forked, and crackled around us like a white fire upon the prairie, in which, unconsumed, we were burning; immortal in these jaws of death! In vain we hailed the other boats; as well roar to the live coals down the chimney of a flaming furnace as hail those boats in that storm. Meanwhile the driving scud, rack, and mist, grew darker with the shadows of night; no sign of the ship could be seen. The rising sea forbade all attempts to bale out the boat. The oars were useless as propellers, performing now the office of life- preservers. ~Hermann Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 48: The First Lowering

I would not start to believe again, but it seems as though others then had the opportunity, for a short while, to be my salvation, to turn me back towards the safety of the religion that I held so dear. These would-be and possible saviors were the other Chaplains in council around me, men who had served God and Country for years longer than I. They tried, with sometimes kind and sometimes cruel words and actions to steer me back onto the right path, but that metaphorical haze and the open ocean was too much for me, I had already been lost in the wilderness of my own doubts about Christianity coupled with the heartache I felt concerning the cruel things I was experiencing, either carried home from Iraq or wrecked upon me on the shores of Fort Sill, OK.

These cruel things wrecked upon me were of my own making. They were the petty things that a wounded soldier says and does upon returning to garrison; things not even worth mentioning in this essay that turned my would-be saviors against me over time. Not only that, but also I could no longer function as a minister in Sunday services without experiencing a nausea of dissonance between my apostasy the requirements of my office. This caused me to commit a mortal sin: I refused to preach.

Refusing to preach in Sunday services because of a crisis of conscience brought my apostasy to the forefront in the minds of my supervisors. No longer was it an internal struggle that they could help me with, instead I become an outward symbol of what they had been struggling again their whole lives: unbelief.

“Unbelief,” that thing that made Chaplain irrelevant to commanders in the Army; that thing that caused commanders to wonder out loud what the Chaplain was doing the staff meeting or the battle planning session; that thing that caused commanders to measure up chaplains with mocking eyes; the very thing that caused Ivy league legal students to sue the Armed forces in order to undo the Chaplaincy—“Unbelief”, their mortal enemy. Now I was the standard bearer of their enmity; I was their Judas, I had kissed them on the check with my refusal to preach.

So, cutting the lashing of the water-proof match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair. ~Hermann Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 48: The First Lowering

Miserable and forsaken I continued to do my job in the battalion I was assigned upon my return. In terms of spiritual advice, I had none. But what I did have to offer was a keen ability to counsel people through their difficulties. This was something that I had been working on for years, having taken training classes, read numerous books, etc. I had become quite proficient with both individual and family counseling. So although I had something to offer my unit, I didn’t have exactly the right thing that a Chaplain should have. It was during these days that I began to identify myself most closely with the figure of Queequeg holding up that lantern in the midst of his own despair, “… the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.” For the first time I was required to feel the same sense of confusion, loss, and utter despair that those whom I was counseling felt. I couldn’t remind them gently about the God who knows and understands their sufferings and could do something about it if he willed, there was no medicine of this kind anymore.

Little did I know at the time how much this struggle was changing me; I found myself becoming more empathetic and less critical of others. Family members and friends whom I had been critical and judgmental of started to strangely find a place in my good graces for real, and not just out of practical necessity. I was becoming a better person sans the guidance of Religion-- this was a strange revelation.

But becoming a better man was not without its trials or its setbacks. Imagine yourself, Seminary trained, married into a family as ensconced in the Christian religion as your own, putting oneself on the margins of the family conversations-- either that or making every chit-chat into an argument about religion. Imagine the pain that you cause your beautiful, patient wife through now, several years of committed apostasy after 10 years of shared Faith. My trials started in the desert that day, in the middle of a no-man’s land but my wife’s trials began when I returned to Fort Sill, OK in the March of 2004

10Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. 11The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. 12She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. ~Proverbs 31: 10-12

As for setbacks, being without a clear moral foundation after so long a time relying on the one given you by your Church can be unnerving.