I’m Trying Christianity (Again) for 40 Days
I left my Christian faith about 8 years ago and haven't really looked back. But I’m ready to take another dive into it and want to share some of that journey. Starting September 1, I’m going to try becoming a Christian again for 40 days, and 40 nights (for poetry’s sake).
What this means
This is a personal experiment to find out what may happen if I attempt to reindoctrinate myself into a belief system I no longer believe. I’m not going to pretend to believe something I don’t (and at the moment of writing this, I’ll clarify I do not believe). But I’m going to surround myself with it again to see how it changes my perspective.
I’m not going to be too "religious" about it, but my general guidelines are:
- I’ll attend church services on sundays
- I’ll read the bible daily
- I’ll listen to Christian podcasts, books, sermons, etc. regularly
- I’ll do a daily "quiet time"
- I’ll spend intentional time hearing from Christians about their faith
- I’ll abstain from “sinning” as best I can*
- If I want to stop the experiment, I’ll stop.**
*Sin is harder to define, especially for a non-believer, but I intend to give up anything labeled sinful by a typical Texas evangelical protestant, and in general pause on behaviors I feel pointing my mind and heart away from the Christian god.
**This is important for me to say to be clear with myself that I’m not going to force some stunt if it ends up violating my integrity or feeling harmful to me or my family.
Why now
I left the Christian faith just as i turned 30 (it was a years long process but that’s when the band-aid was fully ripped off). It was not pretty. In fact it was pretty ugly. But I’ve since rebuilt my life on a different foundation, and I’m grateful for everything I learned on that journey - primarily that meaning and personal integrity do not come from an outside authority but from within.
That’s what I know to be true at this point in my life, and I’m not writing this to perform otherwise.
But something over the years has shifted in me that I can be honest about. When I first left, even as I was relinquishing my Christian beliefs, I still understood where my believing friends were coming from. I disagreed with them, but their reasons for remaining in the faith still made sense to me because I had also lived inside it for so long. Somewhere along the way, that’s eroded.
Losing the Thread
Years outside those walls, in a new echo chamber, and living a lifestyle that would’ve shocked younger me, I’ve all but lost the thread that connected me to my old Christian community. Now, trying to empathize with “believers” is really challenging (not to mention that I don’t see them making any attempts to understand me - oops I guess I mentioned it).
In the process of exiting the church, I did a lot of reading, watching, listening, writing, and thinking about the arguments for and against Christianity. It would’ve been really convenient at the time for me to come back to it - to play out some fantasy prodigal son redemption story where I lost my way but then repented and came back to god.
I genuinely tried really hard to rediscover my faith in that season of fallout. I had a lot of conversations with believers (including pastors, missionaries, theologians) seeking answers, but the conversations all hit a dead end pretty fast. I didn't find their reasons for belief convincing, and when their "reasonable faith" didn’t look reasonable to me, most of them diagnosed me with one of the following:
I think you know the truth in your heart, but you don’t want to accept it because you don’t want to be accountable for your sins.
I think you giving in to sinful desires has warped your mind and made it so you can’t see clearly.
I think someone else gave you the wrong idea of the gospel, but if you could understand my version of it you’d see that it's right.
Owning My Fears
I’ll be honest and say that this all felt (and still feels) condescending. But I can’t put that all on other people because at the time I was also afraid those things might be true, and that orientation of fear was a lot of what was driving me at the time.
What if I am hardening my heart toward god and creating more chaos and pain by rejecting this?
What if I am blinded by temptations, using my intellect to rationalize my desire to live selfishly?
(Alternatively but also fear-based): What if I force myself back to Christianity to save face and it just restarts this cycle of hurting people because I’m ultimately just pretending?
At the time it was so overwhelming, I needed to stop struggling so hard to figure it out and just learn to exist without constantly wanting to die. I set my questions about god aside and have spent the past 8 years exploring different perspectives and experiences than what I was raised with. On the other side of all that, those fears that were closing me off from hearing from believers before have really dissolved.
Pressure's Off
I don’t feel the same pressure about coming to any specific conclusion about this. In the past, leaving meant losing my community, my identity, my career, and my family as I knew it. And staying felt like remaining in prison - surrendering my life to a system I didn't create and never really chose.
The high stakes I was perceiving about both sides threw me into a reactionary state that made it all about my anxieties and kept me from really seeing the human being that was talking to me. On the other side of some healing, I look forward to listening to people as they are without connecting their experience to all my personal baggage.
Burned Idols
I’ve spent my thirties exploring my desires freely and fully, which took a lot of curiosities off their pedestal. My Rumspringa of sorts feels like it’s purged me of what I used to call temptation. In that freedom, I feel less attached to pursuit of pleasures or thrills that may have hindered my willingness to “give it up for god” in years past. Don't get me wrong I still enjoy the sex drugs rock n roll, but they've become pretty mundane to me and not something I'd choose over a higher calling.
What I want from this
At minimum I hope to rebuild some empathy and understanding with the people I cared about but have lost touch (or lost trust) with. Even if we still disagree at the end of this experiment, I want to perceive and respect the humanity in religious believers again.
It feels empowering and adventurous to be able to jump out of my comfort zone and try something different - in many ways a redemption of the fears I had leaving religion. The what ifs have been supplanted by a self trust that I can handle myself, listen generously, and process honestly. This experiment is an opportunity to flex those muscles.
It’s also an opportunity to practice the curiosity I’ve often criticized Christianity for closing people off to. Granted I don’t need a big dramatic experiment to practice listening to people who are different from me, but taking intentional time to focus on that skill will be rewarding.
I think the biggest challenge within the 40 days will be listening to others' differing experiences without needing to argue or have my piece be understood. Many of us fall into viewing these conversations as a zero sum game because each side triggers some kind of fear from the other.
The argument isn’t really about uncovering “truth” but rather each person trying to suppress the discomfort the other’s experience brings up. I want to suspend that judgment and extend trust to those willing to engage with me. There's something powerful about being able to hear someone's story, look back at them, and believe they're speaking the truth of their experience without judging them.
Last... I don’t want to misrepresent this as me being on the verge of recommitting my life to Jesus, but I want to be open to hearing what God may have to say if I really take the time to listen.
If you want to connect
If you’re a Christian (or were at one point), I’d love to hear your story. If you’re open to sharing, I made this little form - I know forms are impersonal but this seemed like the best starting point to give everyone a way to reach out. I plan to read every response, and time-permitting I’ll follow up with everyone who's interested in more conversation.
We'll see what comes next.
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Updates:
3 comments
The desire to feel unique seems to be intrinsic to the human condition. However, your experience is not unique with regards to your disillusionment with Religion or your experience on the hedonic treadmill. It is not even unique to your own peer group from the church you grew up in. You had a classmate who went through the same thing except he did it 15 years earlier, with more gas and less brakes, and he didn’t come out on the other side. That is an extreme example but there are many more who “fell away” as the Church would put it. I say this as an indictment of the Institutional Church in general and the church you grew up in, specifically. To add to the absurdity, I will remind you that during the time that they lost a generation of kids, they completed a building project that cost 10s of millions of dollars. But while the exact stories may be unique, the zeitgeist of the entire Institutional Church has shifted to a “Chritianized” mirroring of late stage capitalism trying to grow bigger and faster. To make matters worse they have been “Galatianized” as well and use pharisaical law preaching to try and get the parishioners to contribute to their endless pursuit of growth. So I leave you with a question and two pieces of advice: What will you gain from going back to the same Institutions that so utterly failed you to try and find different answers? My advice is first to go far outside of your old experience to find new perspectives on Faith. Read someone like Brennan Manning or maybe Russell Brands new book (I haven’t read this one yet but his experience might be relatable to you). Second, go right to the Bible and cut through all the religious red tape that’s been put on Christ. There are not many gospels or “my gospel” but one Gospel that is stated plainly in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4. So instead of striving to keep the law, maybe strive to know Christ and Him crucified and instead of striving to not sin strive to live in forgiveness where everything is permitted but not everything is profitable. Anyways, good luck my friend. I’ll be praying for you Also, my wife says hi and that she still has your demo of Christian music that you “self produced” in highschool.
Michael, it’s your old student pastor. I would love to catch up, it has been awhile.
Hey Michael! I don’t know you personally, but I met you once in McKinney TX at a showing for “Beware of Christians”. (Man, I loved that movie and have watched it dozens of times and used it in ministry with students!)
I’m a college ministry worker at A&M, just a little ahead of you in life. About to hit 50. I just wanted to say thank you for being vulnerable about your story. I believe that God is lovingly chasing you down, to even give you the idea of doing this 40 day thing…the idea came “from somewhere”…Someone!
I will set an alarm and be praying for you each of these 40 days. If I could recommend a book that’s been a huge blessing to me and young men I’ve discipled, that would be an easy “1 chapter a day” read during this season, “Gentle and Lowly” by Dane Ortlund. He explains Jesus love and care for me in ways I’m still working to wrap my mind around.
Praying for you, brother.
Phil 1:6
Brian