Belief and choice

Romans 10:9 says:

"If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."

Basically, I've been taught and always have believed that those are the two things you need to do to be a Christian. Just believing, without the declaration, is no good. Likewise, declaring without the belief just doesn't get you there, you need both. 

I've been reflecting recently on these words, and the implications of them. The two things detailed in that statement are not the same. Declaration is an action, it is something that we can choose to do, or not. Belief is not an action. You cannot choose to believe something or not. You need persuaded into belief by evidence or authority.

Belief is not a choice.

Don't believe me? Surely you can choose to believe me? If you're not prepared to do that, how about believing something that doesn't matter? Can you believe that, for example, the moon is made of cheese? If belief is a choice, you can choose to believe that, right?

No matter, how hard you want to choose to believe something, if there is contrary evidence, and you honestly consider the evidence, and believe the evidence, you simply can't believe something that goes against the evidence you have accepted.

That's where I am at with regard to being a Christian.

I was raised with a set of beliefs that I accepted on the basis of the authority of who told me the things in the first place. People I trusted, and who were demonstrably correct in some other things they said, taught me to believe in God, to believe in Jesus, to believe in the bible, and I did.

Part 2 of the Romans 10:9 criterion was built into me from an early age. From my childhood I was halfway to being a Christian.

Part 1 came later, when I decided to follow Jesus for myself. From the age of 17 I fulfilled both of the parts of Romans 10:9. I have never subsequently given up on that choice.

However, I have looked at the evidence, and I have been persuaded by much of it that my childhood belief in God, Jesus and the Bible was misplaced. There are not good grounds for believing that. Indeed, there are very good grounds for not believing that Jesus was raised from the dead. The evidence points against that belief.

I didn't want to, but eventually I had to be honest with myself and accept the fact that the evidence was compelling and that Jesus (if he ever lived at all, which is a separate question) if he died on a cross (which is far from historical fact), did not rise on the third day. Having considered as much evidence as I could get my hands on, I found that my belief in the resurrection melted away. I can't simply choose to believe in it. I don't believe in it any more, because of the evidence.

So by the Romans 10:9 criterion I have stopped being a Christian. Not because I chose to do anything. I didn't choose to stop being a Christian. If anything, I would still choose to proclaim that Jesus is Lord, if I could actually believe that he is. But I can't believe that.

C.S. Lewis once (famously) wrote of his conversion:

"In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England"

I seem to have done the opposite. Eventually, having considered the evidence, I admitted (to myself) that God was not God and Jesus was never raised, and slowly (over a transition of several years) I have now become a somewhat reluctant de-convert from Christianity. I don't claim to be dejected though. There is much relief and satisfaction in reaching a conclusion that is in agreement with reality.

The cognitive dissonance I have been wrestling with for a decade or more has now gone.

I guess that should be the end of this blog, but I'll probably keep posting away anyway.

"No longer a friend of Narnia"

“My sister Susan,” answered Peter shortly and gravely, “is no longer a friend of Narnia.” 

“Yes,” said Eustace, “and whenever you’ve tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says, ‘What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.’” 

“Oh, Susan!” said Jill. “She’s interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly site too keen on being grown-up.” 

“Grown-up, indeed,” said the Lady Polly. “I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she’ll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one’s life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can.”

From "The Last Battle" by C.S. Lewis

I'm going to assume you know the context of the passage quoted above. If you don't, you really should read all of C.S. Lewis's Narnia books. Yes, all of them. You'll find this baffling exchange in the final volume, but it won't make much sense unless you've read the others.

The question this passage poses to the reader is how Susan Pevensie, who lived for many years as Queen of Narnia ("Once a king or queen in Narnia, always a king or queen in Narnia") in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and returned again to Narnia in Prince Caspian, who was there when Aslan was killed by the White Witch, and who was one of only two witnesses to his resurrection, who spoke to Aslan in private at the end of Prince Caspian, how she could come to believe all that was merely "funny games"?

In the context of the Narnia stories, this change of heart is utterly inconceivable. It should be impossible for someone who has been through all that to reject it as fantasy. And yet, Susan apparently does.

I've read that Lewis did not think that this passage from The Last Battle was the end of the story for Susan, but that her journey beyond this point was an adult one, and not one that he wanted to cover in a children's book. But he never told anyone the actual story he had in mind, or if he ever developed it.

Of course, the allegory in the Narnia stories is well documented, and its easy to jump to conclusions of the meaning of this passage. "No longer a friend of Narnia" is analogous for 'no longer a Christian', right? Hmmm. Would that it were so simple. I think Lewis is quite clear that Narnia is somewhat akin to the faith of a child, and at the end of The Last Battle, Aslan leads the characters in the story from Narnia into something bigger that transcends it, and characters from our world into something bigger that transcends it. Something more grown up. All the characters in the book go beyond an attachment to Narnia, not just Susan, its just that she takes a different path.

I suppose it is telling that Susan is never described as "no longer a friend of Aslan". That would be something different. Did Susan lose faith in Aslan? I guess if she thought that all the adventures in Narnia were simply "funny games" then maybe she did. Maybe she never did learn to find Aslan by the 'different name' that he has in our world.

But the question remains, how could someone who has experienced Narnia in all its wonder, come to view it all as a fiction? Or rather, if I can turn this into the real question that I am really addressing, how can someone who has experienced the reality of the Christian life, who has felt the power of the Holy Spirit, who has had a personal relationship with Jesus, how can such a person come to view all that as fiction?

The reality is that this happens all the time. People who were real Christians lose faith and turn away from the Church. I've listened to and read quite a lot of interviews with ex-Christians recently, it happens again and again. To understand the issue I think we have to consider the three basic possibilities:

1. Option 1 is that Christianity is true and these people were once real Christians who believed in and experienced the real thing. 
2. Option 2 is that Christianity is true, but these people never really experienced the real thing. They only ever had a fake faith, and never tasted the real thing.
3. Option 3 is that Christianity is not true, and these people once believed it, but came to see that their beliefs didn't square with reality.

People who abandon their faith generally come to see the world as though Option 3 is the truth. Its certainly where I find myself these days.

Christians who see their friends and family leave the faith generally end up believing Option 2 - its so much easier to believe that than Option 1. For a Christian to believe Option 1, they have to invoke the devil and lots of deception going on. But believing Option 1 also entails lots of concern that the same could happen to the believer, so they must remain vigilant to the attacks of the evil one, and not ever consider any evidence that suggests that Option 3 might be true. For the believer, Option 2 is a place of security, because of course, every believer believes that their own faith is real, not fake.

In the context of the Narnia stories, Susan falls into category 1. Narnia was real to her, and somehow she has been deluded into thinking that it was all just nonsense. Even in the fictional world of Lewis's books, where animals can talk, I find that hard to believe.

But in the real world, where am I? I once believed in Christianity. From my point of view, it was a real faith, and just as real as Christianity is for everyone who still believes. I'm now of the opinion that Option 3 is the truth. Christianity is not, and never has been true. Either I'm right, or I'm deceived. Part of me still holds that as a small possibility, but on the whole I think I need to dismiss that, as it raises far more questions than ever it answers.

So am I no longer a friend of Narnia? I guess so. But I still do love the stories as the fiction they are.

Life beyond belief

It looks a lot like I have written a book.

Or rather, someone else has written a book which, essentially, says everything I would write in a book, if I had the time to actually write a book about my journey through belief in the past decade.

The book is "Life Beyond Belief: A Preacher's Deconversion" by Bob Ripley. Aside from the details that Bob Ripley is about 15 years older than me, is Canadian, has had a divorce and had no interest in science as a teenager, the rest of the story of his loss of faith pretty much mirrors mine. He read similar books, he wrestled with the same issues, many of which came from actually taking the Bible seriously, and he came to the same conclusions - that the Bible is the work of men, not of a God, and that the God described therein is a fiction. There may be a god, but if there is, he isn't the God of the Bible.

He starts with a chapter describing his life, growing up in the church, his calling to the ministry and his life as a pastor, eventually beginning to doubt the words he was preaching. After this, the book deals with various themes, chapter by chapter, as if he dealt with them in turn. I expect that, much like me, many of these doubts were simultaneous and jumbled together, not in a coherent linear progression, but it does make for a more readable book this way.

Chapter 2 dives right in and addresses the subject of the God of the Bible, in all his jealous, bloodthirsty and unreasonable glory, head on. This chapter will be a hard read for many Christians, but as it is completely Biblically based, they will find it hard to actually disagree with the evidence presented, even if they will reject the conclusion. After this comes a chapter where he goes through several bits of the Bible that don't get expounded from the pulpit very often and you certainly don't get in Sunday school. The point being that the Bible is not the 'good book' its cracked up to be.

In Chapter 4 he turns to the New Testament and Jesus and goes through the evidence, such as it is, for a historical Jesus. Here he actually doesn't stray as far from orthodoxy as I was expecting, but still we come away from here with a very human Jesus who wasn't the son of anyone divine. For Bob Ripley, Jesus was a historical preacher who got on the wrong side of the Romans and was executed. And stayed dead.

Following this, we wander through some of the more unpleasant bits of church history - the atrocities committed by believers in the name of God. It is a hard read, and it is very simple to say that these people weren't really Christians, but then again they got their direction from the Bible and the list of offenders includes heroes of the church like Luther & Calvin. A chapter on morality and related themes follows this, showing that you don't need God to exist to know the difference between right and wrong.

Chapter 7, somewhat unusual in a book like this, tackles the subject of prayer. Does it work? How do we know if it works or not? He gets to the feedback loop that I have blogged about before. If the believer prays for something (no matter how mundane) and it happens, the believer's faith is boosted. If the believer prays for something and it 'isn't granted', the believer's faith isn't reduced, so whatever happens, the net effect of prayer is to boost faith, even if there is nobody to hear them. Chapter 8 goes further into this and looks at faith.

Chapter 9 seems to me to be the big mis-step in the book as he looks at science. To me, a scientist, this chapter is a bit simplistic, but after all the good stuff before, and still to come, I forgive this.

The final chapter is the longest and possibly the most interesting. It looks at the question I am still wrestling with; where do I go from here? What is life after belief like? The thing I liked most about this chapter is the very strong defence he gives of the claim that he is still exactly the same person he was as a pastor - he has the heart of a pastor, the generosity of a pastor, the compassion of a pastor, etc. In every way that matters he is exactly the same person as he was 20 years ago. Why should the fact that he considered some facts and as a consequence changed his beliefs change his personality? It shouldn't and it didn't.

In summary, I like this book, it is a little short and doesn't go into as much detail of the issues as I would have liked, but if you want to know what I think about god, the universe and everything, then this is about as good a summary as I could write myself.

If you are a Christian, I recommend you read this book as it shows clearly why some people have come to the point of rejecting faith, and it does it in a clear and easy to read manner. There is nothing anti-Christian in here, but there are some real issues that Christians should really think about.

Why are (young) people leaving the church?

A recent Unbelievable show discussed the 'problem' of young people leaving the church. It followed the pattern of other similar discussions I have heard in the past, whereby it turned out that the 'ex-christian' made a lifestyle choice or had a sexual orientation which was seen as incompatible with the teaching of the church they attended, and so they felt alienated and had to leave. In this case, the guy was gay and believed he had to make the choice between being part of a church or having a meaningful sexual relationship with another man. His natural urges for sex and companionship won, as you might expect. So he left the church and lost his faith in God, more or less in that order. It wasn't the lack-of-faith issue that was the reason he left, it was kind of the other way about.

I've heard interviews with other ex-christians, like John Loftus for example, where the pattern was broadly similar. In Loftus's case (as I recall), he had an affair with a woman in his church, then was surprised to discover that the church rejected him rather than accepting him as the sinner he was and trying to bring him back into the fold. He left the church, somewhat disgruntled, and it was this that ultimately pushed him towards rejecting Christian belief.

This pattern of people leaving the church is broadly what the church wants to hear. People leave because of their own moral shortcomings. In other words, its not the church who is at fault, is is the unrepentant sinner. The initial sin (nothing to do with belief) is followed by other bad choices and further sins that so cloud the former believer's way of thinking that they eventually become deluded and ultimately reject the God they used to believe in.

For many Christians, this is the only deconversion sequence that really makes sense. Indeed, I once heard a minister, when he heard of someone in his congregation losing faith, whose immediate reaction was "I wonder what he's been up to...?"

I suppose, within the Christian mindset, this is the only option that makes sense. Someone who truly believes in God, and furthermore has a real personal relationship with him, cannot, simply cannot come to believe that the God they know does not exist. Well, they cannot, unless they are deceived and deluded, and that will only happen if they are a habitual and unrepentant sinner...

The thing is, there are others, who haven't 'fallen' into sin, who haven't had affairs and who haven't made lifestyle choices that are incompatible with the teachings of the church, who still lose faith. The church doesn't really know what to do with them.

If they truly seek to fix this problem, the church inevitably starts looking for the faults within the church that are the reason the people leave. Of course, the faults must be within the church, for there is no way that it could be the God concept that is flawed. The church can't really ever face the possibility that the leavers could be right and those who stay are in the wrong. As soon as they admit that possibility, the collapse is inevitable. Or at least it was in my case.

With hindsight, the greatest single factor that contributed to my eventual lack of faith was simply considering the possibility that I could have been wrong about God. As soon as I questioned God himself, things began to unravel.

Why are (young) people leaving the church? Maybe they've honestly considered the central beliefs of the church and found them lacking. Maybe they're right to leave. 

Conversion and deconversion

Despite the fact that numerous conversations, events and internal ponderings all contributed in some way to it, I can pinpoint a specific time and place when I made the transition from not being a Christian into being a Christian. It was on a train (somewhere near Falkirk), on a specific Saturday evening in October 1988 (26 years ago! Eeek!). That was the moment of decision. That was when I made the transition from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. That was when I made my decision. That was when I was 'born again'. That was when I was saved. That was when I converted. That was, as far as I was concerned, when I became a Christian.

And it rather narked me for several years afterwards when I had conversations with Christians of more liberal leanings than I was who would make comments to the effect that I was 'on the right track' or 'on the journey of faith' or whatever, before that time.

As time went on I began to soften my views a bit and came to realise that the process was important - the process that began a long time before 'conversion' and continued to play out for a long time after it. (See this blog post from 2007 to see where I was in terms of thinking about this back then.) The 'moment' of conversion was one step on a journey or one rung on a ladder, but there were many steps before it and many steps after it.

So while once upon a time 'conversion' was pivotal in my spiritual journey, over the years its influence has diminished, I think.

Why am I raising this issue now?

Well, I'm wondering if there is an equivalent pivotal point on the path of deconversion? Once again it is a journey of many steps or a ladder with many rungs, but is any one of them the definitive transition point where you go from being a 'born again' believer, to a 'dead again' non-believer? If there is such a step, how do you know when you take it?

Basically I'm trying to work out if I have 'deconverted' yet. (In another blog post back in 2007, I addressed this question and concluded at the time that I hadn't deconverted.) I'm not so sure now.

Two weeks ago in church I took communion - should I still be doing this? Am I still part of that 'community' body? As far as I am concerned, I have never stopped following Christ and his teachings, but I have come to doubt the authenticity of those teachings and the historicity of the man who allegedly said them. I suppose Romans 10v9 is clear on this one: 'if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved' - well, its a while since I actually believed that in my heart and I haven't been confessing that either for a few years, so by that token I am not 'saved'. But saved from what? The need for salvation is one of the many things I doubt.

There has been no 'Damascus Road' experience on the way back. No moment of decision not to follow. So there has been no moment of deconversion. I don't think my heart has changed. I do think my beliefs have changed. That's all down to evidence and understanding. You can't make yourself believe something that goes against the evidence. Your beliefs have to follow behind what you know.

A year or two ago I had the shocking realisation that if I had known back in 1988 what I know now, I would never have made the decision to become a Christian in the first place. I now know too much to make the decision that I made back then, because the decision I made back then was a (relatively) naive one, based on few facts and a lot of claims that I now have good reasons to doubt.

Given that, I think I probably have deconverted somewhere along the way, even if I can't pinpoint the place and time. I am no longer a Christian (except in the most liberal definition of the word, and I've never chosen to be a liberal Christian!). So what am I? I really would quite like to still be a Christian, because I really would quite like it all to be true. Then again, I really would quite like to discover a doorway to Narnia in the back of my wardrobe too. What I want has no bearing on what is true, or even on what I believe to be true.

My Facebook profile says I am a 'Christian Humanist' (whatever that means) and I have certainly never decided to become an 'atheist' at any point. I don't need to 'come out' as an atheist. But as to what I am? I guess your opinion will be different from mine, but I'm OK with that.