Leaving Christianity Behind - From Atheism to Silence in Words

Much earlier in my story

I have left Christianity behind. God is dead. God was never alive.

Except that’s not the end of the story.

There is more to say. It would be easier if there wasn’t and I could settle down without any kind of spiritual impulse. I blame what follows on my temperament and if I felt more grouchy I might blame autism and special interests.

Two truths that are true whether or not I ever wanted them to be:

Firstly, I could not leave thoughts of God behind. I remained fascinated. While I read more books about science or social issues or atheism I couldn’t let go of God entirely. I still followed Christians online, mostly of a very liberal variety, the ones I wouldn’t have gone near as a Christian. God remained in my thoughts. Or god, or not-god. God crept into my writing too. Frequently. Even once I’d rejected all those other spiritualities. Whatever the writing prompt may have been somehow God crept in as my subconscious continued to struggle to come to terms with our past. The evangelicals would say their God was chasing me down like a lost sheep. It was just autism though!

Secondly, I’ve had to be honest about myself. I have a religious temperament. More than that I have a contemplative temperament that it’s painful to suppress. I had to suppress it in most church environments as well as outside them. Pentecostal evangelicalism doesn’t have a lot of time for the contemplative life. I was told meditation, except as a mental consideration of a Bible passage, was a doorway to evil. “Empty your mind and it leaves room for the demons to get in.” Worship was loud. Worship was always with words.

God, in completely non-theistic ways, was still a part of my life. Atheism satisfied as far as it went and I’m not going to argue with Stephen Hawking demonstrating that no supernatural being is essential for the universe to exist or with the writings of evolutionary biologists showing ways by which genetics and evolution understand the development of eyes. The universe is a marvel and each new discovery is an excitement even when an advance shows that it hasn’t quite got the answers to everything and sometimes that we’ve got things very wrong. Science is a progression towards being less wrong rather than a claim to have everything locked down. If science is ever presented with the certainties claimed by conservative religion then it ceases to truly be scientific. As an astrophysicist said recently in a podcast, “Physics works in our universe but we can’t even prove the universe exists!”

That satisfies me. The questions satisfy me. My temperament needs more though. It needs spirituality. That’s not contrary to atheism of course but I’ve found that atheist spiritualities miss something. I might be fooling myself but I discovered I needed to look elsewhere. To be astounded by beauty without “god” is always a wonderful moment. Somehow it wasn’t enough. For some people it is and that’s okay. For some people it isn’t and curiously there isn’t a contradiction between the two groups of people, at least not one that needs to matter in the slightest.

Tenth Birthday. Ooh, a Bible

So I began to read again. To question again. I have rejected a vast amount that insulted my soul and there is freedom in that. Did I miss anything though? What would happen if instead of merely rejecting what I believed I deconstructed it to see if anything was left that was worth saving? What if those Christians I was told to avoid had anything good to say? What if the Quakers made good points, or Bishop Spong who I quoted before? What if beyond doctrine and dogma there is a spiritual and religious life that fits who I am? What if atheism and theism aren’t the only ways to live since they merely deny or affirm one view of reality? What if there are non-theistic ways where I can find more life than in either my atheism or my old theism.

And this year especially, what if I began to experiment again?  To allow the active existence of this contemplative temperament that I’ve denied, atheism has denied, most of the churches denied too in increasingly blunt and dogmatic ways, and which my mental health history has prevented me exploring in any way that could be objectively seen as healthy. Contemplation and self-hatred or self-rejection are very bad companions. It’s true that there may be an element of self-rejection in contemplation but it means something entirely different to any of the ways in which I rejected myself. In contemplation you may seek to let go the false self but it’s only to embrace the true self that’s underneath ego, trauma, dogma, cultural conditioning and so on. It’s a connection with reality whereas my mental health was a disconnection.

Contemplation is a move towards humanity whereas I hated my own humanity. So my attempts at silence were a form of self harm, a partial suicide. Now they can arise from self love and from offering compassion to even the darkest or most broken parts of my psyche that they may find healing. Healing comes from love not from rejection whether through thoughts, pills, or the teaching that emotions like fear or anxiety are bad.

So to the present day. I sit half surrounded by Christian books at this moment. Progressive Christianity books by which I’m still breaking down the bad god I had in order to find better light in places that were too painful to touch. Places like the Gospels. Bishop Spong and scholars like the Catholic John Dominic Crossan and the agnostic atheist Bart Ehrman have become familiar alongside elements from scholars like Marcus Borg. I’m enjoying listening to podcasts too with liberal theologians. The ideas are interesting and they never offer a demand to believe or agree with them or a threat that anyone will be punished in any way for following another path or for walking away from spirituality altogether and not looking back.

I’m looking to mystical Christian teachers too by which I am … to be honest, I don’t know. I only know that at this time I need to do it, that the meditation is becoming increasingly important to me and that I am very hungry for something that I can sense is in the silence that I cannot attain.

I sit with John Main and Laurence Freeman of the World Council for Christian Meditation, a practice that could just as well be called Hindu, Buddhist or something else just by swapping the mantra. Freeman’s teaching can be distilled into “Say the mantra.” I’m beginning to sit with Thomas Merton and am about to start reading The Cloud of Unknowing though I shouldn’t mention it because the prologue of the book says not to.

I could very easily look to Buddhists and Hindus. Freeman and Merton have both had many discussions with people on different paths because in the silence all mystical experiences and conclusions are the same. The mystic is ultimately of the human, not of any particular culture, tradition, religion, time. So the Sufi, the Jewish mystic, the Zen Buddhist, the Taoist, the Christian all scale ladders resting against the same wall. Is it the right wall though? At this point I don’t mind.

The reason why at this point I’m sticking to Christian teachers is that it is, like it or not, my tradition. It’s where I’ve been in different ways for 32 ½ years since converting and even before then through influences in childhood. To stick to the Christian teachers means I can unpack the vileness of my past religion but more than that I know the vocabulary. To delve deeply into the Buddha or Advaita or the Vedas or Sufi spirituality would fascinate but it would be a steep learning curve. I can open a Bible or a page by Julian of Norwich or Saint John of the Cross and I’m in a familiar place even if it’s a place where I couldn’t have sat when I was a Christian. I open the Vedas and suddenly there are a hundred inefficient translations from that most philosophical of languages, Sanskrit. So while I have copies of Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi and other scriptures and have commentaries and works by wise men and sometimes women from those traditions they aren’t where I am focussing. At least not now. At least not with depth.

The Dalai Lama might be pleased about that. He once complained about westerners so often turning to the spiritualities of the east so frequently because we have perfectly good spiritualities in the west. He also reviewed a work by Thomas Merton by saying “This was the first time I had been struck by such a feeling of spirituality in anyone who professed Christianity.” A Christian loved and respected so much by the Dalai Lama seems good to read at this time. Even though he’s not easy to read. I tried reading him as an conservative evangelical. It didn’t work. I tried The Cloud of Unknowing 25 years ago on the recommendation of a friend and couldn’t get past chapter one. They are short chapters! I’m not a Christian now, not a theist, yet the works of these writers are meaning so much more to me now. Probably none of them would be surprised.

Six blog posts have led to here. I could have written in many other ways. I could write much more about my current explorations or quite how I decided that “Christian meditation” was worth a try when it never seemed worth it as a Christian. I could also write about why I think words like “Christian” and “God” are almost meaningless. Simply, if you say you’re a Christian it expresses nothing because it could express so many different and contradictory things. Similarly, the word “God” tells us nothing. It’s also a trigger word for many people and full of the terror and reality of a thousand kinds of trauma and abuse. The liberal Anglican bishop John A T Robinson suggested banning the word for a generation. The Lutheran existentialist pastor and philosopher suggested banning it for a century. And Gretta Vosper helpfully provided 100 alternative words in one of her books.

Here I stand. For this moment. Next year I might decide it’s all been a completely wrong decision or I might walk deeper into it. The Cloud of Unknowing may help discern that. The final chapter, having spent the previous 74 teaching mysticism from the perspective of an anonymous 14^th century English contemplative, is about which kind of people may profit by such a spiritual path.

I currently have one lack. Books are good. Meditation is good. Podcasts and email subscriptions can be good. An increasing focus feels as though it would be good. What I lack is community. What I lack are people I can talk with about all this. People far more experienced than me in meditation. Merton says that most of the time a contemplative is alone and that they rarely find the right person to talk with at the deep level needed.

The churches aren’t the places. Where could I go? The evangelical gospel sickens me and the liberal churches very often offer very little beyond human community and support. Two good things but not excellent for sharing in the silence or an exploration of the meaning in Teresa’s Interior Castle or any meditative sutra of Buddhism. Even the liberal churches may offer little more than liturgical services based around traditions that perhaps can no longer serve our world. The Nicene Creed! I’d abolish it. Or rewrite it. I have suggestions and none of them impose narrow Christology and all of them include living more fully in our own humanity.

So where do I go? Where, next year if I need to, do I find relevant community? Where to I find a trustworthy, dogma free, non-theistic, contemplative guide to talk with once in a while? I do not know. This kind of walk is uncommon. Somewhere there will be others and perhaps we will meet. If I walk this strange contemplative seeking, when the time is right I will find them or we will find one another. Outside of doctrine. Outside of narrow necessities. Outside of the cult and cultus of religious entanglement.

I’ve written 11,000 words. That’s enough. It’s too many. It’s all true yet only the partial truth. From Christianity to the New Age to atheism to this day. Perhaps I left Christianity and found Christ. Perhaps I left God and found god.  My chains fell off, I arose and was free!

Perhaps I’ve only found another illusion. A kinder illusion. An illusion full of compassion for myself, for humanity and for the world. A beneficial illusion that may help and enable me. Yet still an illusion. For today it doesn’t matter. For today I find greater strength within and a boldness to proclaim that although 11,000 words cannot do justice to any of us we can fully express meaning in silence.