I beg your pardon; I'm afraid I forgot my hat

When I stopped going to church, it was no bold and brillant move. I did not challenge the powers that be or question the powers that be not. I squirmed and weaseled my way out, and now, perhaps for the first time, I am regretful.

I am not regretful for leaving. I frankly should have left sooner, but I lacked the will. I am not a strong person, not innately. I am afraid. I am weak. I feared in the faith and I feared in unfaith. I feared telling my parents. But that wasn't anything new. I had trouble telling my parents anything personal. It goes way back in my childhood and I don't understand exactly why.

My fear is pure, natural, innate. I am sensitive, I am reactive. I usually follow leads and I do not like speaking up. Would that I could be led through my entire life, I might have taken the offer up.

I have something else, though, equally pure, equally innate. I have a simple sincerity of nature. At times it has manifested as naivety, at times stubbornness, at times idealism, at times conviction. An inability to lie well, a tendency to trust. It fed the simplicity of my faith, and it feeds the complexity of my doubt.

But I could not tell my parents. I had no practice and no confidence. I had barely begun to flex myself free of the chains of that social system. I did not express doubt to anyone I knew there. I behaved. I played the part. I fit in nicely.

So I left the faith not as Batman, but as Bruce Wayne. I started staying up too late on Saturdays, a habit that came naturally to begin with, and would do my best to sleep through church. When awoken to get ready, I would just lie in bed stubbornly, not answering, until my dad got fed up and just let me be. I didn't do it every week, but sometimes I did, or sometimes I'd just make plans on Saturday.

Eventually they stopped trying to make me go. It wasn't talked about and that was just as well for me. It was completely passive-aggressive, but for people who had never bridged the gap to open discussion with me about my feelings or beliefs, and for someone like me who was (is) nervous, withdrawn and afraid of disappointing, it seemed so daunting, so impossible, to face the direct route.

I never told my church friends why I stopped going. For awhile I still saw a few them, but eventually we just fell out of touch. I never talked to the pastor, my Sunday school teacher, or any of the people who had been influential in my youth. I didn't burn or cross bridges. I just swam the channel, or perhaps floated across like a drowned rat in the still of night.

To this day I have not discussed my atheism with a single person from that church. Hell, I've barely had a few words about it with my dad, and my mom dodges the topic. I daresay she puts my passive-aggressivenss to shame.

As I said, I am now regretful. I feel as though I ran from it all. Well, I did run from it all. I just feel as though, if I could do it all again, I would have fought, pushed, made my mark, spoken my part.

A big part of why I feel that is because now I am raring to go. I know so much more than I did. I am so much more confident in my ideas. I feel this topic is important and I do not like the stratification of ideologies, with Christians off at their churches, and people like me alone or in our own stratified little groups, railing against the other side across a tall fence.

Let it not be said that we're to blame for that fence. Many of us fled with naught but the proverbial clothes on our back from that way of life, while others fought tooth and nail to drag their dignity with them. Let it not be said, either, that our cynicism, mockery, and willfulness, however matched by the other side, has not contributed to that fence as well. Heck, let's just not say anything in that regard.

I wish to discuss, to debate. I wish to plumb the depths of human thought, human reason, human belief, human existence. I wish to test my ideas against those of others, and not while sitting at a machine, but while engaging real people out there, in real settings with real consequences.

That isn't to say that internet dialogue is useless or even inferior. The amount of people who can be reached by videos, blogs, podcasts, articles and archives is extraordinary, and without such things, someone like myself would never have been privy to the subculture of skepticism drawing near to a boil under the tired veneer of faith.

In fact, I would say that the synthesis of real events and digital distribution is the pinnacle of what the internet can bring to the religious debate. I am not so vain as to think I will ever be able to provide any significant contribution to it, but I am driven to do my best. To that end, I will plot my next actions.

At some point, I may try to figure out how to address that church. I may further discuss my feelings on that topic in a future post, or I might go back to talk more about when I stopped going, and when I stopped believing.

Look forward to more posts, either way.