Nothing to be Frightened Of

Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Thomas Cole 1827 - 1828.

I became an atheist this morning. The experience was similar, though less overwhelming, than the moment i became a Christian five years ago. The declaration was immediately accompanied with a wave of relief, and my anxiety was quelled. It was as though knowing there was only me in that moment removed any yearning for an answer to God’s absence. Suddenly, there was no absence to obsess over, no voice to not hear, and no love to not feel—i settled peacefully in my own little nook in this universe knowing that there was no one coming to save me. And i slept the remaining hour in an embrace of calm. The half-decade war was over, and when the dust settled i saw that i had been alone.

It isn’t so much about what caused this declaration—i had been leaning on the precipice already, but denied admitting it to myself because of my willingness to accept God’s existence, which we’ll consider in a moment—nor is why entirely relevant any longer—my past writing can speak for itself (here, here, and here). The important question now is how does this work—however, i don’t think that much changes from this point. In any event, i feel the need to logically spell out how i arrived at this point, which sort of summarizes the first two questions anyway.

I don’t think that belief in God is illogical; there seems to be enough of a philosophical basis for his existence that either satisfactorily answers it or elicits his mere probability. But beyond the philosophical grounds, there is nothing to prove his existence that isn’t through faith—faith, which nauseates itself in circularity. Seeing as existence relies on one’s willingness to believe, i can only proceed to base God’s existence on an assumption—one which i concede to make. What follows is a personal condemnation, one which i don’t think i’m alone in nor unjustified to make.

Assuming God’s existence, he’s suddenly to be held accountable for his absence, which must be directly personal if we also concede the Christian, Muslim, or Jew’s claim that God is personally speaking to and guiding them. Therefore, what follows is the acknowledgement of his abandonment. So i believe that God just might exist, but his passivity, his betrayal to human anguish in pleading for his good graces, renders himself irrelevant—and hence, he might as well not exist at all, and should be treated with the same reciprocity of nothingness.

We are alone in this world, save for the devout theists who are evidently the only children worthy of love (unless they are egoistically deluding themselves). There is no scripture, no philosophy, no theology, no amounts of one-sided faith that a hapless man could ever pour forth that would ever be enough to fill that depthless chasm that God has put between himself and us. Blessed is he who believes without seeing?

No. Blessed is he who believes because God believes in him.

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The path i was on that led me to faith, as a proclaimed Christian, was noble, at least to me. It was in hindsight that i saw this series of events progressing to their climax—when i professed that i was worthy enough to be loved, never mind saved. It feels almost cultish to believe in that now, self-centered and hopelessly blinded by my own delusions that such could have been the case.

But before that, i often avoided even considering the God question, until i found myself above my lamplight one day, bible in hand, reading Ecclesiastes. It wasn’t long after when i was approached by Cru missionaries in front of another godless university in New York City, one of whom would become a good friend—until he was a friend no longer. There is a time for everything. During this period, i had taken philosophy courses where i was in the prime of creative productivity—i was also in love and enamored with the future.

One evening, i got on my knees and prayed. My experience could have been related to Augustine’s conversion, in a way, although not as literary or inspiring. “No sooner had I reached the end of the verse than the light of certainty flooded my heart and all dark shadows of doubt fled away,” he wrote. I was a new man. But I was only 19, and knew very little of the storm i was brewing in some juvenile self-professed righteousness, where in just a half-year time, God would be all that i had left. But that story no longer matters.

I find it precursory that at that time i had bought this book, a memoir on mortality by Julian Barnes, Nothing to be Frightened Of. He begins with the sentence that came to ring truer every year since the day of my conversion.

“I don’t believe in God, but I miss him.”