{"id":778,"date":"2011-04-08T07:34:38","date_gmt":"2011-04-08T11:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omeoflittlefaith\/?p=778"},"modified":"2011-04-08T07:34:38","modified_gmt":"2011-04-08T11:34:38","slug":"conversions-from-christian-missionary-to-atheist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2011\/04\/conversions-from-christian-missionary-to-atheist.html","title":{"rendered":"Conversions: From Christian Missionary to Atheist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s conversion story<\/strong> comes from Amy, a former Christian missionary, homeschooling mom, and magazine editor who has recently abandoned Christianity altogether. Now an atheist, she has asked that I only use her first name.<\/p>\n

—————-<\/p>\n

Bio:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m a mother of four young children, whom I homeschooled until last month when we moved to a new state and an excellent school district.\u00a0Now, I\u2019m putting my Master\u2019s degree back to work teaching English as a second language in a college prep school for international students.\u00a0My husband is a research scientist at the local university.<\/p>\n

Please describe your conversion experience or process:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I grew up in a nominally Christian home\u2014Mom took us to church occasionally at a mainline, liberal Methodist Church (There were 13 churches and 13 streets in my hometown\u2014this church was one of the few \u201cmainstream.\u201d) I would consider myself a \u201cseeking\u201d kid. I prayed and had a sense of \u201csomething larger.\u201d God\/nature. Jesus. Whatever. I remember once seeing a part of a Billy Graham Crusade on TV where he was preaching that Jesus died for our sins. Frequently thereafter I would sit in church and look up at the big cross and wonder, \u201cWhat does that mean? Does that mean I would have died on a cross if Jesus hadn\u2019t?\u201d About a year later (when I was 13), I was talking about Heaven with my best friend who was Baptist, and she asked me if I was saved. I wasn\u2019t, but I understood instinctively that to be \u201csaved\u201d meant to be saved from something. I was instantly fascinated. To make a long story short, I met her at her pastor\u2019s house that weekend and repented and invited Jesus into my life.<\/p>\n

It was a meaningful and deeply moving experience. Pastor King explained the gospel in much the same way I presented it to other people in the years afterward. I remember crying and praying, on my own. \u201cThank you Jesus, for forgiving me. I know why you died on the cross, and that I never could have earned it.\u201d I really understood what Billy Graham had been preaching about and I committed my life to Jesus that day. What\u2019s more, I was completely bewildered by the beautiful simplicity of it. Why hadn\u2019t anyone told me about this salvation before? I felt certain that anyone, hearing the truth of Jesus, would come to faith in Him as quickly as I had. If I\u2019d had access to religious tracts, I would have been the most rabid tract-distributor the world has ever seen.<\/p>\n

I read my Bible every day after that, as Pastor King suggested. I began praying regularly, going to church and youth group every week with my friend. I spent almost 20 years involved in evangelism, leading Bible studies, and on staff (with my husband) as missionaries in a well known, international, para-church organization. I was Assistant Editor of a Christian professionals magazine before my oldest child was born. Three years ago, my husband and I abandoned Christianity and deism. We are now atheists.<\/p>\n

What events led to your conversion?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There were a dozen little dominoes that wobbled over time, including the Biblical teachings on homosexuality and the conflict of science and the Genesis account of creation (yeah, the conflict that fundamentalists deny is actually there).<\/p>\n

But I guess my biggest problem in the end is prosaically common, it just took a simple incident to help me face it: Evil. Not just \u201cwhy does God allow evil,\u201d but \u201cWhy does God permit, command, and even perform acts of evil in the Bible?\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, I wouldn\u2019t have framed it like that when I was a Christian\u2014couldn\u2019t have\u2014but the idea was there. Of course, God wouldn\u2019t have any truck with evil\u2014He\u2019s perfect, so I wasn\u2019t even able to frame the question in a legitimate way in my own head. So, as many Christians do, I framed it more simply as, \u201cWhy does God allow so much suffering and evil?\u201d<\/p>\n

The typical answer is this: God is so big, and so great that only He can see the bigger picture. He is using all things to work together for good. We humans, being fallible and limited, cannot understand how this mighty, perfect being can make even seemingly evil things work together for ultimate good. We must have faith that our perfect God is good (despite the obviously horrible things He permits and encourages).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a tough idea to grapple with, and I think most Christians find this ultimately unsatisfying, though perhaps not so great as to abandon their faith\u2014not when it\u2019s the best answer they have.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t realize how deeply I had rationalized the biblical God\u2019s evil doings until one afternoon when my 7-year-old daughter came to me with a Bible question. My husband and I had given her a youth Bible for Easter when she was 6, and she\u2019s quite precocious; after starting in the gospel of John and losing interest, she decided that she wanted to read from the beginning. I said, \u201cGo ahead!\u201d not expecting her to get very far. I didn\u2019t realize how far she\u2019d gotten until she approached me with Deuteronomy 22:28-29<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat does this mean?\u201d she asked me.<\/p>\n

(Yes, my daughter understood the basic concept of sex and rape, though perhaps not in their most gory details, but all that a 7-year-old might know.)<\/p>\n

Fortunately (or not) I had a ready answer to such questions\u2014I had several explanations to excuse these sorts of verses, after all, was I not a Bible study leader and evangelist?<\/p>\n