Hymn for the Deconverting
Even though it feels horrible, there is beauty in what you’re going through.
Before now, your world had been defined by the convenient engine of “God’s mysterious ways.” Every action and reaction used to be influenced by either God or Satan, each vying for dominance in the trench warfare going on in your spirit. Heaven or hell—the big, binary ending, loomed over everything you did.
All of that is gone now. Now you’re just a pile of atoms that the universe randomly produced. You have no idea how to define the world around you. It’s agonizing.
It’s a travesty that you were deceived and caught in the trap of your faith. There you were, entangled in a snarl of sticky lies that most people can never extricate themselves from. Your heart, your soul, your spirit were all indicted by those lies, and you were taught that you needed your church to cure the poison that they were injecting into you.
Right now, you might feel broken and distraught. You’ve abandoned your old way of defining the universe, so you’re confused and lost. You can’t tell right from wrong or up from down. You may not see the beauty in your experience yet, but I do. You are unspeakably beautiful.
You were trapped in an effective machine, but you still maintained your personal integrity. You still cared enough about yourself to realize your situation was dire and wrong, so you didn’t buy it. You rebelled, and that is beautiful. The act of you lancing away at that web of deceit and emerging from it a new person … is the most hopeful image I can imagine.
Trust yourself. Keep going. You are on the right path.