To Atheist and Back Again

 

fter Malachi was born, reality seemed as pleasant as the waft of his fresh diapers. Everything became so hard. Trying to get back to school, raising a kid, marriage, and finances were taking their toll on my sanity and subsequently my faith. God provided all these signs about what he wanted me to do but nothing worked out apart from miracles of survival. Why did he keep confirming things and keep us alive if he had no intention to help us be successful in such endeavors and instead waste our time? Why did he keep directing me to corrupted churches and religious organizations? And as God led me, I had to fight with Emily half the time regarding whether or not God desired for us to do something in particular at all. God condoned our marriage, after all, so why would it be a constant struggle rather than him directly leading me where to go and her following along? Why would he hook us up if he knew she would not be submissive and literally follow me to the ends of the earth or if God had no plans to guide me properly? I began to realize that perhaps I should never have been so sure of myself and of God’s leading.

As I continued to read the Bible, it started falling flat and questionable. I wondered about odd things like the pluralization of God in Genesis. We made man in our image? It sounded more like aliens doing science experiments to create us out of their own DNA and then meddling in our affairs and purporting themselves as Gods. In fact, this started to make a lot more sense to me. The wars, the genocides, the remorse of God for his own actions, the uncertainties, the lack of agreement between believers, the multiple religions, the corruption and thievery everywhere in the churches, the lack of power, and the multitude of immoral acts produced in God’s name—it became more cohesive to think aliens fought to rule over us than to believe a God who knows everything and is all powerful could possibly regret that he made man and further regret flooding the world to kill them all. How could God regret anything? I never went as far as truly believing in the aliens, but I seriously contemplated whether or not it could be true and I studied the possibility. In fitting with the theme of my past and as entirely expected, no one else procured excitement regarding this potential as I casually threw the concept into conversation. I thus kept it mostly to myself as I continued to wonder.

             As it turned out, others before me came up with this same idea. After a little research, I found the Raelian movement which is led by a man claiming my exact sentiments—but he had it dictated to him by aliens, of course, rather than deriving it of his own mind like I did. I also found a book called Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Däniken which took things like Ezekiel’s account of a wheel within a wheel to be a spacecraft and the rushing water sounds it made to be that of the rockets propelling it. He also brought up ancient drawings which appeared to support ancient aliens.

Apparently, one Harald Reinl even directed a film for Chariots of the Gods back in 1970 and the concept of ancient aliens has never died. I had simply failed to hear of it myself. Even recently there were new television programs regarding ancient aliens and ancient astronauts. I enjoyed having company in my delusions, of course, but it disappointed me to know that the revelation had already been made and even became well-known and yet it did not change the world as we knew it. It put a greater damper on my mood and made me wonder just how much we could really know anything at all and whether or not my life would ever amount to anything.

             Eventually I decided that we could not possibly know anything regarding God and that we should stop acting like we could. There were too many religions claiming too many different things and too many sects of Christianity all claiming opposing views from the same words in a book. We could not know whether or not the stories in the Bible were the products of primitive lives responding to alien invasions. We could not know if they were straight-up lies or bedtime stories or if a real God truly worked in their lives. The alien concept stood no more provable or disprovable than the God concept. I slowly decided that I no longer believed in God. If we could know so little, God seemed the least likely since that option should provide the most revelation if God still lived.

My admission of God’s non-existence scared me at first, but I soon felt a catastrophic release of pressures, worries, and concerns. All the struggles of trying to please God and failing had suddenly vanished. I no longer worried about being judged and I no longer had a fear of hell for me or for anyone else. I could determine right and wrong, moral and immoral, for myself rather than trying to figure out what a mute deity required of me. Such bliss had its cost, however, as my life became utterly meaningless where before I had the greatest of all purposes. I no longer had anything to look forward to in respect to the power of God nor of heaven. I became absolutely worthless without God proclaiming me precious in his sight and I had already wasted many years in search of a fairytale.

             Emily remained a believer while my bliss contorted into anger and depression over my fate. I tried convincing her of the stupidity of the faith and of those who believe in it. I explained how aliens made a better argument and one could not possibly prove one right and the other wrong. My efforts had no effect other than to heighten emotions and to build an ever stronger wall between us. We eventually decided to stop talking about it since I could not handle her refusal to agree and she apparently did not like being referred to as stupid. We agreed only that we disagreed and we focused instead on living our lives, raising our child, and getting ourselves back to school to complete our degrees.

             We rented a U-Haul truck and a trailer to tow our car and we prepared to leave around six in the morning. My breath fogged up what little I could see in the dark as I tried to attach our car to the trailer in the freezing cold. The mesh-like straps that wrapped around the wheels and ratcheted in place were simple enough to use, but there were also some chains that were supposed to attach to the frame of the vehicle in some fashion. I stood stupefied as to where I should put them. I did not presume the axle would be a good location for such chains. Despite the cold early morning, there happened to be a man smoking outside the apartment whom I decided to ask for support. He obliged and hooked the chains up to who-knows-where. I figured that whatever he did could not be any worse than what I would have done, so I thanked him and hoped it would suffice. In the end, the chains were only a secondary precaution and the straps should suffice.

             To my surprise, I noticed halfway through our journey that those very chains were the only thing keeping our car on the trailer. I tried to comprehend how the straps could have possibly slid off the wheels but nothing came to mind since I ensured they were tight and wrapped around front to back and on both sides of the tires. I could only muster astonishment at my luck—not the bad luck of the straps coming off, but the good luck for someone being outside smoking at such an ungodly hour as to help me with my car. If not for him, God only knows where my car would have ended up. I logged this in my mind as a potential grace of God, but I remained steadfast in my desire not to jump to false conclusions any longer.

             We had another close call at the very end of our trip. As we tried to find our new rental, we got turned around on the final road of our travels. Merely feet from our new residence, after driving over 16 hours, we quite nearly lost our car and our U-Haul with all our belongings over a cliff as I attempted to turn around in the fresh snow. The U-Haul would no longer move forward and every attempt merely fish-tailed the car closer and closer to the edge of the cliff. It stopped merely a foot or two from the edge.

I tried to drive the car off the trailer in hopes of having more luck getting the truck to drive forward rather than sideways, but for some strange reason the car would not budge—the wheels merely spun in place on the metal trailer as if on pure ice. I do not exactly remember why it would not move, but I truly hope it was not due to my forgetfulness that I had been lucky enough to receive help in chaining it down. Without having much luck on my own, I called up some guys from Crusade to see if we could get some help. Within half an hour, I had a posse of guys helping us out of our predicament around 11pm. Once again, I logged the luck of receiving support, rather than the luck of nearly losing all my things, as a potential grace of God and noted that Christians in particular had helped me at such a late hour.

We survived our stay at Michigan Tech by utilizing credit cards, financial aid, and welfare until we could graduate and get real jobs to begin the slow and arduous process of paying it all back. I managed to snag a part-time gig at Technisource which paid fairly well for my being a college student and it helped quite a bit on the financial front. It certainly did not cover our tuition, rent, food, and pleasure, however.

             Returning to school embarrassed me considerably as one might imagine after all I had done. I had quit school with an over-confident “I’m following God and you’re not” attitude and now I had to redo every class that I had failed for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Emily had no such problem since she actually passed her classes despite my mocking her choice to do so. My statistics class embarrassed me all the more when I had to retake it with the professor for whom I wrote out my “better way of life” on the exam that I had failed. My way certainly proved itself no better despite my conviction and the confirmation that God lead us every step of the way.

             During this time, I wanted to believe again so terribly much, but I felt it stupid to believe without evidence and I feared myself making it all up. I had always based my faith on what facts I knew and yet now I could not rationally explain how the Bible deserved any credibility. I continually sought answers to my deepest questions yet never found any satisfactory responses without the presupposition that we ought to trust the Bible or that it is just too complicated for us measly humans to grasp.

I really wanted to believe again because my faith made me fearless and it gave me purpose. I felt good. I felt strong. I felt belonging to something greater than myself even if I often found myself on the outskirts of the common groups of believers. Without the faith, I felt hopeless, lost, confused, and useless. I had strong motivation to believe but I simply could not without strong evidence. I tried getting involved in more Bible studies and asking crusaders my deepest darkest questions and so many of them brushed me off. They could not answer my questions and they did not find them worth thinking or talking about even just to reassure me. I could not believe how fine they were with not having answers and leaving me to wallow in my confusion.

             The “problem of evil” as it is often called left a deep impression on me. How could God allow so much evil in the world if he himself was so good? If I could stop some terrible torturous event from happening—even to an animal—I would certainly step in and prevent it. Why would God not do likewise? Even worse, he supposedly created all this life that lives and breathes a motto of death and dismemberment in ways that have absolutely nothing to do with humans. Mankind supposedly made the one mistake of eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and suddenly the entire animal kingdom must suffer a life of murder on every corner along with starvation and every manner of disease and disaster. Right now there is likely a gazelle running for its life and becoming dinner to some starving beast. This did not make sense for animals and it made even less sense for humans. Mere children having not yet had any real choices in life were to be doomed to the brutal behavior of parents or others and for what? Just to allow free will? Since when is free will at any cost a good thing? Everyone knows that it is worthwhile to restrict the freedom of an individual who harms others. God could easily stop anything at all but instead he watches it and personally knows the pain and yet does nothing.

             I also had no good answer for why God would punish someone eternally rather than temporarily for the intent of correction or else merely blotting someone out of existence. And why on Earth does he require blood for wrong-doing? Even further, in what civilized country is it okay to give the death penalty to someone other than the murderer? Answers can be given smugly with confidence and an air of superior knowledge as I learned to do myself, but the point remains that such answers were not very satisfying once I was an atheist even when I desperately wanted to believe.

Little girls in India have had acid poured in their eyes to turn them blind in order to make them more effective at begging for money to provide for a drug lord—and God watches. With this in mind, God’s taking the effort to provide me with glass dishes and toilet paper became utterly detestable no matter what the excuse. Answers to these questions were as useful as spitting into the wind. It meant nothing and it only backfired. God cannot ignore the cries of multitudes of humans being killed, slaughtered, raped, and maimed while guiding me with where to go, what to do, and providing used furniture and dishware for my minor joy. How could I possibly believe he would focus on those minor things and not take care of real business that the world truly needs?

             I thought that perhaps if I went on another mission trip I would find God again and it would all make sense. Crusade had planned another trip to Mexico for Spring Break and I started inquiring on how I might be able to go. The response certainly did not help my faith in Christianity, however. I had welcomed Anna into Crusade when she was a freshman and I remember thinking great things about her zeal and joy in God. My parting words to her when I left to become a missionary were, “Keep on smiling!” She always seemed to be smiling and joyful which I found delightful and encouraging. Yet now, upon my return and with my desire to partake of God’s work, Anna told me that she did not want the added effort of including me. This shocked me immensely. Could it really be that hard to simply take my cash, put it towards a plane ticket and hotel room and let me tag along in the large van? I mentioned that I could drive myself to the airport if there were not enough van seats to accommodate me. She still said no and that it would be too much work to add me. I tried obtaining clarification as to what could possibly be so much work that she would be willing to reject me like this, but she ignored my attempts at specifics. She simply said no and seemingly could not care less about it.

             So much for a loving Christian attitude, I had thought. It demonstrated yet more evidence of the lack of love existing within all of Christendom and it further cemented Christianity’s fakeness into my mind. People were focusing on themselves and cared nothing about other people. Here I stood, a human being, hoping to know and love God more and to take part in his work, and they rejected me as an inconvenience. It showed Christian love at its best: non-existent. At this point, I had not come out of the atheistic closet, but it is entirely possible that she caught wind of my questioning and feared that I might be a weight to the more faithful and less questioning people on the trip. Still, if God is real and the work is real, then should it not be the perfect opportunity to strengthen a person’s faith as I had hoped? The subconscious denying of God’s power in this way is all around. People speak as if God moves yet act as if he does not. If she thought that God moved in power, it certainly would have been great to welcome me.

             I got together with Bill to explain my dilemma of faith in hopes that he could reconvert me. I told him that I could no longer believe when so few people were following the instruction of the Bible. I could find no people willing to believe diligently and to live out an extreme life in faith. To this day, his response saddens me. He teared-up and tried to hold back his sorrow at what I presume he thought had become of me. He did not offer an explanation for the tears, but our discussion unmistakably broke his heart. Perhaps he felt as if all his efforts were in vain or perhaps he agreed with me all too much regarding the state of Christianity. Maybe he did not like the thought of me going to hell. Whatever the reason, I felt terrible for causing this reaction in him since I respected and cared for him, but I could do nothing more than hope that he could change my mind and make it all better. Unfortunately for him, and what I believed unfortunate for me, he could not.

             As I continued to hit walls in my search for God, I became more open with my atheism. I told my family and friends that I no longer believed. I had no idea how much this news would hurt them. My mom and sister both cried when they heard the news and I had zero support for such a decision, quite unshockingly. If ever I had gone against the flow before, I had just now gotten out of the river and walked upstream. But I felt proud of my decision since it went against the norms which meant I was no one’s puppet. I deduced it via logic of my own accord. It finally made sense why I had to struggle so hard trying to follow and even fix the faith since it had all been created by man. No amount of studying and looking for answers could reconvert me despite my predisposition and desire to return to God. This gave me profound confidence that I had found truth and this truth resonated the falseness of Christianity.

             I saw the world in a whole new light. I could see from the outside what I could never have seen from the inside. I saw how rude Christians were to atheists and I then knew first-hand that atheists truly did not believe in God’s existence. This revelation surprised me. I had always thought, nay knew, that all atheists had knowledge of God’s existence but merely denied him for the passion of their worldly lusts. They were evil people bent on sin and destruction. No good person could possibly come to the conclusion that God did not exist. And here, I now had, despite my best efforts and without any particular lust guiding my belief.

I did not deny anything—I simply did not believe. It no longer made sense to kill things as absolution for sin. It no longer made sense that a loving God would torment people for eternity. I could no longer fathom a world where a loving God allowed people and animals to suffer at all let alone to be tortured mercilessly at the hands of another. It all fell apart when I finally disregarded faith, and it all finally made sense to me. Still, the romance of an all-powerful and all-loving God with promise of purpose to my life was so enticing that I wanted to find reasons to believe anyway despite the new-found clarity.

             I would often come across websites devoted to debunking the Bible and providing contradictions within it. Having been a Christian, I found a lot of such sites distasteful and annoying. I found the behavior of many atheists to be quite revolting. They were generally rude and vulgar and they would be quite open to accepting anything as a contradiction without giving it much thought. Many supposed contradictions were so easily resolved with a second of thinking and others already had significant effort put into explaining them. They were merely blind and closed-minded while they threw everything up as a contradiction and laughed at their superiority over the idiot Christians. There were a few gems of biblical discrepancy which made more sense as contradictions than what the resolution would make them out to be, but they were so buried under trashy arguments and hateful spite and rhetoric that I could hardly find anything worthwhile. Atheists were truly disgusting creatures—and now, I was one of them.

             I hated being associated with such foolish, arrogant, and rude people. I was now an atheist, but I certainly did not want to be associated with these jerks. They were not opening anyone’s eyes with their terrible arguments and they were closing minds through insults. I had wished that someone would put together a more realistic list of discrepancies in the Bible and to do so with a kind and loving attitude that would actually benefit a Christian audience or anyone with decency trying to find truth such as myself. Still, I found Christian behavior no better than that of the atheists I came across. They were not so different from one another in any way. They were just as blind and just as rude and insulting. It continually reminded me of the quote by Brennan Manning that I had heard in DC Talk’s song “What if I Stumble?” The quote reads, “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”

Behavior of individuals often affects another person’s willingness to give their beliefs any consideration. Most people in America are not entirely interested in the beliefs of ISIS and Al Qaeda because they happen to be murdering anyone who disagrees with them. That is certainly rather poor behavior to say the least. Similarly, many Christian churches and Islamic churches alike have learned to do charity for the sake of promoting their religion. It works. If a person is kind, he or she is quite likely to be listened to. In the same way, Christians who see good atheists may begin to question their faith when they come to realize they are not the monsters that the Bible often makes them out to be. Some atheists and agnostics may also see good Christians and begin to wonder more about such a faith that has given them their values and joy.

In the end, a person believes what they find most convincing or most comfortable and the behavior of others certainly plays a strong role in determining both. Unfortunately for me, I found much of the behavior of both groups to be quite appalling—mostly because I had a heightened sense of purity as dictated by the Bible. Any form of delight in cussing, sexual promiscuity, coarse joking, or drunkenness immediately produced in me a certain amount of disgust for an individual even though such things were only terrible from a religious background.

 

*  *  *

 

I managed to graduate in May of 2007 with a Bachelor’s of Science in Computer Science. I accepted a job at GE Aviation down in Grand Rapids, Michigan where I wrestled with my thoughts and sunk deeper into depression. I pondered the meaninglessness of my life and suffered in frustration at my many failures. Emily and I had our second child, AnneMarie, in 2007 whom we did not name after a Biblical character but after Emily’s grandmother who had always been a big influence in Emily’s life. I continued to provide for my family but I found it exceedingly difficult.

I may have been confident in my position of atheism, but I desperately wanted to be wrong. I begged God to help me and to convince me of his presence but he did not. Being constantly depressed, I became more easily angered—especially with our two kids. I found myself having zero patience and wanting to smack them or throw them away from me as they cried about every little thing with no chance of consolation. The thought terrified me that I might actually do something I would regret so I decided not to watch the kids on my own while Emily worked. I started going to both a psychiatrist and a psychologist to help me. The discussions helped a lot, but the multiple types of drugs only ever left me more on edge. Some made me more easily and terrifyingly angered. I started throwing things and I even broke my windshield with my cell phone one day when Emily refused to talk to me because she claimed to be too busy.

             Emily put up with me day after day but it started wearing her out. Dealing with my lousy disposition on life and my constant frustration and anger made for a rather depressing life for both of us. I rarely wanted to do anything beyond hiding myself away from responsibility and failure. I felt like such a loser and I could not bear doing anything that announced my stupidity or lack of capability even further. Any perceived attack on my intelligence infuriated me. We were both on edge and doing our best to function while hoping that something will come of the counseling and medication.

I hated my job and my boss made it clear that he did not find much approval in me either. He assigned me and a few others to a meaningless task and caused me to dread coming to work every day. Driving both ways to and from a depressing job left me without energy and constantly fighting off sleep while driving. I could hardly keep my eyes open as I put myself and others at risk on the road every day. I participated in a sleep study to determine if I had sleep apnea causing my fatigue but they claimed I had such a minor case that it could not possibly be the culprit. I felt that every little bit might help, however, so I purchased a CPAP machine anyway to pump air into my lungs as I slept. It did not help, of course. My problem was a sucky disposition on life. I just had to find a new job to turn this around.

I painstakingly sought a new job but hardly anyone had any openings. Just when I thought I had an in somewhere, they changed their minds and went another direction. I literally began feeling crazed and trapped in a worthless nightmare of existence. I finally managed to land a new job at Eaton before I lost my mind entirely. Within the first week of this new job, I heard that everyone else assigned to that same meaningless task I had was let go. I had gotten out just in time.

I learned from the mistakes I made regarding my attitude toward others at GE and I vowed not to repeat them at Eaton. I could not afford to be unappreciated or disliked again. Unfortunately, it made me all the more fearful of making a mistake and being a failure. I constantly worried that I would be rejected by those I worked with. It did not help that I added very little value to the company having no experience or knowledge at the time. Much of my employment merely kept a seat warm. I constantly dreaded losing my job and every call to the boss’s office terrified me.

             Still hoping that a non-existent God could prove true, I scoured forums looking for answers and I started taking part in one forum called Debating Christianity and Religion (DCR). I asked if anyone else wanted to believe again while hoping that someone could help me. I did not find anyone so desirous which shocked me. The atheists on the site mostly felt free from Christianity and were grateful for it. Others could admit that they enjoyed their time as a Christian but no longer had any desire to be a part of it. They were fine with their atheism. I, however, was not. I hated being an atheist. It frustrated me and I felt even more alone than I did as a lone-wolf Christian. At least then I had the perception that I had God’s approval for most of the time. I felt entirely empty of meaning. I so desperately wanted to believe again.

             We decided to find a church to go to where the pastor might be able to help me believe again. I did not have any desire to put faith in the Bible, however, since it led me so far astray the first time. I tried to find a church that could admit the imperfection of the Bible but no such church existed. I settled for one that seemed less judgmental of other people and focused more on the positive aspects of faith such as love, peace, community, and friendship rather than studies, hymns, and hatred for homosexuals. Emily and I both enjoyed Lifespring for a time. I had hoped to get some good answers through these more open and friendly Christians who were willing to have a questioning atheist in their midst.

             Pastor Mark proved to be rather nice and easy-going. He spent a lot of time discussing things with me and he had no problems with my challenging his beliefs. He even offered for me to join the praise band even though I did not truly believe yet. He alleged that getting the motor running and acting out the motions would eventually spur me back on to faith much like I expected Anna to believe when denying my participation in the Mexico trip. I considered this option for a while but I simply could not sing praises and so lie to myself and others. Oddly enough, this idea of getting the motor running is fairly well based on science. In the same way, if we force ourselves to smile when we feel sad, we will naturally start to feel happier. Going through the motions often helps a person feel the emotions associated with them. Unfortunately for me, I desired too greatly to be honest with myself such that I could not fake the motions in hopes to trick my mind into feeling better.

Mark and I had many email conversations and I enjoyed having such in-depth discussion. Unfortunately, the Methodist organization that his church had affiliated with decided that Mark would best be used in a different church and they gave us a lady by the name of Patti instead. I was not too keen on continuing on with someone else and let alone a woman. They cannot claim they believe the Bible while so blatantly going against it by having a female pastor. I may have no longer put faith in the Bible myself, but I would not take part in such hypocrisy seeing as they claimed to believe it. I had nothing against women themselves, but the Bible makes clear the roles to be filled by men and women and they just ignored it yet claimed to believe the book. I could learn nothing from hypocrisy.

             I went back to square one having no church and longing for peace. I truly hated being the scum that I saw myself as. I had been so trained to believe that atheists were immoral trash that I could not separate myself from it and the evidence showed me no better. Becoming an atheist and recognizing all my past as a failure, I could not help but agree that I must be the lowest of humanity. I deemed myself either worthless for denying God or worthless for having given in to such fairytales. I could hardly continue having any desire for life.

             Even as a child, I truly wanted to help people. I wanted to be the best I could be and to influence the world in a positive way. My faith made me think I could do it. My faith made me believe I was special. I thought God had a plan for me and that he continually showed me and taught me how to achieve it. Having my faith so stripped away from me after devoting so much of my life to it left me destitute. I could no longer be who I wanted to be. I was a nobody and a foolish one at that. I had been tricked into seeing whatever I wanted to see and believing whatever I wanted to believe. A person such as me could do nothing great or useful for mankind. I fooled myself and I felt like the worst person on the planet.

Had I never had initial thoughts of religious grandeur, I can only suppose I would not have fallen so hard. Every day of faith took me higher and higher with my confirmation biases until that day when it all began to collapse. I hovered miles above the earth like Wile E Coyote as I saw my feet standing on nothing and began my descent to the earth’s unforgiving crust. It broke every bone of my spiritual body.

             One fateful morning, April 2009, quite near my birthday, Emily came home from working an overnight shift and we began a rather unpleasant discussion while I prepared for work. One of our children had thought it fun to drop a canister of paint down our stairs to our basement while Emily was working. It splattered paint everywhere on the landing and wall below. Since our basement had yet to be finished, I simply spread the paint all over our concrete walls and considered the cleanup a success. She, however, scoffed at the fact that it was not the right kind of paint rather than applaud my ingenuity to clean up a mess while decorating our walls simultaneously. The argument commenced from there.

I felt as if her words impugned my intelligence and this, of course, hurt me deeply. The wound poured blood as she jabbed her fingers in and twisted with every further word she spoke. The conversation ended abruptly as she gave up on me entirely and tried to sleep. All my frustrations at life and feeling rejected rose up within me as she tried to sleep rather than caring for what she had just done to me. I now had to start my day feeling worse than a lobster in a boiling pot because of her. Hoping to keep her awake until she righted her ways and apologized for her misbehavior toward me, I grabbed a pillow and started to hit her forcefully with it. Truly I had no expectation that a pillow with any amount of force could be all that traumatic, but for her it left an emotional scar along with a headache. With all that had happened prior, she saw this as a sign of things to come and decided then and there to divorce me. She did not tell me at the time, but she got up and blankly obliged to whatever I demanded and waited for me to go to work before packing up.

             I had apologized in a text message for the one-sided pillow fight which she used at a police station as the incriminating evidence to warrant my arrest. My mom called me and informed me of the warrant, but I could not quite believe her. It seemed too strange and ridiculous. Who goes to jail for hitting someone with a pillow? People bash others with pillows all the time with no great consequences. Perhaps they were simply in on a joke to scare me into better behavior or something. I had plans to see a movie that evening with a friend, but I certainly could not enjoy the film as I awaited closure on what would soon unfold. When I got home, I called the police department in order to figure out the truth, but they simply asked me to stop by to answer some questions. Never in a million years did I expect what would happen as I obliged and showed up willingly to their front step.

             An officer sat down with me and asked about our recent encounter. He showed me a picture of the text from Emily’s phone and asked if I had sent it. I did not lie, of course, being entirely opposed to lying. I had no idea the extent of Michigan’s no tolerance policy for domestic violence. He immediately cuffed me and brought me to his car. Despite my calm and cooperative demeanor, he had no sympathy or gentleness about him. He shoved me in the car forcefully and took me to the local jail where they took my picture and crammed me into a holding cell as they awaited individual cells to open up. I spent over 24 hours in the company of wife beaters and druggies who sprawled over every ounce of the cold, hard, linoleum floor. I found a corner where I could stand or even sit so long as I pulled my legs in. The only comfort they provided came in the form of my own personal toilet-paper-thick blanket. I sat listening to the others bragging about their wrong-doings, talking smack about their respective “old lady” and explaining how they were going to show their wives a lesson when they got out. No one appeared repentant of anything besides being caught.

             I looked around in awe that I, Mr. Jesus Freak, who focused so highly on righteousness, could find myself in such company in such a short time from my high with God. In only three or four years, I went from spouting the awesome graces of God as I faithfully rejected a material world in exchange for a spiritual one, to being thrown in jail for beating my own wife. My life melted before my eyes. I hit lower than I ever even thought possible. Clearly I would not get custody of our children as a wife-beater. Clearly I would no longer have friends and family since everyone despises a man who hits women. Clearly I would lose the house, and clearly I would go insane and lose my job or else kill myself for lack of anything better to do. I had already been on edge for so long and this would be the final straw.

             I used my one phone call to call Emily despite the sage advice of everyone in the cell who had the privilege of listening in on my conversation. I begged her to give me another chance. I promised that I would consider my own life as nothing and that I would simply attend to her as if she were a queen. Since I believed I would be losing my life anyway, I figured I might as well lose it intentionally by serving someone else even if not God. She would have nothing of it, however. She offered no further chances. The hours passed like days as I listened to the absurd sounds of flaccid brain matter uttering words of drivel around me. They were like children incapable of reason and logic. I did not belong in such company and yet the guards treated me no differently than the rest when I asked questions about my situation. They were cold, rigid, and unwilling to be kind to the likes of me. I could not post bail as part of the no tolerance policy in order to prevent such violent criminals as myself from killing their spouses in a rage.

             As I left the jail house over 24 hours later, I looked down the road that would lead to my house some 12 miles away. They did not offer any shuttle service and I had no friends to call to pick me up. I walked home as a mixed bag of emotions. To go to jail over hitting someone with a pillow sounded awfully ridiculous. I could not believe it had truly happened. It all seemed like some kind of crazy dream and yet it all proved quite real. I wondered if somehow God arranged this situation due to my denying him, but I shrugged it off.

I considered hitchhiking, but I feared whether or not it would cause me to be thrown back in jail. I called the station to inquire of its legality, but they refused to give me any “legal advice.” I shamefully called my uncle, an officer himself, to see if he would offer anything more. The response did not come as a resounding yes, but I felt fairly sure that I would not be picked up again so I stuck my thumb out and hoped for the best. Quite to my amazement, a shiny blue sports car stopped for me. My thought of God’s orchestration of events came back to me as I thought perhaps he would now reward me. As I reached for the handle, the kid inside laughed triumphantly and sped away with obnoxiously squealing tires. If God did exist, he evidently had it out for me rather than desiring to help me. I considered my plight and all the more wished to die.

             I made it home severely sore and tired from walking in the dress-shoes and socks I had been arrested in. A restraining order disallowed me any contact with my wife until after the scheduled trial. She stayed with a friend and we both continued to work as we toggled who watched the kids. One day, I stood in the kitchen and I looked at my son knowing full well that I would not be seeing him much more in the future. I stared into his precious three-year-old eyes as I tried to convince myself that it would be perfectly fine if I never saw him again. I did not need him and he would be fine—probably better off—without me as well. He would not remember me any more than I knew my own father and I could just go off and start a brand new life like he did. I could do nothing better given the circumstances. Who needs a kid anyway?

             I continued to look him in the eye as I repeated these things in my mind trying to convince myself of their truth. I do not need you. I do not need to see you again. I could not believe my thoughts. They were just too painful, calloused, and cold. What had I done? What had I become? How could a loving father such as myself think such heinous things about his child? I had ruined everything. I went from being on top of the world to losing everything when I lost my faith. I began to cry in deep regret. My son patted my leg as he consoled me with child-like enthusiasm, “Don’t cry, Daddy.” Knowing that I just tried to disown him in my mind, it made me cry all the more. I began sobbing and he countered by singing the words instead, “Don’t cry, Daddy. Don’t cry, Daddy.” He sang while doing a little back and forth wiggle-dance. I could not feel any more miserable with myself for trying to give up my love for such a kind and adorable little man.

             I left the room sobbing and started praying to God to make it right again. I prayed that if he were to somehow fix all of this I would believe again. I cried out in agony at my plight and begged for forgiveness despite not knowing exactly where I had gone wrong. I did not feel any trumpet blasts or booming voices, but I felt better as I went to bed that night knowing that God just might fix the situation. I hoped and hoped he would, but I knew I would have to make amends myself. I decided to call up Emily’s family and apologize for my behavior despite the fact that they probably hated me immensely. I called Emily’s dad, her grandparents, and her Mom and I apologized for my actions with no form of justification. They were not irate, but I did not feel entirely welcomed, and they certainly made clear that they did not approve of what I had done. Her grandmother provided the harshest response out of everyone. “Well, I guess we can’t expect anything more from you,” she coldly stated, “Thanks for calling.”

             The very next morning, I received a call from Emily. For whatever reason, she informed me that she had a sudden change of heart and wanted to work things out. Overjoyed and shocked with disbelief, I asked her when she made this decision while wondering if it coincided with my prayer. To be honest, it would have meant nothing if the time were different, but it made for a greater story if indeed the time matched. And match, it did. She changed her mind the very hour I had prayed as far as I could estimate it. I had received the confirmation and the evidence I had longed for. I had personal proof that God controlled my life even if I could not find evidence in the world around me. I had promised that I would believe again if he fixed my life, and now I just had to figure out what this meant for everything else. I had become a Christian yet again. The prodigal son had returned!

             As I shared this news with all those whom I had previously shared my deconversion, I learned that it had a greater impact on their faith than I had previously realized. Many people told me that it had shaken their faith that such a strong and devout Christian as I could suddenly be lost. They felt that if I of all people had lost my faith, then maybe the faith required a second look. I do not know if anyone followed me into atheism, but I know many people felt dumbfounded and lost at first and relieved when I came back. We impact others in our daily lives more than we may ever know. In this way, I now realize how important it is that we remain true to ourselves so that others are impacted by our truth and not by our pretenses.