I grew up in the Lutheran Church,with little pressure from my parents after junior high, but "prayed to receive Christ" in my room when I was 18. I had read book talking about the "free gift" of eternal life. Between that and the book of Romans, I felt that Paul's arguments were logical and you could simply receive Christ as your savior and have eternal life. Immediately after my prayer, I felt a tremendous amount of peace. In college, I became involved with a Christian group on campus, got "fired up" for the Lord, taught small groups, shared the gospel on campus to complete strangers, and met my future wife.

My unwinding began because of my political beliefs. I was quite liberal politically, while most of my church leaders, friends, etc. were conservative. This began many years of struggle to understand why I felt so differently about things if I was actually embedded with the same Holy Spirit as my brothers and sisters. This did not cause a huge amount of division as my wife shared many of the same political views. About three years ago I read some John Shelby Spong books (Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, Why Christianity Must Change or Die) and while not abandoning my faith, admitted that Spong made some very valid points about science and morality in the Bible. For a couple of years, I was still an evangelical Christian, but admitted that the Bible could be errant (There is a group of Christians today called "Red-Letter Christians" that I would have identified with then...they emphasize the teaching of Jesus over other parts of the Bible).

About two years ago, I began questioning my faith all-together. A big factor was my stated view that homosexuality was a sin, but my deep-in-my-heart view that it was not. I started reading and researching about the formation of the Protestant Bible and the dogma of the different groups of believers. That combined with the atrocities of the Christian church throughout history really began to sour me. I was in a skeptical mind-frame much of the time, but would always "return to my faith" because of not knowing how to handle the uncertainty, because it was easier on my family, or because I "felt mroe at peace".

I'm convinced now that I cannot go back despite the many difficulties presented: My wife is still a Christian and she wants to raise our two small boys as Christians, most of my good and long-time friends are devout believers, and my family, while not being as dogmatic, have a general strong belief in God (although I doubt they would be any happier if I worshipped Allah or Brahma). Also, I'm still adjusting to going from having a belief in a great everlasting heaven where I would reunite with my father, to a life where, well, this is all there might be.

But, I'm trying to be honest with myself. I can see how I could live a better life on this earth, knowing it may only be my only one. And I would be generally doing it out of goodness, being that I'm not vying for any eternal reward. As far as my family goes, I can only hope that I can be honest with my beliefs, while still being sensitive to the views of my wife. We were married with similar religious beliefs, and so it's only fair that I allow her to influence my children with hers. In fact, I love her so much (she is wonderful!), that I will continue going to church with her, as long as she wants me too.

Lastly, I would like to echo some comments on this site about my "deconversion". Like everyone, I've been through some difficult times recently, but my "falling away" has been due almost entirely to my inquiring and learning more about my own faith and seeing the inconsistencies and inujustices. My family continually asks me, "What Happened?" or "Why are you mad at God?" It's hard to explain to people, who generally don't read the Bible themselves (my Mom told me she didn't believe some of the things that I said were in there...I had to show her!), that my continued reading of the Word of God was the main reason to believe that, well, the Word is severly flawed, and maybe, just maybe, God is not there at all.

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