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My story really begins from the moment of my birth. Some would say that is where everyone’s story begins, but not everyone is born to Christian parents. As parents go, I definitely received very loving and understanding ones. My father became a pastor when I was seven years old and my mother worked wherever her administrative skills were required.
I believe I was a fairly normal child though I did not take a lot of risks and was largely on my own since I was the only child. However, I did manage to be out and about and largely did as I pleased.
The teenage years arrived and that is when problems in my social/emotional development began to manifest themselves. I was an outcast in school; teased, provoked, pushed around, and just considered the typical unattractive, unwanted nerd. Underneath all this was a deep self-loathing that I will cover later.
Church was my outlet. Youth group specifically, but church in general was where I shone. I was the poster-child, the golden-boy of the congregation. It was basically the same as having fame and fortune, but on a far lesser scale. I had my pick of girls to date and could basically do no wrong.
Unfortunately, the only reason I didn’t want to do any wrong was because I didn’t want to disappoint anybody. I didn’t want to be a problem for my parents. I wanted to be a good example for the kids that looked up to me and I particularly didn’t want to disappoint God.
Every decision I made and everything I did was based upon my relationships with God and people in the church. Even the college I chose to attend was based on, “doing what God wants me to do.”
There was one other big problem that went completely unnoticed by everyone though. I was massively, clinical depressed most of the time. All church really was to me was a band-aid that covered my day to day pain.
“Save yourself for marriage” was drilled into me time after time in youth group. Second to that was “marriage is holy”. I certainly believed and lived by it as much as possible. I desired sex as much as the next teenage male, perhaps even more.
When sexual opportunities arose I, quite literally, ran for the door. The one time I did give in to some heavy petting with a girl I freaked out and broke up with her the next day.
When I turned twenty I decided not to date anymore. I was keeping myself “pure for the Lord and for my wife”. Inside I wasn’t pure at all and was still hopelessly depressed about life in general.
At twenty-four I believed that God had chosen a specific woman for me to marry. Unfortunately, she was only fifteen at the time and I think my belief was based on the fact that I was more comfortable with teenagers than I was with people my own age (wait a second...fifteen? Okay, yes, I did believe that I was supposed to "wait" for her). Inevitably, God changed his mind and “let” me marry a woman older than myself with two kids from a previous marriage.
As much as I loved them, it was a foolish move on my part. In no way was I ready for marriage, a relationship, or kids. I was simply too unstable and basically wasn’t even a real person.
One of my most severe problems was my addiction to pornography. I wouldn’t have labeled it as such at the time, but it’s become a bit of a buzz word in North American society today; especially in the churches.
My wife found out about the pornography early in the relationship and it hurt her deeply. I promised time and time again to stop, but I could not. No, not would not; could not. The next section will explain this more fully.
First I would like to touch on how hard I tried to rid myself of the addiction. I honestly and truly tried every possible method. I attended deliverance sessions, was prayed for, prayed daily for release, read my bible, attended “step” programs, read books regarding male purity, attended seminars, men’s groups, retreats, and even professional counseling.
You name it, I did it. Some of you may think I was just going through the motions and not taking it to heart, but I believed and I tried it all with true fervency. I really, really wanted to be free of the problem.
Sadly, freedom never came through any of those methods. Despite all the promises in the Bible and all my efforts to do what was right I was never set free from the problem. Freedom did come, but not in the manner I expected.
After eight years of marriage, my wife and I started sleeping in separate beds. I had walked out for a week and then tearfully begged to come home.
Now, I really have to explain something that I have completely left out of my narrative thus far. My thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and all my internal processes were becoming more and more unglued as the years passed by. The true sign that something was really, really wrong though was that I was caught in a vicious, unending cycle of behavior.
The cycle would begin when, for whatever reason, I would literally go on a “religious high.” These high times consisted of prayer, Bible reading, excessive excitement about the things of the Lord, ecstatic worship, and simply believing that I “really had all the answers now and everything will be okay.”
Usually slowly, but sometimes very quickly, I would sink into depression. Eventually, the depression would lead to pornography. The pornography would lead to more self-loathing and at that point I would pretty much give up and not even try to “be good” about things anymore. I would chat with tons of women, have online affairs, sometimes look for (but never found) a real affair, and just inappropriate behavior overall.
Every time it happened my wife would eventually discover my forays and the feces would surely hit the fan. Every time I was broken and sorry and promised never to do it again. I would struggle and climb my way up back to repentance. Suddenly, the doors of heaven would open wide, I had all the answers again, and the cycle would begin anew with another religious high.
This happened continuously for nine years. High, coast, depression, crash, discovered, repent, wash, rinse, repeat. Usually the cycle lasted for months at a time, but there were also times when I would go through it all very quickly, even as quickly as a few days on a couple of occasions.
The final time it happened my wife and I were ready to split. I had been secretly sneaking a laptop computer home from work and, since I was sleeping in the basement, spending hours and hours viewing porn and chatting with women. My wife discovered it one Saturday afternoon and I hit rock bottom emotionally and mentally.
I refused to allow myself to go on another religious high. She was sick of it, I was sick of it. I promised to go to the doctor and I did. I knew that something was wrong, because I could not break my pattern of behavior and I could not control the drives that made me do things that I hated.
The doctor asked me what was happening and I told him everything in a nutshell. He prescribed some anti-depressants and then ordered a blood-test. Once completed, the test revealed that there was a problem; low testosterone.
Now, that may not seem like such a bad thing to have, but if you do some research on the net you will discover that it is a very, very bad thing indeed. It is generally more common in older men, but it appears that I had it since puberty.
I was prescribed hormone pills for four months. Forty milligrams taken once a day - just enough to jumpstart my body’s natural production factories. Within days I was feeling better. I wanted to know if it was the testosterone or the anti-depressants that was doing the trick, so I stopped taking the anti-depressants. I kept right on feeling better. Roughly around the ten-day mark the depression that plagued me for so long just simply…disappeared. Along with it went the pornography addiction. The craving was just gone.
Unfortunately, something else disappeared with the testosterone treatment. Well, it didn’t disappear. It was shattered. Torn to shreds. Scattered to the four winds and never to be found again.
My faith was gone too.
Most people don’t understand the fact that my faith is gone. They think it’s a choice. I suppose to some minor extent it is, but the fact remains that it is not for a lack of wanting to believe. The truth is that I cannot believe. While there is much in me that would like for Jesus to be real, reality, reason, logic, and experience argue incessantly against the possibility.
Faith tends to be blind and what I experienced was an eye-opener to say the least.
The question remains, what was real about my faith? It was all based on the “feel-good”, the emotional high, trying to avoid depression, and so many other things.
There is also one further thing that I didn’t mention. For whatever reason, I could never speak in tongues, but I truly believed that I had received another “gift” from the Holy Spirit. I believed that I could talk to God directly in my head and would literally have huge “conversations with him” in that manner.
Tell me, can you say, “schizophrenic”? Yes, just one more symptom due to low testosterone. Though it may have been more psychologically induced than having anything physically to do with the hormone balance.
You see, I was especially deluded when it came to the “moving of the spirit.” Physical things happening due to emotion or excitement or good music I totally believed was the Holy Spirit. However, since my de-conversion I have gone back to various churches just to listen and think and try to understand more. I do not participate at all, but I have to admit to loving good music. When a good band is on stage I feel like I can almost slide right back into the Christian mold. When the right chords are struck, I get a shiver up my back, the hair on my neck stands up, my blood runs hot, and my adrenaline starts pumping. Really, that’s all the Holy Spirit ever was – a physical response to the emotion raised by the music.
The response is the same if you are being prayed over and you really believe that the power of God is flowing into you. Of course, don’t even get me started on “mass hysteria” or “mob mentality” and such. People will trick themselves into all kinds of things in those situations.
The most devastating part of my de-conversion still has to be covered and it is a warning to everyone who is traveling the path. I am not saying that your experience will mirror mine, but you do have to consider the possibility.
The day I finally told my wife that I did not believe in god anymore (hmmm...slightly inaccurate...I'm completely agnostic now, not atheistic...) was the last straw for her. The marriage was over and she wanted me out of the house. Truly, in our situation and after all we had gone through it probably was for the best. That does not, however, lessen the pain of the break up in any fashion.
When it comes right down do it, what I have experienced is for the best. At least I am finally to the point where I feel I can be the real me. I definitely have to admit though that I am still in emotional pain quite often. There is a lot of anger and frustration and hurt that I need to continue to work through.
I am finding that a complete lifestyle change is necessary. New friends, new contacts, new habits, new places to hang out, etc. Any of my old Christian friends I really do not want to see or have contact with. For one, if they are understanding people they simply have no advice or support to offer since they know you don’t want religious opinion. Second, if they aren’t understanding people they’ll generally keep trying to reconvert you. Third, if they are downright immature fundamentalists they will reject and fight with you telling you that you’re going to hell now.
I have experienced a little of all three by this time and I am quite certain that I will experience more of it as the years go by.