I became a Christian through a dramatic conversion experience when I was 15 years old. Over a decade later, I became pastor of a congregation which I served full-time for 14 years.
But, I no longer believe in God.
I don’t want to offend anyone who does believe. For what it’s worth, I want only to tell my story.
When I resigned from ministry after a long season of anguished soul-searching and prayer, I my faith was still intact, but I could no longer lead others with confidence and integrity of conviction.
For the first year or so, I wrestled with questions and issues that I had pushed to the background while in active ministry – hard questions of doctrine and practice, spirituality and belief, sin and righteousness.
A year or so later, I still believed in God, but the details were less certain. I held on to the WHO, but the What and the How were not so clear anymore. I studied faith, religion, history, psychology, biology, anthropology, and cosmology.
In the third year post-ministry, I began to settle on the fact that I could no longer believe in a deity at all. I had learned that many of the things that I once considered spiritual can be explained by human psychology and behavior, and that my experience and observations of the physical world are better explained by science than by scripture.
Today, many questions remain unanswered, but I am now content to live with the unknown. I no longer feel the need or obligation to explain things which are beyond my understanding. And I continue to learn and be open to truth.
Could I be wrong? Of course.
Does this keep me up at night? Nope.