The Churchgoing Atheist Stops Going to Church

Today is a big day for me. It finally happened.

Today is the Sunday of me not going to church anymore.

If you’re new here, it will probably help to know that, although I’ve been an atheist since 2008, I’ve been attending church with my wife and kids since 2006. We go every Sunday with exceptions for illness, travel, or weekend house guests. It’s been rather weird for me, both attending church as an out and out atheist and in giving my reasons to people who think it equally weird that an out and out atheist goes to a Christian church.

Although my reasons were based on complex emotions, they seemed simple to say.

1. I love my wife and want to support her in her “spiritual needs”
2. I didn’t want to have separate lives away from her and the kids
3. I wanted to be around to talk about the religious topics when they come up
4. I wanted to try and stop the kids from becoming Christians themselves.

That last one was kinda unspoken. But it was there.

Over the last year it seemed, more and more, like these were bad reasons to go to church.

As it turns out, I can support my wife’s spiritual needs just fine without going. All I have to do is watch the kids while she goes to her different functions and pay for the occasional book or fundraiser.

We already have separate lives anyways from work and school. I’m not terribly worried about TiggerGal or myself having an affair or anything from the extra 2 hours a week we’re away.

We don’t really talk about the religious topics outside of stating what the standard dogma is. TiggerGal is a fantastically wonderful woman and a terrific wife but a hideous debater. I married her because she was sweet, loving, and kind… not for her rhetorical stills or oratory acumen.  That and I know more about theology than she does, so these discussions go wonky. And for me and LadyBug, the best time to talk is when we’re driving or reading stories, so I don’t really have to be in Church for that.

Oh, and LadyBug was recently baptized… whatever that means for us.

On top of that I’ve been growing increasingly dissatisfied with the quality my church friend relationships, discussions, and debates.

So I’ve been on my way out for a while.

All this came to a head last week during a guest sermon about obedience to god. The guest pastor is an intern who I consider a really good guy and a friend. But his sermon had a little bit about the Amalekites. You know them? God tells Saul, via King Samuel, to completely wipe out the Amalekites.

 ¹ Samuel said to Saul, “I am the one the LORD sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the LORD. ² This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. ³ Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’” – 1 Samuel 15:1-3 NIV

Freaking genocide. Wipe everything out. Even the children. Even the innocent babies. Even the sheep! What did the sheep do to deserve that?

So Saul wipes out Amalek, but doesn’t kill off everything as instructed.

⁷ Then Saul attacked the Amalekites all the way from Havilah to Shur, near the eastern border of Egypt. ⁸ He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. ⁹ But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed. – 1 Samuel 15:7-9

Saul wipes out everything except the best animals and the Amalek King. And god is pissed!

 ²² But Samuel replied:

“Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as in obeying the LORD?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
²³ For rebellion is like the sin of divination,
and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the LORD,
he has rejected you as king.”

-1 Samuel 15:22-23

So the guest pastor made the case, in non-denom progressive Christian tones, that god wants you to be obedient. Obedience is better than sacrifice. Then he went on about how obedience is less about rules and guidelines, blah blah blah.

Well, here I am in the pews thinking WTF!?!?! You one of the most morally reprehensible examples of Yahweh’s asshattery as a reason why people should be obedient?

And so I posted on Facebook.

Seriously, how do to bring up the divinely commanded genocide of the Amalekites as and example of how god isn’t all about killing and just wants you to worship him? I mean seriously. Bad example. And I love how no one bats and eye about the slaughter of men women children and animals ( what did the animals do) because the true lesson was that Saul didn’t fully obey. WTF?

That was my mistake. Some of my atheist and fairweather Christian friends chimed in agreeing that this was disgusting. And then one of my Christian friends started a discussion suggesting that Yahweh used Hitler as a tool for his justice. It all went bad

Guest pastor messaged me the next day. He was disappointed that I think he’s an idiot and hoped I would have just talked to him individually instead of calling him out like that. And I think he’s right. We were friends and I should have just talked to him directly. I apologized immediately and he forgave me.

That whole interaction really made me question my church attendance. What was I doing there? Seriously, what was the point? Why am I even getting mad at his sermon? His sermon wasn’t for me, it was for people who already agree with him. The challenging part for them is the obedience, not the “my god is totally cool commanding mass murder”.

I forgot that I’m a guest in their house. I don’t have to be there. No one is forcing me to go. Even TiggerGal, when I talked with her about my desire to stop going, reiterated that she never pressured or forced me. She felt honored that I wanted to go with her, but that it was my decision.

So I stopped fooling myself.

There’s no sense in going. No sense in worrying about what other people think. No sense worrying about people seeing me as “that atheist”. I’m already “that atheist”. I might as well own it. No sense in holding on to the belief that going to church, as an atheist, makes me a morally good person. It just makes me a martyr. A whiney, frustrated, angry martyr.

And martyrs are annoying.

So now I’m home. The house is quiet, and I’m going to head over to Lowes to get some o-ring’s to fix a leaky faucet.

And it feels good.

It feels good to have 2 hours of my life back.

It feels good to be free of the self-imposed prison I was in, caused by religion.

True freedom is definitely a life without Jesus.

And today, I’m a little bit more free.

 

 

 

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