For the context of this comment please consult Bruce’s post and comments HERE. (Edited to add that Bruce has closed that particular blog.) You can see the dialogue Claire and I are having or had. It’s rare that I respond at length to anyone on the Internet anymore but I know Claire means no malicious intent and that is the case also with me. I’m not sure if I’ll hear from her again but I wanted to take part of my comment to her and bring it here. The following is taken from the comment section at Bruce’s blog. Many of us as former Christians face thoughts like Claire’s time and time again. I know it is impossible to answer these thoughts satisfactorily to some minds and yet every so often I feel I need to try and share with them a little more of my own thoughts.
Claire comments:
I think if people received a true perception of the absolute joy of knowing Christ , they too , would want to have it.
Zoe responds:
It probably won’t surprise you that many former Christians feel insulted by such a statement regardless of your intention. Let me explain. It’s another way of saying we were never Christians in the first place. As a fellow human on this earth, this just waves away our actual existence and experience here. Our former belief must have been a figment of our imagination. We must have been deceived by Satan. Wolves in sheep’s clothing. Even within the Body of Christ such claims are made to fellow Christians. We shouldn’t be surprised that once we step out of the Body that we’d get this even more. *Today I still get tears in my eyes when someone dismisses the joy I knew, the sorrow I knew, the salvations I witnessed, the prayers I prayed because I never ever came to a point of receiving “a true perception.” Nonsense Zoe, it never happened. “If” it had then you would still be. In one moment of time the blackboard of my existence, my own experience, my story is wiped clean. I don’t exist. I am invisible.
My ancestors knew the joy of Christ. Although wait now, which of them according to you, according to the Bible “received a true perception of the absolute joy of knowing Christ” . . . ? My Christian Science ancestors? My Methodist ancestors? My Anglican ancestors (one who actually translated the Common Book of Prayer into a Native American dialect?) My United Church of Canada (a collection of Presbyterian, Congregationalist and Methodist) ancestors? My Unitarian Universalist ancestors? My Baptist ancestors. And while I’m at it, I have Catholic friends and family who claim the joy of Christ. Is Catholicism a “true perception?”
- Updated: * Re: tears in my eyes. It’s now 2020 and the tears have dried up in this regard. Their denial of my own experience is theirs to own.
Secular Wings 
Hello Zoe, I do like your blog very much and no doubt our stories have some common threads.
This comment that Christians make is a very frustrating one to me, but those who peddle it don’t realise what they’re saying about themselves. If believing that Jesus died for your sins, repenting of your sin, loving Jesus with all your heart, having your life transformed by your faith,being filled with joy at knowing God, seeking to be like him and to serve him in all your life, studying his word so as to know him better, sharing his message with non-believers, worshiping him in heartfelt adoration and having full confidence that after “knowing Christ” in this way, you could never, ever walk away do not qualify one as a Christian, but rather the only true test is whether you do in fact stay a Christian your whole life, then it follows that nobody living could know if they are a true Christian. You could only know after you’re dead!
Of course, the believer will simply insist that what an ex-believer previously thought was true faith or the inner witness of God’s Spirit must not have been, and they apparently fail to see how that might be relevant to themselves.
Great blog, love your stuff.
Thinkaroo
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Hi Thinkaroo. Thanks for the comment and compliment. I never did hear back from Claire. Wonder if I made her think? Not likely. ;-)
I wonder how many Christians truly believe they have the “true perception” or just how many of them live in fear that they might not?
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I’m new to the “you never were one” thing. I’m sure it’s been said many times, but I think that it is leveled against us out of fear, you know?
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I believe fear is an issue for sure Alice.
Addendum: I wanted to tell you that I’ve been reading your story and I’ll hesitate to even comment due to my own fear of being labeled a “vulture.” You know, like Sabio and Bruce. (To my readers, Alice will understand this reference as it came from her comment section in a recent post by Alice. Alice did not do the labeling.)
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I understand completely. Ain’t nobody got time for that:)
CW Martin has been following me for years and at a time when I was a very outspoken believer. He’s also accused one of my other readers as being someone else, who she’s not. I don’t know what to do about that.
Oh well, I’ve been removed from about 5 blogrolls, and ticked off a good bloggy friend this week, so good times .
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I’ve been where you are now Alice. I had my start in blogging and on forums as a Christian. I use to have what would be then considered a fair-sized readership and I was in many blogrolls. Leaving spiritual abuse was vogue back then. Leaving fundamentalism was heresy to the fundamentalists of course (I was one) but the liberal and progressive crowd sure didn’t mind me at all . . . and then I wandered away from there. That didn’t go over well. When I transitioned out of my former belief, that is, left Christianity, well, that was it. I had become a pariah. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
I actually have a post in draft form re: the vulture comment. Since then I’ve seen the “garbage” comment and I’m thinking, maybe I’d best not venture into a discussion. Been there, done that type of thing and you certainly are holding your own. BTW, I’ve finished your series yesterday morning. Really enjoyed/enjoy your writing.
Alice, I’m not sure where you’ll end up but I do know it can get ugly. When I knew I was no longer Christian I got a lot of grief and later as a person who left the faith I kept getting people to get me to try and hold on . . . with just about every interpretation of “Bible” and “Jesus” they could come up with. And I got nasty stuff said to me too. It got so problematic that I left my former blog and started this one and then kept myself off the *search engine crawl* to keep an even lower profile. It worked but my point in telling you all this is, the “vulture-like” comments and such really got to me (for a variety of reasons) and I took it personally.
When you leave a faith you are going to get people tell you that you were never a believer in the first place . . . it’s the best position for most people and it allows them to get ugly with you. Of course, they don’t see it as “ugly” . . . it’s all in love according to them.
Well, I noticed Sheldon added you to his blogroll. That’s cool! And I added you to mine recently, so I don’t know, you lose some and you win some . . . though you’ll be reminded that we aren’t the winners. :-)
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Thank you so much for that. It’s good to know others who have been there. I was told by another person recently that I am going to start seeing nastiness from some people that I would not expect and I have. What hurts me the most is that my very first and long time blog reader and friend that have know for years even before the blog can say I was never saved. I mean she was there for all the Christian discussions and posts. She saw me “battle” atheists and those who drifted from orthodoxy, she saw my devotion and yet can say I never “had” it. The blogroll thing isn’t so much about being on the blogrolls, but the sentiment of it, especially on those whom I have known and got to be friends with over the years. They don’t want to be associated with me. I seriously need to update mine and figure out what direction I want to take it. Thanks for adding me:)
What I didn’t realize that I would get what you said people esp. of the progressive crowd trying to keep me in all kinds of creative ways. I did say from the outset that I didn’t want to debate on any topic, but it looks as though that won’t be possible. I say I just don’t believe it anymore and get “not so fast”.:) One of my friends commented that he saw all the problems in the Bible, but instead of giving up the faith found a way to hang on. I just couldn’t.
And thanks for reading all the posts in the series so far. Once I’m done with that, I do plan to continue the blog, but hopefully lighten the mood a bit. I have no idea why I’m even doing this to myself by putting it all out there, but I HAD to, you know? The experience of losing faith was devastating (I know you know) and I needed to do something.
I have enjoyed your writing here, too :)
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Yes, it hurts. It’s an endless conundrum.
It becomes awkward in the blog world when you know the people you’ve linked to all these years would rather you didn’t link to them anymore. They start to worry about what other people will think about them when they see their blog listed in a *no longer a Christian’s* blog. It just seems to be part of the baggage one has when they’ve been writing online and “things” change.
One of the most interesting parts of the discussion with the people who consider themselves the “non-extremists” is that one wonders why they want you to hold on. What is it they want you to “hold on” to? There has to be some benefit they have determined that makes it all worthwhile . . . and they appear to believe that those benefits benefit you too. I think it’s really a case of some people believing/thinking you can’t possibly gain any benefits by being a non-theist.
From my own experience, I found debating progressives like (as my fellow vulture Bruce would say) “nailing jello to the wall.” I’d get blamed for my black & white literal past and it would be pointed out to me that that kept me in a black & white world and unable to see. I thought I’d feel better in the liberal/progressive world but I only was made to feel worse &/or less than them because I obviously could not see it their way. The thing is, I could see it their way, and her way, and his way, and that way and when you consider all the formulas and all the opinions and all the interpretations and all the “my ways” . . . you’re kind of back in that black and white world again, if you know what I mean.
Okay, enough of this. I understand about “putting it out there.” I question our sanity but I get it. :mrgreen: ;-)
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Oh, man – the wrangling I went through with this attitude. I blogged on about 6 years ago (and I think afterwards.) I won’t be so rude as to link it without your okay, but I was definitely angry when I wrote it, and the comments section really spiraled, thanks mostly to one abhorrent Calvinist a**h*** who was entertaining himself at my expense.
These days when people say that, I literally just say “If I was not, then you are not.” Not that it dissuades them of their delusion, but I find it gives me a little space. The problem is that when they say something like that, they can do it in one phrase, but trying to explain why they’re full of BS takes two or three paragraphs, and they have neither the discipline nor the honesty to read and understand. They’re just scoring points to make themselves feel better and stave off their doubts.
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You can share the link Anthony if you like.
Today if anyone said this to me in person, I would weigh whether a response was even necessary.
I might say: Okay. If that makes you feel better.
I might say: Yeah. I get it. There was a time I might have said the same thing.
If it is in a blog/comment post I might engage them as I did here but honestly, not one person I engaged in this manner ever showed up again.
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