The Former Protagonist

 I had the opportunity to be a guest on one of my favorite podcasts, The Graceful Atheist, this week. It was so much fun to have a conversation with David and to share my story. I think other people who are post-faith will identify with this: there are so few people to whom I can truly tell my story, that it felt really cathartic to just lay it all out there. Most of the important relationships in my life are with people who do still believe in God in some form or another, and so even if I can be honest with them in general, I'm holding back out of respect for the relationship. So sitting down to talk to someone like David just felt really good.  If you're here because of the podcast, hi! David was so kind to give a shout-out to this blog on the episode, which honestly surprised me, because I don't usually share my writing with anyone. I started this blog as a private, anonymous sort of processing tool. But if there are other people out there who can identify with any part ...

 When I was a Christian, it felt like I had to be God's defense lawyer and PR person. For reasons unknown to me, a mere mortal, it was my responsibility to represent the all-knowing, all-powerful deity to whom I owed my worship. Why couldn't he just appear to the world and say, "Those people don't speak for me," I wasn't sure. We weren't supposed to test God. But all I knew was that I had to be a good witness, to always be ready to give a reason for the hope that I had, and in general to live in such a way that the gospel was shared and Jesus was glorified.  This was a big responsibility, and it shaped the way I interacted with people who were not believers. I couldn't ever be fully and completely myself—I was representing God! I had to be on the lookout for opportunities to share about God, to talk about how peaceful and joyful I was, and to distinguish myself from others. Not by mere behavior or following rules, of course. We weren't legalistic l...

 One of the big unspoken truths that was impressed upon me while growing up in Evangelical (or, as I like to call it, Protagonist) Christianity was that people who aren't living their lives based on the gospel have terrible lives and relationships. I don't know if any adult who was teaching me would have actually come out and said that—but it was definitely the message I, and many other young people, received. We stayed away from the outright prosperity gospel, so I knew that God didn't promise Christians a good or easy or rich life. In fact, he promised suffering. Just look at Jesus! But through that suffering, he promised joy, fulfillment, and rich purpose. The inherent lesson there was that people who were NOT suffering for Christ did not have joy, fulfillment, or purpose. They were building their houses on the sand. Marriage? Probably going to fail. Kids? Most likely going to turn out badly. Friendships? Shallow and fake. Since literally none of my close friends were no...

I’ve been thinking recently about my upbringing in the evangelical Christian faith and how I would characterize it. After hearing many stories from other people who were raised in stifling religious environments, I’ve come to the conclusion that I wasn’t raised in fundamentalist Christianity. I was raised in what I’ve decided to call, “Protagonist Christianity.”  What is Protagonist Christianity? In this subculture, I wasn’t controlled by fear (at least, not overtly). They didn’t use fire and brimstone speeches about hell to force us to comply, and “legalism” was a dirty word. In Protagonist Christianity, we didn’t follow God’s laws because we were afraid of punishment; we followed them because this was clearly the best way to live. God’s ways (which is to say, our ways as handed down by our interpretation of what God wanted) were obviously the best: the best way to have relationships, to live, to work, to be joyful and fulfilled. Everyone else—from non-believers to adherents of o...