A letter of deconversion

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Wesley Perry's picture
A letter of deconversion

Hey guys, I'm new here so if this isn't the kind of thing you guys normally discuss just lemme know and I'll delete the thread. I deconverted almost a year ago while working at a bible camp but didn't say anything about it to my Christian coworkers. I've actually kept it hidden from everyone but my family and some of the friends I've made since then. Anyway I wrote an open letter about it and posted it for like 10 mins last night and deleted it because that same camp has some of those same people working there again and it literally began June 1st. I don't want them thinking that I'm doing this to "Shake their faith" although I know it will for some of them.

TL;DR: Coming out as an atheist to my friends at a Christian camp and need to know when I should post the open letter

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Wesley Perry's picture
This is the letter.

This is the letter.

Hey guys! I hope everyone is doing well and that you are all enjoying the early June weather. Contrary to the prior statements, this is not a happy post. To my newer friends this may either be unsurprising or simply a restatement of past conversations; this letter is not for you. This is for my friends from camp, for my church family, and for me. I didn’t keep it a secret last year, that I had been having doubts, that I was leaning towards Old Earth Creationism. I spent most of my breaks studying the Bible and going to Answers in Genesis seeking truth; I had conversations with several of you including the leadership at the camp. I prayed fervently and desired nothing more than to have all of my doubts swept away and reasonably dismissed by childlike faith and factual arguments from some of the best apologists in America; this did not happen. As much as I may wish for faith to move mountains my mind cannot accept this as a good enough reason to delude myself; my entire life I have viewed God and truth as one, but this is not the case. Two plus two is four in America, in India, and in Iran, but in America God is Yahweh, in India God is Krishna, and in Iran he is Allah. This means that truth must supersede God, no matter how disconcerting this statement may be. The more I tried to persuade myself of the inerrancy of gospel and the factual basis of its claims, the more errors I found and the more fiction I discovered. I even used the tools at my disposal to translate various passages to the original Greek in hopes of finding the answers in translational errors; this also did not happen. I considered some of the harder moral questions later in my quandary; why does the Bible allow slavery in the Old Testament and not update it at all in the New Testament? If this is the new covenant then why is the barbaric Old Testament law still considered valid? If God is the creator of good from whom all morals stem, why has the developed modern age come to a higher understanding of morals than God? After all from a moral standpoint, we are on the same level as God- “And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil…” –Genesis 3:22a KJV. I further considered the moral implications of abortion; if you don’t believe in the doctrine of “The Age of Accountability” any miscarried baby or aborted fetus is damned to Hell and considering the infant mortality rate of previous generations the vast majority of residents of Hell are young ones who never even knew what it was to think about God, much less accept him as their savior. All but the most cruel psychopaths of society recognize this as an atrocity therefore we consider the doctrine of “The Age of Accountability” as a valid argument to scapegoat the whole problem; that is, until we critically examine it. If one has a free pass into heaven until they can consciously decide whether or not to proclaim their faith in Jesus then letting children live past three or so is morally reprehensible; contrary to current Christian dogma then abortions are the most moral thing anyone could do, receiving an abortion guarantees the child a swift lift to paradise. This is, of course, not a valid way to scapegoat the problem, this is foolishness. I apologize for the vehemence on those last two topics, the point I was making is “You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.” These are only the critiques I made while at camp; it has been almost a year since then and of that time I have wasted little. Philosophy was only the beginning, as these questions festered in my heart my mind continued to find other and more difficult questions for which fewer and fewer answers could be found in scripture. If you haven’t guessed yet, I am an Atheist. For reasons beyond the scope of this letter I have lost all faith I had in the concept of God whom I obediently and sincerely served for eighteen years. It has been my experience that most of you will react in one of two ways; you can believe me when I say that this was not a pleasurable experience and attribute my decision to a horribly sad error in judgment, or you can credit my decision to a deformity of character. I hope that most of you will fall into the former category and not just brush me off saying “He probably never believed,” or “He just wants to sin,” I was the most genuine Christian boy I could be. This decision devastated me in indescribable ways. I’m making this post public because there are many of you that I would consider friends but who are not on my Facebook friends list. On the topic of friends, I understand if some of you want to unfriend me as I will begin sharing and updating my profile with the content appropriate to my world view, but allow me to let you know that it has been an unrivaled pleasure in my life getting to know all of you kind people and participate in fellowship with you all. :)

chimp3's picture
Bravo ! You are wise beyond

Bravo ! You are wise beyond your years young man ! What a great letter.

Sir Random's picture
Brilliant, as chimp said, it

Brilliant, as chimp said, it is a great letter. Hopefully this letter will at least get people to accept your decision.......

doubleAtheist's picture
Beautiful letter, way to

Beautiful letter, way to stand up high and be proud of whom you become.

Wesley Perry's picture
lol Thanks for the

lol Thanks for the compliments guys I can't take all the credit, I drew some inspiration (and two sentences) from this ( http://blog.andy-walters.com/2010/01/04/the-letter-i-shouldve-sent/ ) letter. Did any of you write letters or make a public announcement to your old christian friends? If so would you be willing to lemme know how it went and/or what to expect?

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