I told my parents this past week. I told them that no longer believed in Jesus. It was an incredibly hard conversation and yet I am profoundly proud of how they handled it. I went into it full of dread, knowing that they would neither understand nor support my decision. All I could truly hope for was that they would listen respectfully, not attempt to dissuade me and not withdraw their love. They succeeded in spectacular fashion!
Changing faith systems is hard! Even when you are absolutely certain that you are making the right move away from something, it is still a challenge to those you leave behind. It is challenging because I do not want to denigrate the faith that they still hold to. I do not want to blame or shame. I simply want to move away from it myself.
But how do you condense into a lunch-hour conversation the journey that, while intense over the last year, has really had roots throughout your entire life. I have been on this journey forever really, even before I knew it. Looking back at all the questions I had. The general wondering as I sat in church whether we weren't all just deluded and lost. The feeling that the values were well-intentioned but the applications and motivations were screwy. The paper I did senior year of high school about why it's actually harder to be a Christian in a Christian school (it was not well-received). The anger I felt at the judgement leveled against others who were not "Christian" enough or homosexual or poor or rich or whatever that particular Christian was insecure about. But now I'm getting off topic, back to the lunch.....
Somehow I went in, laid out my journey as thoughtfully, succinctly and kindly as possible (I hope). Openly acknowledging that this was a big deal, I knew they wouldn't agree and that this was going to be hard but that I wanted to be close to them and that I believed that we could work through this together. They had questions, some of which I couldn't answer and that was okay. They said that they loved me and only ever wanted me to find the real truth. And we all sat there silently knowing that we now had very different definitions of what that truth was.
I know in my heart that many people will never experience the level of acceptance that I experienced that day. For many people leaving a faith means death. Literally. For others their lives and major relationships are irreparably damaged. I am blessed beyond measure to have parents who love me enough to love me despite my rejection of the thing they hold most dear in their life. It is a shattering reality and the reflection from that shattered mirror will continue to illuminate my way onto paths I would never have found otherwise.
