That is all that remained from my walk away from faith. In the early years my struggle was dominated by anger, frustration, doubt and fear. But as the crumbling theist worldview that I grew up with completed its slide into the sea of metaphysical confusion - and as I started to build a new worldview of my own - fear, anger, frustration and doubt dissipated. In hindsight, even though these feelings were so vivid at the time, they were only temporary: brief bouts of flue that passed as I healed.
But a feeling of loss has taken a lot longer to get over. It’s been nine years since I attended a church service as a committed Christian, but at odd moments I still catch myself missing some elements of my Christian life. It has gotten a lot better, especially over the last year, but it’s like a scar that never fully heals, a piece of my neural network that is so ingrained within my psyche that I will never be able to rid myself of it completely, even though leaving Christianity was one of the best decisions I ever made.
What do I sometimes miss about my own Christian experience? A while back I was thinking about this and I came up with the following elements that contribute to my own sense of loss. In the coming weeks I will expand on each of these in the following posts:
Part 2: Hebrews 10:24-25: The loss of a cohesive community. (click here)
Part 3: Psalm 139: The loss of fully being known.
Part 4: Jeremiah 29:11: The loss of certitude.
Part 5: 1 Corinthians 15:54-57: The loss of immortality.
Part 6: Conclusion (Proverbs 24:14).
I welcome any thoughts or comments you might have.
