I saw a post on Reddit over the weekend about the Shroud of Turin which, in a roundabout way, started me thinking about my path to atheism and the role–or lack thereof–the Shroud played in that.
As a kid, I harbored serious doubts, and around the ages of 10-11 I became very interested in Biblical archaeology and relics.
I remember being fascinated by the two different accounts of the fate of Judas Iscariot who, when looked at dispassionately, is unjustly condemned by modern Christians. I think the Gnostics had the right of it; he’s actually Jesus’ greatest disciple, because he sets the whole death and resurrection business into motion. When Mark Twain asks, “Who prays for Satan?” he could write just as well, “Who prays for Judas?”
I was especially Noah’s Ark–was it in Turkey, on Mount Ararat?–and the Shroud of Turin–was it the burial shroud of Jesus–because I was looking for proof. If these were real, then that would confirm that the events of the Bible were real. My dad checked books out of the library, I poured over them, I studied pictures, I was trying to understand.
I was a curious kid, and I was well aware, from an early age, that different countries had different cultures and different religions. People worshiped different gods than the god of my Methodist church, and nothing about that seemed unnatural to me. Of course they would. I remember questioning a counselor at Camp Overlook on his assertion that the only way to get to heaven was through Jesus, because that seemed wrong to me as most of the world is not Christian and clearly God had revealed Himself to other cultures in other ways that did not involve Jesus. Me, the ten year-old universalist.
Confirmation in the UMC I found very difficult because I kept expecting some secret, some key to be revealed that would answer all of my doubts… only it never came. I remember the feelings of fear and dishonesty in me as I stood with my parents at the front of the sanctuary at Asbury and said I believed things I honestly didn’t. My mom, thirty years later, asked me what had happened, and I said to her, in all honesty, “You have no idea how much I felt like a liar, standing up there.”
The two key events, though, came when I was thirteen. I’ve written about them before — Easter Sunday and the Ichthus music festival — but I’d never stopped to think in retrospect, when did these events happen? Which came first?
I didn’t remember.
So, curious adult that I am, I decided I would find out.
Easter 1987 — Sunday, April 19.
Ichthus 1987 — Friday, April 24 through Sunday, April 26. (Thanks, concert poster on Flickr!)
The week the seed of my atheism got planted — the third week of April, 1987.
It was Sunday school, in the youth classroom on the second floor of First United Methodist Church in Barbourville, Kentucky. The class was run by the youth minister, a man named Ken (whom I didn’t really like), though the senior minister sat in on the class that day. Ken was talking about how Jesus’ life was a fulfillment of Biblical prophecies, and as he was going on and on about this a question, relevant to Easter, came to mind.
I don’t remember exactly how I phrased the question, but I was along these lines — Jesus is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies, and we see that now, but the Pharisees, who were much closer in time to the prophecies, more learned about the prophecies, and steeped in the culture and history that produced the prophecies, could not see that Jesus was the Messiah. Why can we see Jesus as the Messiah, but the Pharisees, who were looking for the Messiah, could not?
Ken deferred this to the senior pastor, who said it was a good and important question, and then talked about how the Pharisees weren’t supposed to see Jesus as the Messiah and, anyway, they were looking at the prophecies in the wrong way.
I listened to this, did an “Ah, okay,” and we all moved on.
But when I pinpoint the moment where I went from looking for more details to questioning the whole edifice, it was that Easter Sunday. April 19, 1987.
I have no real memories of the Ichthus trip later that week. I remember that only one or two kids besides me went, and my dad was a chaperone. He and I have never talked about it, though my mom said, in the same conversation she asked me what had happened with Confirmation, that he “had thoughts.” I don’t remember the music. I do remember mud. I remember that Ken, the youth pastor, introduced me to some people he knew and he was really amped up for the whole experience.
The only firm memory I have, frankly, is of an event that must have happened on the morning of Saturday, April 25th. If you read my Ichthus post, you have all the important details, and there’s a bonus Mike Pence connection, but I’ll retell it here.
That morning, before the day’s music, there were prayer meeting we had to attend and be preached at. We were left to ourselves to decide where to go, and I don’t know how I picked the tent I chose, but I sat near the back. I remember the preacher was a man, probably in his fifties, with silvery hair. He talked for twenty, thirty about Jesus and “feeling Jesus in the heart,” whatever that meant.
When he finished, assisted by a couple of young women and men probably of college age, he asked us to bow our heads in prayer. I bowed my head, but I was never one for prayer, reasoning that an omnipotent, omniscient god would already know anything I could “pray” at him, so what was the point? When he finished his prayer, he told us to keep our heads bowed and our eyes shut, then he asked anyone who did “not feel Jesus in their heart” to raise their hands. The young man sitting to my left raised his hand. I, being an honest kid, raised mine. I didn’t “feel Jesus in my heart.” I didn’t even understand what that meant. That phrase wasn’t part of my religious vocabulary, and to this day I’m not clear what it’s supposed to mean.
The preacher told us to lower our hands and we could raise our heads. Then he invited anyone who had raised their hands to come forward. The young man sitting on my left went forward, as did twenty other youths.
I did not. I was a little worried someone might have noticed I’d raised my hand and didn’t go forward.
I looked at the teens and young adults gathered next to the minister and wondered for a moment why I hadn’t gone forward. What was wrong with me that I hadn’t? What was missing? Why were they different? I wasn’t even sure what feeling “Jesus in your heart” meant. I’m not sure if it was fear or confusion or embarrassment that held me back.
I looked at the boy that had been next to me, then I left the tent and walked back to my church’s campsite, and as I walked I thought about it all and realized, no, there wasn’t something missing in me or wrong with me. I was okay with not feeling Jesus in my heart.
One week when I was thirteen — Sunday to Saturday, Easter and Ichthus — and I was set firmly on the path of atheism, though I had further to go and it wasn’t until college and, ironically, reading Karen Armstrong’s A History of God that I had the vocabulary to understand that.
And that’s another story.