Joe Omundson
Nov 7 · 6 min read

You are, of course, welcome to bring up your disagreements. Thank you for keeping a respectful tone.

I do not want to get into a whole back and forth, either — I don’t have the time or energy. Yet, like you, I feel compelled to respond to what was said.

I was in my early 20s when I came to these conclusions. Of course, I have not “understood the totality of biblical teachings” (as nobody can understand the totality of anything). But if I was unable to grasp the fundamentals after spending the first 20 years of my life going to church every week, AWANA or youth group or some secondary study group every week, 9 months of Bible school, reading through the whole Bible, regular prayer, and in general a lot of enthusiasm and heartfelt conviction for the importance of knowing Jesus and understanding Christian doctrine… then I don’t know what to tell you. I’m not stupid or willfully ignorant. I didn’t even want to leave. I just found that deep down my intuition told me it was fiction, as I was devoting my life to understanding more and trying to become a godly man in preparation for being married.

There is a logical fallacy that if someone disagrees with biblical teachings, it must be because they didn’t study them enough or understand them enough. Yet plenty of very informed, very experienced Christian ministers have come to the same conclusions I did. This is an opinion piece, about my own story, not a presentation of a full intellectual understanding of Christianity. Of course a more rigorous attempt at discrediting belief would have included a lot more information, but I wanted to keep the read time manageable, and I hoped the reader would give me the benefit of the doubt that I was a fully immersed Christian and that I was capable of understanding all the things I had learned. I think the ways I’ve presented the Christian response are quite familiar to others who have shared my experience and that’s why they’re agreeing.

I have presented exactly what I was taught in the denominations of Christianity I was exposed to. No matter which denomination that was, a Christian from a different sect will look at my story and say “of course you lost your faith, you had the wrong understanding of the Bible.” This plays into my first point — Christians can’t even agree with each other about what the Bible says, and it’s impossible to study every single denomination in order to satisfy the objections of every believer who seeks to discredit a deconversion experience.

Another problem for me is that you would reject my conclusions against religion based on my age, yet I doubt that you would cast doubt on a 21 year old converting to Christianity because they had only spent the first 20 years of their life as an atheist and probably weren’t able to fully understand the totality of evolutionary biology. How old is old enough to form an educated opinion about religion? Is it a different age depending on whether you’re coming to agreement or disagreement?

If you are able to offer some insight that awakens a profound shift in the way I perceive things, I’m all ears, but, respectfully… the two points you have given me so far are very common responses which I have heard endless times. They fall in the category of “explanations which I do not consider to hold water after further examination.”

1)I don’t think I stated that hell was created for humanity, though I do kind of imply that by saying “if you don’t want your children to go to hell, don’t invent hell”. I am fully aware of the idea that hell was created for Satan and the fallen angels. However, I think that’s completely irrelevant to my argument. If hell is not for humans, why would God send them there? By sending them there he is making it clear that that is where he thinks they should go. It’s not as though his hands are tied. If he has unlimited power and resources, and created the entire universe in 7 days, could he not have created a separate place for “fallen humans” instead of by default sending them to the terrible place he created for “fallen angels”?

Furthermore, I don’t think this argument makes God seem like any less of a monster. He had spent eternity with these angels, presumably loving them unconditionally like he does us. (It opens up a whole new can of worms, but if eternity in heaven with God is so amazing, why did 1/3 of the angels spontaneously decide to sin and rebel against him in he first place? Will humans have that option in heaven too, if free will is so important?) When 1/3 of his angels wanted to go out and do their own thing apart from him, why did he need to create a place of infinite suffering for them? Was his ego so badly bruised?

2)I understand the concepts that struggle builds character; that life shouldn’t be expected to be perfect. That a parent teaches their child but allows them to make their own choices.

One difference is that you are a real person, and your child is a real person, and you are directly involved in their life in measurable, physical ways. You are literally there to teach your child and that’s undeniable. While you might assert that Jesus does the same for us, that’s a statement based on faith and not evidence. Also, most people in the world are born into cultures where they are not raised to believe in Jesus, and instead believe in many other religions just as wholeheartedly, and go about their lives doing the best they can (and then God sends them to hell for getting it wrong). So they were not “raised in the way they should go” according to you.

Why would a loving God sentence his child to infinite punishment for a finite offense? Why is that satisfying or necessary for him? Surely you will not torture your child if they disobey you.

If your free will (or even just your environment/programming) causes you to disbelieve in God, in your 83 years on Earth… and the result is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000-plus-infinity years of the worst torment imaginable, then no, I don’t think offering free will is love. “Love me, so that I can save you from the literal hell I’m going to give you if you don’t love me.” How is that love? How is that free will? If he really wanted us to choose him out of free will, he wouldn’t sentence people to a terrible punishment for failing to love him. It’s coercion based on fear. He could have created a less severe punishment, or allowed for annihilation of the spirit after death (as some Christians in fact believe). Do you want your children to love you because they are terrified that you will torture them otherwise? Would that be love? Fear of hell is a MASSIVELY traumatic thing for millions of people.

“Free Will is a tenet of biblical teaching and none are forced into servitude.” That’s up for debate, isn’t it? Calvinists don’t believe this, for example. Many make the argument that it’s God who predestines certain people to be called to him, and hardens the hearts of others.

Anyway…

I know you think I should provide more rigorous points supporting my arguments, but I’d also like to see you answer some of the many difficult questions I have already asked. I’ve spent decades thinking within the framework of Christian theology and now I invite you, as a thought experiment, to join me in entertaining some questions that are outside the box of belief. Alternatively, if you can provide evidence that the way I have represented Christian claims are not in fact in line with some vast Christian consensus of which I am unaware, I’m all ears.

Of course, if you want to drop this conversation and agree to disagree, I’m more than happy with that option too, because we’ve both expressed a desire not to get into a long back-and-forth, haha.

    Joe Omundson

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    PCT hiker, CHD survivor, former engineer, ex-Christian. Frugally bus-dwelling in the desert SW.