Death Bothers Me More as an Atheist
Really, I just die… and that’s it?
On the morning of my open-heart surgery, I was at peace with the fact I might die on the operating table. Life or death; either outcome was fine. I would either wake up in the hospital and recover from my operation or wake up with God in the best place imaginable.
At 15, I had convinced myself that life on Earth was insignificant compared to the eternity I would spend with God. This became the foundation of my faith for the next five years — even as I began to doubt.
The more I learned about Christianity and the Bible, the less sense it made, and my belief in God started to slip. I was surprised by the relief I felt when my faith fell away completely. In the 12 years since then, I’ve never missed prayer, worship, church, or the Bible at all. Striving to maintain a relationship with a silent invisible fiction was exhausting. Adopting a secular worldview has improved my life in nearly every aspect I can think of.
However, there was one part of leaving Christianity I found quite challenging: facing the permanence of my own death.
Because of my heart defect, I’d always thought about dying more than most people my age, but heaven acted as my security blanket. I viewed life as page 1 of a long novel.
