stiggy wiggy
Well-known member
I guess I need to explain why I put "deconvert" in quotes. I touched a little on that a few days ago and in doing so I must have somehow expressed my thoughts in a manner contrary to CARM rules since it got me banned for five days. So I'm back in hopes that I can express my thoughts on the subject in a less offensive way.
Not approaching it this time from a theological position perhaps I can head off the hackneyed "no true Scotsman" responses. I will not be declaring a doctrine here, specifically that "if one 'deconverts' it is proof they never converted." I will however reiterate that merely changing an opinion is not a deconversion. The former involves a change of mind, the latter a change of essence. If a bullfrog decides that he is no longer a bullfrog he cannot deconvert to a tadpole.
I will only attempt here to explain why from my own experience it is very difficult for me to wrap my head around deconversion. I can however understand "I used to believe in God, but I no longer do," since as an agnostic I went through many changes of mind from agnostic to theist and back again. But that was mere mental assent. My heart remained hardened to a belief in a Personal God with Whom I could relate.
When I was 26 years old, I underwent a change that affected the entirety of my life, not just a change of mind akin to believing in life on other planets or some such. It was as if I awoke from a dream and for the first time faced a world vibrant with reality. It was like my previously black & white world had not only been colorized in a way that would put Ted Turner to shame, but it had elevated from 2D to 3D. The Light not only shone on the external world but on my inward world as well, illuminating all my sins and revealing the amazingness of the amazing grace that dealt with them. My suffering was not replaced by joy; it TURNED INTO joy. It still does. I suffer more now than I ever did before age 26, but I never knew then that the unspeakable joy which springs from such suffering and in which my life is now grounded was ever even possible.
OK, enough of that. I could go on and on trying but most likely failing at describing the impact of my conversion, but why give 5wize the opportunity for shallow mockery? I haven't even mentioned the PERSONAL touch of Jesus Christ as the ultimate cause of all I've typed. I'm not proselytizing here with any illusion that I can convert others. I just wanted y'all to understand why I find it hard to swallow these "deconversion" anecdotes. I do not doubt that one can change one's mind about Christianity. But to willingly choose to reject the Light of Christ which illuminates all that is, was or ever will be and to return to the dark dungeon of a corrupt and fallen world in which one detects no redemption, well, that seems to me to require a spiritual masochism, the existence of which I cannot fathom.
There's a lot more to a conversion than changing your mind about a theological doctrine. You can't think your way out of a rebirth any more than you can think your way out of your first birth. Sure, you can repress the Light (don't know why you'd want to) and you can even shake your puny fist at Him, and if so will have to deal with the consequences of a judgement worse than if you'd never been reborn, but I can't imagine why you would. It'd be like a freed slave cursing William Wilberforce. Why would he?
Not approaching it this time from a theological position perhaps I can head off the hackneyed "no true Scotsman" responses. I will not be declaring a doctrine here, specifically that "if one 'deconverts' it is proof they never converted." I will however reiterate that merely changing an opinion is not a deconversion. The former involves a change of mind, the latter a change of essence. If a bullfrog decides that he is no longer a bullfrog he cannot deconvert to a tadpole.
I will only attempt here to explain why from my own experience it is very difficult for me to wrap my head around deconversion. I can however understand "I used to believe in God, but I no longer do," since as an agnostic I went through many changes of mind from agnostic to theist and back again. But that was mere mental assent. My heart remained hardened to a belief in a Personal God with Whom I could relate.
When I was 26 years old, I underwent a change that affected the entirety of my life, not just a change of mind akin to believing in life on other planets or some such. It was as if I awoke from a dream and for the first time faced a world vibrant with reality. It was like my previously black & white world had not only been colorized in a way that would put Ted Turner to shame, but it had elevated from 2D to 3D. The Light not only shone on the external world but on my inward world as well, illuminating all my sins and revealing the amazingness of the amazing grace that dealt with them. My suffering was not replaced by joy; it TURNED INTO joy. It still does. I suffer more now than I ever did before age 26, but I never knew then that the unspeakable joy which springs from such suffering and in which my life is now grounded was ever even possible.
OK, enough of that. I could go on and on trying but most likely failing at describing the impact of my conversion, but why give 5wize the opportunity for shallow mockery? I haven't even mentioned the PERSONAL touch of Jesus Christ as the ultimate cause of all I've typed. I'm not proselytizing here with any illusion that I can convert others. I just wanted y'all to understand why I find it hard to swallow these "deconversion" anecdotes. I do not doubt that one can change one's mind about Christianity. But to willingly choose to reject the Light of Christ which illuminates all that is, was or ever will be and to return to the dark dungeon of a corrupt and fallen world in which one detects no redemption, well, that seems to me to require a spiritual masochism, the existence of which I cannot fathom.
There's a lot more to a conversion than changing your mind about a theological doctrine. You can't think your way out of a rebirth any more than you can think your way out of your first birth. Sure, you can repress the Light (don't know why you'd want to) and you can even shake your puny fist at Him, and if so will have to deal with the consequences of a judgement worse than if you'd never been reborn, but I can't imagine why you would. It'd be like a freed slave cursing William Wilberforce. Why would he?
