Today I spoke with Tim Sledge, who was a Southern Baptist preacher for 35 years before fully examining the worldview claims of Christianity and ultimately deconverting.
We discussed many topics, including:
• Facing a childhood with an alcoholic father, and consequently, from an early age, seeking something stable and safe in his life, which Christianity provided.
• Being exhorted at a young age to choose heaven or hell.
• As a teenager, going to "Revival" services that called people to get saved, repent of sin, and consider full-time ministry.
• Seeing many "exceptions to faith" such as fellow Christians displaying severe racism toward black people and people having a radical salvation story but then quickly "falling away."
• Starting to think and talk more about depression, anxiety, recovery, vulnerability, and healing from the past -- and realizing that it was much more impactful than prayer and discipleship.
• Experiencing a Pastor tell him that he was "permanently broken."
• Starting to turn off the "confirmation bias" he had lived with as a Christian.
• Affirming that people he knew who were gay had not chosen to be gay, that being gay was not a sin, and that the Yahweh character could not be a loving father if he would torture people forever in hell.
• Crossing the deconstruction threshold into admitting that the Bible was not inerrant and was therefore untrustworthy.
• Concluding that he no longer believed in Jesus or the god of any religion.
• Observing Christians express revulsion and fear over his deconversion.
• Entering a 10-year phase of being a "quiet atheist."
• Sharing his journey through his books and social media, with a special focus on helping others not feel alone, correcting the Biblical messages he used to preach, and making it clear that truth matters.
• Experiencing Christians shunning, snarking, discarding those of us who deconvert.
• Dealing with the grief and amazement at how we let ourselves believe the Bible and cling to the Christian worldview for so long.
• Remembering how, when we were Christians, other fellow Christians would advise us to see "doubt" as the enemy and to simply "keep running the race."
• Realizing that the "spell of belief" makes it nearly impossible for many Christians to seriously consider challenges to what they believe. In addition, the possibility that what they believe is not true is so daunting for many believers that they cannot bring themselves to seriously address even the most obvious problems with their belief system.
• The importance of not giving in to toxic shame.
• Acknowledging that childhood indoctrination is psychological child abuse.
Thanks to Tim for sharing his story, for his many books, and for all he does for the community!
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Read Tim's books:
www.amazon.com/stores/Tim-Sle...
Buy his greeting cards:
theencouragement.store
Follow Tim Sledge on Twitter:
/ goodbye_jesus
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linktr.ee/harmonicatheist
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Tim may be reached by email at: harmonicatheist@yahoo.com
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Thanks!
--Tim
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Ending music by Eyal Raz, "Friends"
• Friends
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