Leaving the Garden, Paper written for English Comp. 101

It's Sunday morning in a little church in America's Bible Belt, and most of the congregation is worshipping, singing its praises to God. Some are shouting. A few are weeping. If you're lucky, somebody might speak in tongues, an event that happens nearly every Sunday yet never fails to leave those in attendance in a state of awe. Imagine a message straight from God, direct orders from the President of Everything. The short gray-haired woman who bursts out in tongues nearly every Sunday, she's like Jesus' own Tom Brokaw with a breaking news bulletin. The singing is loud, forceful yet graceful. The people who come here to worship do so proudly and loudly.

Somewhere in the middle of all this noise, this praise, this commotion of emotion, is me not paying attention. I'm hearing Jesus' own Tom Brokaw speaking in tongues and taking it as my cue to wonder, "Did I finish my algebra homework this weekend?" I'm mumbling the words to Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" while the real-life Christians drown it out with hymns, totally oblivious. To them, I could be any God-fearing young adult, my blank visage expressing regular teenage indifference rather than active rebellion. It isn't as if I pretend to be a Christian because I enjoy deceiving people. I'm not a wolf in sheep's clothing; I'm just a sheep in a different kind of sheep's clothing. I'm a freethinker among the faithful, an atheist among angels. I'm really not even here on my own accord. This situation I'm in has its genesis in a telephone conversation that took place years ago.

The real-life Christian seventh grade version of me was talking to a close friend, Laura, on the phone. Outside in the hot sun, lying across the trunk of the family Grand Am with the cordless phone nestled between my shoulder and ear, I noticed how uncommonly nice the day was. Birds resting on telephone wires, clouds reflected off the back windshields of cars parked along the road, a breeze occasionally blew leaves and paper across the hot black street pavement. It wasn't perfect, but it was nice. All this beautiful nature hidden in this suburban setting could've been the modern Garden of Eden, if only Adam and Eve could control their appetites.

Outside, speaking to Laura on the cordless phone, topics seemed to change quickly. Discussions could segue from television to music to politics so rapidly, you wouldn't notice. For the first time, one of our conversations drifted to religion. I mentioned that I was a Christian, and Laura calmly replied, "Really? I don't believe in God." It seems ridiculous to me now, but those words hit me hard, like a freight train you don't see until it's too late. I always knew Laura wasn't particularly religious, but I had until this point assumed she at least believed in God. After all, only prison inmates and scientists don't believe in God, and they don't really count as people, right?

My concern as a real-life Christian sprung up immediately in the form of the question, "Why not?" I felt I had a genuine right to make this girl justify her disbelief. I anticipated her answer eagerly, as if somehow in this instant she would decide she was wrong and everything would be peachy keen again. Instead, she replied, "I don't know, I just never had a reason to. No evidence."

No evidence? We were discussing important religious matters and she wanted proof? "Okay," I replied smugly, "but you have no evidence that God doesn't exist!" Knowing what I know now, I regret making that statement. When somebody makes a claim, it isn't your job to prove him wrong. It's his job to prove himself right. I understand this now, but at the time, it seemed like a logical thing to say. Rather than continue the argument, she simply acknowledged that she, indeed, couldn't prove me wrong, and seemed content to end the discussion there. I, however, was not.

I asked her if she would at least consider becoming a Christian. Laura may've been a horrible, vile, godless heathen, but she was still a friend of mine, and I was worried about her eternal soul festering away in the part of Hell they send you to for not accepting God's endless love. Laura explained to me that she had already tried religion on several occasions. It simply wasn't for her. Period.

Pacing outside in front of my house in the modern Garden of Eden, I was becoming frustrated. All I wanted was for my friend to accept that God existed and that He was the only God and that there was no point in questioning Him, ever. Was that really so difficult? My anxiety must've become obvious to Laura, who, for the first time in the entire religion conversation, asked a question. "Why do you believe in God?"

I hesitated to respond. There was a good answer to this question. I knew there was. I had a perfectly logical reason for believing in God. Nobody believes in something "just because." I tried to think of any bit of proof I could, any shred of evidence that might suggest God existed. I'd show this atheist yet, I would! I remembered the things I had learned in church, but all that really taught me was what the Bible said. You can't exactly prove the Bible by citing the Bible. I dug back deeper, really deeply. I dug back all the way to my days in Vacation Bible School, hoping that maybe I had some life-altering experience with God when I was younger that I had blocked out. I didn't find anything. As it turns out, the closest you get to Jesus in Vacation Bible School is making macaroni replicas of the cross they executed Him on.

I was dumbfounded. Christianity was something I had believed in for so long, something I had believed in so strongly, yet now I couldn't even begin to justify those beliefs. In what could only be described as a dead stupor, I said, "I don't know." Despite my difficulty in answering Laura's question, she seemed to have no problem with it at all. "You believe in God," she said, "because your parents do and because you've been trained to all your life."

No, no, no, that couldn't be it. I wouldn't just believe something because I'm told to too, that's not my style. True, my mother was a devout Christian who made sure my siblings and I attended church whenever possible, and no, maybe I had never actually stopped to question my religion, but a good Christian isn't supposed to bother himself with facts and logic! Rather than continue arguing, Laura and I agreed to disagree, and that was supposed to be it. The conversation between us switched to a different topic, but I wasn't paying attention anymore. My mind was dealing with this new conflict. Right here, in the modern Garden of Eden, Laura had offered me the Fruit of Forbidden Knowledge. Maybe I didn't eat it immediately, but I didn't let it spoil. Over the next few days, the next few months, the things Laura had made me realize weighed heavily over my head. Just like Adam being ejected from the Garden, I was realizing my nakedness, and I was blushing.

I prayed to God, to Jesus, to anybody upstairs who would listen, that They would guide me back to the truth, back to the light. Anytime in my life prior to this moment, when I prayed I didn't bother listening for an answer because I had always assumed He would take care of things, in some form or another. This time I listened. I listened for any reassurance God might have for me, any Holy Father-to-son advice He could give me in this time of crisis, but He refused to make His presence known. My dad wasn't the kind of person who left town for days at a time, so this whole negligent Father thing was new to me.

I can't say exactly when I stopped believing. It wasn't an immediate event, but rather a slow process, and a painful one at that. Coming to grips with the fact that God is as real as Santa Claus is difficult, to say the least. Fortunately, the pain doesn't necessarily have to last forever. I eventually managed to accept what I knew was growing inside of me. This would probably seem entirely backwards to most Christians, but the more I lost my faith, the more I felt complete. I didn't feel as if I was looking at the world through the keyhole of religion. Instead, I had kicked the door wide open with reckless abandon and invited the world to expose itself. I'm no longer ashamed of my disbelief; I realize just how naked I am, and that's perfectly fine. I'm the open atheist, standing up for what I don't believe in. In fact, there's only one group of people close to me to whom I have yet to reveal my rejection of Christianity: my family.

My family—not only my immediate family, but also my extended family—still think I'm a believer. The fact is, nearly everybody I'm related to is a Christian--my mother, brother, sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. My nephews aren't quite old enough to understand the concept of religion, but they at least vaguely know who God is and that He makes it rain. My father is really the only person who doesn't seem to have any strong religious faith, though I'm pretty sure he believes God exists. The main reason these people don't know I'm an atheist is because of Mom. Keeping my disbelief a secret from her means keeping it a secret from the entire family, as such information would inevitably make its way back to her. This isn't a secret I plan to keep forever, but for the time being, I feel like protecting her. Mom is the type of person who will "blame" herself for my atheism, and I'd like to enjoy at least a few months more of her not hating herself over something that was my decision (especially a decision I'm happy with). For now, though, I'm keeping her in the dark. I still attend church with her, even if it is a waste of a perfectly good Sunday morning. I love my mother, and if sitting through an hour or two of singing and praising and God's breaking news bulletins means providing her with a bit of comfort, so be it. Of course, she doesn't know I'm humming Nirvana. She also doesn't know that when we're discussing religion and I mention something about the Bible contradicting itself, I'm doing more than just playing the Devil's advocate. She doesn't know that when she tells me to say my prayers before eating a meal, I'm really counting, one Mississippi, two Mississippi...

Of course, I do plan to tell her, and when I do, I'm telling her the whole story, not just the sad, depressing parts. I'm going to tell her that I don't regret losing my faith, I'm going to tell her that the couple years of guilt were worth it, that she didn't do anything wrong. I'll tell her not to worry about her son, because he's happy now.

I think the Bible got the whole Garden of Eden thing wrong. Adam's eating that fig was probably the best thing that could've happened to him. The Garden may've been beautiful, but it was just a fraction of what the world had to offer. Imagine if Adam had rejected Eve's Forbidden Fruit; he'd still be there. I'm sure Eden was beautiful, but you can only take a small amount of perfection for so long before you want more, and it doesn't matter if what you get is beautiful or horrible; having the whole picture is always infinitely greater than having the most desirable part.

A quick tip for those who feel like venturing outside of Eden: don't bother blushing when you realize you're naked. We're all naked.

Pwned. Awesome use of literary technique. Quite well-written.

Propxors.

Thanks for the comments.

Nice quick read, interesting way you put it there. (AKA nice use of metaphors)

This post has been edited by Web on Nov 11 2005, 01:14 AM

I usually dont read stories people put in here. I never to care about them.

But this time I read all of that. Very well written. In a lot of ways it makes me think about myself.

Dude, this is so long! I think you might win...

I'm a Christian myself, but since I got to college, it's made me wonder about some things and admittedly, some of the things I wonder about these days even possibly cross into the territory of atheism.

I'm not going to drop my faith however, because it has helped me sort through a lot of the more troubling moments in my life, but with what goes on here and there, it makes me think sometimes.

Oh HERself.

Ya, think about that

Great work, make's you think of what can go on in place's you know nothing of.

Good read, it was able to keep my attention the whole way through the thing.

Good Luck With telling your mother and the competition

Excellently written, and seriously, it makes me think about my own religious state yet.

Thats how it always is for me exactly.