The Day I Stopped Believing In God

I haven't brushed my hair yet. I wanted to post this first.

This is an essay about my relationship with religion. This is not meant to glorify or condemn any else’s relationship with religion. This is simply how I feel and what I think and some of my past experiences.

I remember very clearly the day I stopped believing in God.

Now, to be fair, my belief in God was not well-founded. I grew up with an atheist father and a mother who didn’t really care enough about church to argue the point with him (Mama, correct me if I’m wrong there), so we never went to church when I was growing up. Not even at Christmas or Easter. Of course, since America is a Christian-centric culture (Christians, I don’t mean to be judgmental by saying that, it’s simply true), I grew up with a vague understanding that there was supposed to be this all-knowing, all-loving God floating around somewhere. I remember struggling to understand this, as a child, when other children told me things like “God is in all of us”, because I wasn’t too keen on some old dude I didn’t know camping out in my sternum (or wherever I thought my heart was back then). But since we didn’t go to church, I didn’t really have anyone to ask, and I eventually just shrugged and said “whatever” and moved on with my life.

I feel it’s important to state at this point that though I wasn’t well-acquainted with God as a deity, I went to a private Quaker school as a young child, and there was a lot of talk there about tolerance, love, and celebrating differences. Of course, I didn’t realize that the quiet time we had at the beginning and ending of every school day was religious in nature, I just knew it was sometimes annoying (when I was eager to start having fun) and sometimes welcome (when I was tired and needed some quiet to gather my thoughts). I knew that not only did my school celebrate Christmas, we also celebrated Kwanzaa and Hannukah (and I’m sure these days they recognize Ramadan and such too), which meant it was three times as awesome. I credit the Kwanzaa celebration for introducing me to my first pomegranate, because we sat in a big circle and passed around plates of fruit. I see that early training as a really good thing, because it helped me become the person I am. Still, even though I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Quakers, it isn’t enough to make me want to become Christian.

At any rate, the summer after my third year in grade school, my parents informed my brothers and I that we would be moving to Springfield, Missouri. I didn’t understand, at the time, that it was because my dad had finished his medical residency and was getting his first real (well-paying) job as a doctor. All I understood was that I would have to leave all my friends and beloved teachers behind, and go somewhere new, and I was not thrilled at the prospect. Still, there was nothing to be done, and so I said goodbye to Durham, NC, and we made the move to Springfield, MO.

At the time of the move, we had two Dobermans, named Kish and Sonja. They were our family dogs, although they loved my dad best (well he loved them a lot too), but they were the best dogs we ever had, intelligent, loyal, loving, sweet, silly, and overall just the epitome of good family dogs. They made the trek in the minivan with me, my two brothers and my long-suffering mother (my father had gone ahead to get a house and take the big moving truck). Don’t worry, they’ll be important later.

Missouri was an intense culture shock, to all of us. Durham, NC, is one of the most liberal places in the South (only just behind Chapel Hill, really). It’s also very racially and culturally diverse. Missouri was neither of those things, and in fact was so conservative and so non-diverse that I think I only saw two people of color the entire time we lived there.

What’s worse is that Springfield, MO is the headquarters for the Assemblies of God ministries. If you aren’t familiar with them, they’re some of the most closed-minded, self-righteous, bible-beating bigoted Christians you will ever have the misfortune to meet. And me and my agnostic-atheist family had just moved in to the thick of them.

To say I hate Christianity would be a lie. To say that I have a lot of negative feelings toward it would be true, and all of those negative feelings stem from the time we lived in Missouri. I was placed in a public school, which was an almost new experience for me. When I innocently informed my classmates that I wasn’t really sure if I believed in God or not, I was informed that I was going to Hell. Constantly. I was witnessed to, I was berated, I was otherwise made to feel like a pariah because I couldn’t state that Jesus was King or whatever it was they wanted me to say. And this was on top of already feeling like an outsider because everyone knew everyone else and no one had any interest in being my friend. So yeah, that made it so my first overt introduction to Christianity was hate-spewing bigots. And that, my friends, is not the best way to go. Trust me on this one.

I endured, as we all did (my parents and brothers had their own struggles, which I can’t really accurately relate because I was very much wrapped up in mine). It wasn’t fun, in fact, next to my parents’ divorce it was one of the worst times in my life thus far. But it all came to a head, for me, one fateful day.

I honestly don’t even remember what time of year it was, but I know it wasn’t winter. The door that led from our laundry room into the garage was having trouble staying shut, and so we were trying to put an invisible fence on that door so if it swung open, the dogs wouldn’t get out. Except, that day, they didn’t have their collars on. Later reports concluded that my older brother was the last one to use the door, although of course none of us blamed him, the stupid thing wouldn’t shut right. The dogs got out of the open door, and out of the open garage door. They ran like crazy, because they didn’t usually get to go out and explore the world like that. It didn’t take them long to find the highway that was close by our house.

I remember, vividly, going out in my babysitter’s car looking for them. I sat in her back seat and I prayed. I had only prayed once or twice before, and neither time it had meant much, but this time I prayed with every ounce of my twelve year old heart. I begged God to please let the dogs be okay, to please let us catch them and find them safe. I clenched my hands until my knuckles were white and I begged so hard. I promised God that if he did this one thing, I would go to church and become a good Christian and never, ever stop believing in him. I told him I would be good for the rest of my life, that I would never be greedy or mean or vain or stupid again. Everything I had been told by my classmates said that if I just opened my heart and accepted God, he would do good things for me. So I told him that if he made sure our dogs were okay, I would do everything he wanted.

I saw Kish, lying on the side of the road, a pool of blood under his mouth. The babysitter wasn’t quick enough to catch me before I saw him, but she made me stay in the car while she talked to the police officer and gathered his body to put in her trunk (there was plastic involved, of course). I never saw Sonja’s body, but she was found and gathered as well. Both of our beloved dogs were cremated at the local vet hospital. And I swore, from that day on, that I would never believe in God.

Those of you who were raised Christian, who had your bible study classes and weekly sermons and stuff, are probably sitting there shaking your heads at how stupid twelve year old me was. “That’s not how it works”, you’re thinking. And I know that, now. I’ve taken classes on religion, and the bible. I am confident in saying that I know more about what the bible says and means than plenty of Christians out there (I mean, feet as a euphemism for genitals? Really?). But none of that makes a difference to twelve year old me. She is still there, wringing her hands and crying and begging God to keep her beloved dogs safe.

I know, logically, that I was never going to be Christian. I am too much like my father, the atheist, too analytical and logical to believe that there could be something like the Christian God out there. And other things that have happened in my life have convinced me that no matter what, I don’t like organized religion for myself, no matter what that religion is. If I believe anything, I want to believe it in private. That one event isn’t the only reason I don’t believe in God. But it was the most definitive nail in the coffin of my potential belief. Because no matter what, I could never believe in a God who allows creatures as simple and loving as dogs to die in the prime of their lives, just from one innocent mistake. And I certainly couldn’t believe in a religion that claims that animals don’t have souls, and thus don’t go to heaven.

In other words, there are a wide variety of reasons why I don’t believe in God. But underneath them all, under the resentment I feel toward bigoted Christians and the skepticism that makes it difficult for me to take anything at face value, there’s a twelve year old girl, crying and begging an imaginary Deity to just save her poor dogs.

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