Believing Again – A Testimony of Unbelief

When I was eighteen, I was preparing to get baptised, and part of the service included me sharing my testimony. The testimony of how I became a Christian, how God had changed my life, and why I was choosing to get baptised. The purpose of this was partly evangelistic, to share what had transformed my life in the hope it might lead to a similar transformation in somebody else. It was also really helpful for me as a self-reflection, to enable me to work out for myself exactly why I was making this decision, and to give me a written record to look back at in the future. I’ve blogged a lot recently about the ways my faith has changed and deconstructed. But I still get a lot of people asking me what happened. What caused my deconstruction, and the changes in my faith and beliefs? This post is an attempt to answer that question, a ‘Testimony of Unbelief’ if you like.

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Struggling to Sing

A huge part of church life, at least at the church I attend, involves singing. Every service or meeting we have involves some form of “worship”. Singing songs, usually with an acoustic guitar, about or to God. I used to love this, worship used to be my favourite thing to do. The songs filled my iPod, I played the drums in the band most weeks, and when I wasn’t I was in the front row of church with my hands raised high. Worship was a way I connected with God in a really intimate way, I loved it.

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Feeling Empty

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post. I’d meant to blog regularly about my journey doing atheism for lent, but I’ve found it extremely difficult to put into words what’s been going on. The readings have been extremely interesting. Honestly I’ve found a lot of them to be extremely difficult to read and get my head around, but perhaps that’s just because I’m not used to reading philosophy. I’m really looking forward to having some more time to read them again once the course is finished and understand them even more.

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Picking Up The Pieces

I walked out of church on Sunday. After the talk, the leader of the service got up and asked if anybody who wanted to have a fresh experience of God wanted to come forwards for prayer. I went forward, desperate for something. Desperate to feel the love that I had felt so many times before, the closeness and presence of God that had once been so familiar. But I felt nothing. I tried not to hype anything up, I tried to make myself as open as possible, but as my friend prayed that I would experience the joy of God I just felt empty. I got back to my seat, the worship team kicked in with a song, and I felt a sudden urge to run. I grabbed my jacket and scarf and ran for the door, past my friends and out onto the street. I headed down the road and found myself sitting against a wall in floods of tears. I was a mess.

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Christmas

If you hadn’t noticed it’s that time of year again. The trees are up, decorations are everywhere and all over the world people are buying presents for their loved ones. In amongst the parties, food and festivities, there’s a story that we like to tell. Whether we are religious or not, whether the story is the centre of everything we believe or just a fairytale, we tell the story of the birth of a child some two thousand years ago. The child who would grow up to become one of the most famous figures in history, a rabbi named Jesus, who came to bring hope to the world.

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Can I Be Gay And Christian?

A few years ago I was at a Christian youth festival, working with the detached team. As part of the week, we ran a debate night called “Grill a Christian”, where anyone could come and ask questions to do with faith and life; we would do our best to answer and talk about them. One girl stood up towards the end of the evening and asked the question “Can I be gay and Christian?”…

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