Tag: faith

Cat Links deconstruction

Believing Again – A Testimony of Unbelief

Posted on gord

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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Cat Links deconstruction

Don’t Doubt

Posted on gord

The story of ‘Doubting Thomas’ is often used to portray doubt as something that is wrong. We’re told that it is something we must fight against, Thomas is portrayed as somebody of weak faith and if we doubt, we need to strengthen our faith so we don’t become like him. Because nobody wants to be a doubting Thomas.

Well nobody except me.

You see, right now I can see a lot of myself in Thomas. I’ve been doubting a lot over the last couple of years, and it’s been a real struggle. But I’ve slowly come to realise that doubt and scepticism aren’t things I should avoid or run away from, but are in fact totally normal and should be embraced.

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Cat Links deconstruction

Jesus the Atheist

Posted on gord

For a few months now, I’ve been having huge doubts in my faith. If you’ve followed my blog at all during that time you’ll know all about it, I’ve been pretty open. Growing up in the Christian Faith, I’ve seen and encountered God in undeniable ways. I’ve felt the presence of God being with me, I’ve seen and experienced healing and miracles as a result of prayer, and I’ve seen people’s lives transformed when they’ve encountered God. However I’ve also experienced times when it has seemed like God is absent, times when my prayers have not been answered. These last few months I’ve experienced the latter. My faith has crumbled piece by piece and the God I once knew feels more absent than ever.

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Cat Links atheism for lent, deconstruction

Standing in the Ruins

Posted on gord

I’ve never really felt like I fit into a box. Ever since I can remember, I’ve always been different. The odd one out. The person that didn’t quite fit in. This has been a huge insecurity of mine for years, as a coping mechanism I often purposely push myself out of the box in one aspect of my life. Something that I can control, in order to feel like it’s my choice rather than just who I am. In school I was really involved in music, and was quite outspoken about my Christian Faith, in college I had a multicoloured mohawk, and more recently I’ve grown an outrageous beard. The theory is that if I define myself by these external things, it distracts from the interior insecurity that I don’t fit in.

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Cat Links atheism for lent

Feeling Empty

Posted on gord

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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Cat Links atheism for lent

Loosening My Grip

Posted on gord

I love travelling, as I write this I’m sitting in ‘Jardin Majorelle’, Marrakech. I’ve spent the last three days travelling through the Atlas Mountains to the Sahara Desert. In the mountains we saw the snow and threw some snowballs, before travelling to some traditional Berber villages and drinking copious amounts of tea. We then travelled to the desert (frequently stopping along the bumpy roads for cigarette breaks, chicken tagine and more tea), took a camel two hour camel ride from Merzouga into the Sahara and settled to camp for the night before heading back to Marrakech the next morning.

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Cat Links deconstruction

Picking Up The Pieces

Posted on gord

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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Cat Links deconstruction

Ends and Beginnings

Posted on gord

As I mentioned in my previous post, in the last couple of years I’ve been on a journey of deconstructing my faith. The ways I looked at the world, the ways I understood my faith, God, religion and what that meant for me have been totally ripped apart. Safe to say it has been, and still is, extremely painful. The glass box shattered, my foundations were gone, in many ways the faith I had grown up with was dead.

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Cat Links deconstruction

Losing Faith

Posted on gord

Through my youth I was what I call a super Christian. I went to every Christian event I could, from festivals to prayer nights to worship conferences. All the music I listened to was Christian, I was involved in as many church activities as I could fit in my calendar, played in the church band, sang in the choir, lead in the youth group, the list goes on. I was so passionate about Jesus, so on fire for my faith and so excited to tell everyone I could about the ‘good news’.

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Cat Links Uncategorised

Christmas

Posted on gord

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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