People come to faith for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they are born into it, other times they have a Paul-like moment, where everything just snaps. Other times, like for me, it’s a return to the faith.
Hello and welcome. My name is Dustin White, and I’m an ex-evangelical, former atheist, and an anti-apologist. For most of my life, I’ve been on a faith journey that I didn’t always know where it would lead me. But over the last few years, I’ve felt a calling to do something with all of this background, which in turn led to a goal of starting a church. A church that is focused on education, and bringing academia into the public sphere.
But I figured that it may be useful to give my own background, my journey, a testimony if you will, to see where I’m coming from. And maybe in doing so, it will help explain why I believe there is a need for a new sort of outreach. One that doesn’t necessarily seek to convert, but instead brings people to a place where they can make an informed choice. Or at the very least, have their questions answered. Something I wish I had early on in my journey.
Evanglical
I grew up in an Evangelical Christian household. If you had asked me how that was 15 years ago, I would have had a lot of criticism for the faith. I would have had a lot of anger for the faith. It had been a faith I had thoroughly rejected. Not just Evangelical Christianity, but all of Christianity.
At the time though, it was something that was incredibly important to me. One of my first memories was asking Jesus into my heart. I was only 3 or 4 at the time, and I didn’t fully comprehend what I was doing, but it was important nonetheless.
Growing up, this would be a central point in my life. Before school, I’d wake up in the morning to read the Bible. And not just one Bible, but I would compare different translations. After reading through the Bible, I began reading every other book on the faith that I could get. My parents had a small library, and I went through each book, one by one. When I ran into something I didn’t understand, I’d find another book that would help me further understand what I was reading.
Once I read through those, I started reading the books at our church, and then any book I could find at the school library that might connect. It was there that I became familiar with C.S. Lewis, with the Chronicles of Narnia, and then the Screwtape Letters.
I was spirit-filled, born again, fully devoted. And then, I wasn’t.
If you had asked me at the time why I had rejected the faith, I would probably have repeated the rhetoric put forth by the New Atheist movement. It was an abusive religion. It preyed on people. It cherry-picked scripture. It was all about power. I had been angry, but I also had had many questions, and atheist writers seemed to have the answers I was looking for, and justification for the way I was feeling.
Looking back now, it was much more complicated. I truly did have questions. Those questions were initially fueled by the 1999 movie, “Stigmata.” The film introduced me to the idea of “lost gospels,” specifically the Gospel of Thomas. From there, it was a snowball effect. I “discovered” other lost gospels, and books that were supposedly removed from the Bible.
Which just raised more questions. Why were these books removed? What was the church trying to hide? If the Bible had been torn apart like this, how could the Bible be trusted at all? And with the internet, there were so many answers that could be found. Not the correct answers, but answers nonetheless.
But in truth, the answers I found fit within something larger that was occurring; a rebellion. It’s a rebellion many have experienced. A rebellion that individuals like Lewis or Sigmund Freud had. Both would rebel against the religions of their fathers; for Lewis, that was against Christianity, for Freud, it was Judaism.
It wasn’t just a rejection of their father’s religion though; it was a rebellion in part against their fathers themselves. Lewis would eventually come back to the faith, and become one of the great English apologists. Freud never would find that path back, even though it was something he would struggle with for the rest of his life.
The sort of rebellion and rejection I went through wasn’t uncommon, but unlike Freud, and more in line with Lewis, I eventually found my way back into the faith. A big reason for that is because like Lewis, I found my own way back. I found that the answers I thought I had under the New Atheist movement didn’t hold up, and I discovered the actual answers I was looking for in deeper study.
This is a process many go through. Kids rebel, they get angry, they reject and challenge the ideas they are raised with. And often, they lose the faith they grew up with whether completely, or partially. It’s a major struggle, that gets piled on with additional challenges and questions.
And waiting with answers for these individuals are often those who will continue tearing down that faith. Because the manner in which many Christians approach this just doesn’t work, as the foundation they are working with is what is being questioned. Reading the Bible, just having faith, relying on Christian dogma falls flat as many of the questions that are being posed are challenging those facets.
Instead, what appears to be the best answers, the most intellectual responses are posed by atheist writers who are intent on tearing faith down. The arguments they posed seem rational, and they justify what the person is feeling. Often, this ends up leading to even more anger, and resentment, as that person now feels even more like they have been abused and taken advantage of.
Now, I do want to be clear that atheism isn’t the problem. Atheists in general aren’t the problem. Through my own faith journey, I’ve met many atheists who helped build up my views. Who provided answers and sources that helped me become better informed. But often, the most vocal atheists that I first ran into were those who were angry like me, and like me, had a bone to pick.
For me, that led me down a path of what I call militant atheism. It wasn’t just that I lacked faith, but that faith was irrational, and a detriment to society. It was dangerous, and thus it needed to be taken down. And within this movement, all the questions I had seemed to be answered.
This all built upon itself. And since many of the ideas that were being challenged were so fundamental, it led me to question everything. Even if I had attempted to patch up each crack in my faith, there were hundreds of more that were forming, and the Christian background I had simply was ill-prepared to build a new foundation.
It wasn’t just my faith that I questioned though. It was everything. And because my actual thought process never changed, I became susceptible to conspiracy theories. If you could think of a conspiracy theory around the mid-2000s, I probably either accepted it, or at least entertained it.
Some of these were based on my mistrust of religion and the view that the church was trying to hide something. Thus, the ideas of Zechariah Stitchen, and his views on the Anunnaki, which tied into Biblical tales, made perfect sense. The ideas pushed by the book, “Holy Blood, Holy Grail,” that Jesus was married and had a child, only added to my belief that the church was hiding the truth.
And if the church, this powerful organization, was hiding things, what about our own government? Obviously, 9/11 was an inside job. JFK, clearly there was a second shooter and it was all planned. I share all of this just to show what sort of breakdown there was. Trust in my beliefs had fundamentally failed, and everything was questioned.
Ironically, the exact same sort of uncritical thinking that some atheists criticize radical evangelicals for was the same sort of thinking that not only I had as a militant atheist, but was common in that realm. The views I took were not unique within the community I had then belonged to. The thought process never changed, only the ideas did.
Eventually, some of those views would be further challenged. Specifically, those dealing with Jesus. Because before long, the very idea that Jesus existed at all was rejected. And boy could I argue that position.
But it was all a farce. The answers I had found were shallow, and never actually held up. They were easy answers, readily available. But they lacked substance. The more I dug, the more it became apparent that my thinking was off again. That I accepted things too uncritically. And once again, I had to question everything, including the very means by which I thought and did research.
This was no small feat. Finding actual substance that made sense was much harder than what I had been doing. For me, finding the answers I needed led me down a path of academia; going to college for religious studies, for theology. It meant diving into the scholarship, listening to lectures, seeking out experts, engrossing myself in my studies. Most importantly, it meant learning how to do proper research.
All the answers I had sought were there. The information I had needed in order to form rebuttals against the previous “answers” I had been given, was at my fingertips. Things I thought were issues, like the supposed missing books of the Bible, no longer were actual issues, as the why was explained in a manner that made sense, and that could be supported.
It was exactly what I needed in order to find my way to the Christian faith, and to be secure in it. But it wasn’t something that was readily accessible. The path I took isn’t one for most people. It doesn’t make sense for most people. It was where I felt called to, but that was just me. And the fact is, when looking for answers, it’s not the one most will choose, because there are those who will give them much easier answers that are so much more readily available. That don’t require large investments of time and finances. Nor should they have to do such.
The issue is that there is a disconnect between academia and the general public. There is a void there that these individuals involved in academia aren’t attempting to fill, and instead, others have filled it themselves. This leads to massive amounts of misinformation, and misunderstandings, that end up running rampant.
What I’m trying to do, what the mission of the church I’m trying to build, is to help correct that, and extend a hand to those who are struggling with their faith, and can’t find the answers they need. To help build a bridge between academia and faith. My goal is to help reach those on the margins, or near the margins, and give them the resources they need to make informed decisions about their own faith. So as to not lead them to the faith, but to help them find their own path.
If I had something like this as my faith was breaking apart, as I was going through my journey, I may still have become an atheist, but it would have looked much different. The faulty thinking and reasoning I had could have been kept in check. But more so, I could have been presented quality information, accurate information, that addressed my concerns, and gave me what I needed to make an informed decision. Hopefully, I can help with that for others.
Finishing up, one thing I need to make clear is that none of these changes in my perspective, in my beliefs, were snap decisions. It took time. As I moved from being an evangelical Christian to an atheist, I explored other ideas, including Islam. For a while, I practiced Judaism. Even while I was an atheist, I was deeply intrigued by Eastern philosophy.
It was a gradual change. When I came back to the faith, it was no different. For years after I came back to theism, I distanced myself from the term Christian. I continued to study Eastern philosophy, and I dove into flavors of Christian theology, as it took time to figure things out.
Even now, I’m still figuring it out. It’s a journey I will be on for the rest of my life. And for many others, it’s no different. Because of this, unlike much of modern apologetics, there is no need to ram through views. We can address new questions, ponder them, provide the information on both sides. We can allow all of this to be complicated, and in need of deep discussions that may not come up with fully satisfying answers. We can allow this to be a journey to taken.