Spiritual Confessions of an Agnostic

By C. M. Blakeson

For some, religious people who think and act irrationally can be confounding, while for others, unbelievers who dont see the reality of God are just as baffling.

C. M. Blakeson, an agnostic who grew up living a fundamentalist lifestyle in Kansas, explores both perspectives in this candid memoir. From his initial journey to Jesus to his deepening belief in fundamentalist Pentecostalism, he explores how religion affected his thoughts on love and life.

With God rooted as such a reality for him, he never imagined hed one day become an agnosticor how happy hed be to reach such nonreligious enlightenment. Now he seeks to battle misconceptions about agnosticism. Get the true definition of agnosticism, learn how to break free from spiritual bondage, and join Blakeson as he seeks to understand various religions.

If youve ever pondered what goes through the minds of fundamentalists, or if youre a religious person who wonders why your best friend left the faith, Spiritual Confessions of an Agnostic seeks to help you find answers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abbott Press
• Release date: Jan 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781458207951

C. M. Blakeson

C. M. Blakeson has a bachelor’s degree in religion studies from Baker University, a private university in Baldwin City, Kansas. He has spent most of his life in Kansas. He now enjoys traveling to different countries to explore different cultures and religions.

Book preview

SPIRITUAL

CONFESSIONS

of an

AGNOSTIC

C. M. Blakeson

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SPIRITUAL CONFESSIONS OF AN AGNOSTIC

Copyright © 2013 C. M. Blakeson.

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ISBN: 978-1-4582-0797-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4582-0796-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4582-0795-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013901619

Abbott Press rev. date: 1/22/2013

Contents

INTRODUCTION

PART I      MY TESTIMONY

CHAPTER 1      MY UPBRINGING, MY INITIAL ROAD TO JESUS

CHAPTER 2      THE BIRDS, THE BEES, AND THE PULPIT

CHAPTER 3      THE SINNER’S PRAYER

CHAPTER 4      THE SEED IN SHALLOW SOIL

CHAPTER 5      THE PENTECOSTAL YEARS BEGIN

CHAPTER 6      THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

CHAPTER 7      THE DISCERNING OF SPIRITS

CHAPTER 8      A SOLID ROCK ON AN ISLAND

CHAPTER 9      MY FIRST TASTE OF OBJECTIVITY

CHAPTER 10      SO SEND I YOU

CHAPTER 11      LABORING IN THE FIELD

CHAPTER 12      SEPARATED FROM THE PLOUGH

CHAPTER 13      THE DARK SIDE OF GRACE

CHAPTER 14      GROWING IN MY LOSS

PART II      MY NEW UNCONCLUSIONS

CHAPTER 15      DEFINING MY AGNOSTICISM

CHAPTER 16      UNLEARNING THE MEANING OF LIFE

CHAPTER 17      UNLEARNING THE AFTERLIFE

CHAPTER 18      UNDERSTANDING TRUE MORALITY

CHAPTER 19      THE CYCLE OF RELIGION

CHAPTER 20      FAITH AND THE OCCULT

CHAPTER 21      OBSERVING COMPLEXITY

CHAPTER 22      THE BROKEN MIRROR

CHAPTER 23      GOD’S CHOSEN NATION

CHAPTER 24      A LETTER TO CONSERVATIVE RELIGIOUS AMERICA

CHAPTER 25      LOOKING BACK

SOURCES CITED BY CHAPTER

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

INTRODUCTION

This book will not change your life. I wish it would, but it won’t. I don’t expect people to change their beliefs if they read this book from cover to cover.

So why would I even write this book? Why would I even get involved with religious terminologies, philosophies, or ideas of spirituality if I don’t expect ideological changes? It could easily turn into another religious debate book about the existence versus nonexistence of God, and we all know what a headache that debate can be.

I personally don’t care about those who are trying to convert people to any dogmatic ideas about religion. I’m more interested in why people believe the way they do. When people drop the semantics and truthfully admit why they believe something, that’s when the childish black-and-white lines of dogma finally get broken. But that’s also why these lines never get broken. People are rarely honest about why they hold onto their beliefs, while others are ignorant about why. Many could be a mixture of both.

I am an agnostic. I wasn’t always that way. I was a diehard, born-again, living-in-the-spirit Christian. I never expected to depart from the faith, and any of my old church friends would be shocked to read this confession. It was the hardest transformation that ever occurred in my life but also one of the greatest. Being against such beliefs as a Christian, I never knew how much agnosticism would enhance me.

Many people have huge misconceptions about agnosticism, fueled by the vast amount of Christian-versus-atheist propaganda. Many of the religious people I come in contact with can’t even define agnostic correctly, so it’s no wonder they can’t evaluate us correctly. If you’re not sure what agnosticism is, I will define that for you in Chapter 15 after I show you the trail that led me there.

This book could also interest the nonreligious. Those who weren’t raised in a conservative religious culture seem constantly perplexed at how people could possibly believe such illogical and even absurd religions. I was one of them, and I couldn’t have been more deeply involved as one of them. So this could explain a lot to outsiders looking in.

Part I is modeled after what Christians call their testimony—in other words, how I came to know the saving grace of Christianity. Let me reiterate that I am not writing this expecting to convince people of any belief. Rather, I wish to show why people believe in Christianity. For that reason, I am writing this testimony as if I were still my past Christian self. I want to show you my previous state of mind, which is the mind-set shared by so many dedicated Christians. For nonbelievers, this may seem emotive or irrational. Others may look at the Pentecostal years of this testimony as a completely made-up fairy-tale. It’s not. I will not embellish or exaggerate my Pentecostal experiences.

You will also be tempted to write this off as an overly personal detailed autobiography. I can assure you I don’t wish to give you my dirty laundry anymore than I want any of yours.

In Part I, I have left out many irrelevant details of my own life. The purpose for writing Part I was to portray a lifecycle of the devoted religious American.

On the flipside, Christians may relate all too well with this first segment of the book, as long as they are being honest with themselves. Many will try and block out, or explain away, everything I write—including the points where I agree with them!—because they are threatened by a renounced Christian’s reverse testimony. The charismatic branches of Christianity will find the Pentecostal years eerily real—again, if they’re not busy defending themselves against everything I say.

The end of Part I will deal with the not-so-fun years where I came to lose my faith. Part II then addresses the thought processes that helped me accept that loss, and show how I was able to embrace my new life in agnosticism. If you’re a Christian, let me say again that I know you won’t leave the beliefs you were raised in, which you hold so dear. I’m not expecting that. Just as I want nonreligious people to better understand the reasons behind Christianity, I also want Christians to better understand why their flock go astray. Instead of interpreting alternative beliefs through a Christian filter, I want you to see agnosticism through the eyes of an agnostic. Dropping the filter will not deconvert you. Nobody has to convert to any belief in order to learn from it.

Leaving Christianity was the hardest thing I ever did. Knowing that, I don’t predict many others will do so. Instead, I make an attempt to cut the dividing lines that are drawn to prevent us from understanding each other. I hope this will benefit you as much as growing in these experiences has benefited me.

PART I

MY TESTIMONY

CHAPTER 1

MY UPBRINGING,

MY INITIAL ROAD TO JESUS

I grew up in a small town in the state of Kansas. I now call Kansas the buckle of the Bible Belt, but I never really thought of that term, Bible Belt, until around my college days. I stayed in that small town all my life until the end of my young-adult years, and to this day, my parents still live there. I can recall our frequent vacations to Branson, Missouri, and Colorado City, Colorado. That was the family’s idea of exotic.

As a child, I couldn’t see such a place as a region because my parents never moved elsewhere. To a child, that is a world; a small world, mind you, but a child can’t see any others.

My parents’ desire to stay in one place, and their reluctance to move, was due to cultural upbringing. You live in your small town, and you die there. Older folks, of which there were many, never left that city. People living in conservative small towns don’t always think about this, so they would not think to explain that to an outsider. Some don’t even understand how that is embedded in their culture. For such a person, a small town is life.

In the case of my parents, they intentionally wanted me raised there. The mentality was that they wanted their precious baby boy to have a stable environment. They came from two different small-town environments, met in a small-town private university, and then dedicated themselves to raising a family in an agreed-upon small town. I should also note that these towns they were raised in were within close proximity. Throughout their lives, my parents never moved outside this particular region. Throughout my own life, we never moved from our little city.

My conservative environment was home to white American Christians. For religious diversity, there were Catholics and Protestants. For racial diversity, there was a small percentage of African Americans.

To a passerby, a flat and sparsely populated state such as Kansas gives the appearance of a laid-back, relaxed environment. People who love small towns in the United States would say they enjoy the closeness of the community. You know all people by name, and they know you. It’s so close-knit that you can always find someone you know at the grocery store and talk up a storm about the last high school football game, or your new grandson, and of course the latest gossip about silly old Helba Meckelbee.

But that’s when small towns can show their dark side. Since everybody knows everybody, gossip gets around fast. Even the most miniscule mistake would be broadcast across town by the next day, purely by word of mouth. In connection with this gossip, small-town schools become a good breeding ground for bullying.

Equally connected to this problem is the close-minded ideas you find yourself entrenched in. My small Kansas town was full of close-minded jocks, bigots, and a good handful of racists sprinkled in for an extra bitter flavor.

I was born too quiet and gentle-natured to fit in with these ideals but never fully knew the alternatives. This was one of the many reasons I was a magnet for bullies. I was also terribly uncoordinated in my youth, making me a terrible athlete. That made me a chew toy for the bullying jocks, especially during gym class.

I was always more talented in the performing arts—music and theatre—which later led many schoolboys to think I was gay—the ultimate stigma in a conservative community. I would hear fag on numerous occasions. While I was never gay, I could eventually come to empathize with homosexuals who had to grow up with such uncalled-for stigmas, taunts, and threats.

On top of all this, I was physically quite ugly. I had wretchedly crooked teeth and a fat, out-of-shape body, which led to nicknames that my schoolmates gave solely to me; names that are best left forgotten. My whole combination of unforgivable traits in a conservative town branded me with a punching-bag status that I could never get rid of during my young life.

For one of the few outlets I knew, I would make friends with the other ugly and quiet-natured kids and then give them names and stigmas after I learned enough about them. And so the cycle continued. One tore down the other trying and keep everyone on the same level.

It wasn’t much better at home. As I look back now, I can see that my parents faced those same mentalities while growing up in their schools. They didn’t bully me like my classmates did, but when I didn’t fit my parents’ mold, I was less of a man in their eyes. The macho stereotype was the norm for us guys, but I just didn’t have it in me to mimic that. I just didn’t know what was wrong with me.

Since I could never figure out what was wrong with me, I just kept to myself. I would go to school, listening to another taunt session, being the butt of the next prank, and being laughed at for my flaws. I would eventually just become a bookworm and turn to excessive study to make the days go by. I didn’t want to interact with the kids.

At home I got the same message from my parents but in a different method. Mom and Dad tried to help, and I think they had good intentions. They tried to coach me out of all these things that were wrong with me. When they didn’t succeed, my dad would just try to joke about them.

I never could figure out how to fix all my flaws, so I simply stayed in my room after school. I played Nintendo or listened to some music, or later, I got a new, small TV, which only helped me spend even more time inside my room. That’s the only place I could escape to—to live in someone else’s world and get lost in the world of a superhero instead of a loser.

What does all this talk of my childhood troubles have to do with religion? Everything. Church was the first place I felt I could truly know love.

CHAPTER 2

THE BIRDS, THE BEES, AND THE PULPIT

My first church experiences were boring but would later become life changing. As a little child, my parents took me to a small Baptist church in town. Every Sunday we shook hands with the entire congregation. Then we would open up our hymnals and sing hymn number 156: Holy, Holy, Holy. I knew all the words but couldn’t find the energy to sing them because they made me too drowsy. Then good ol’ Pastor Bob would get up and tell us to open our Bibles and follow along. He would read a couple verses and then somehow turn that into a forty-five-minute speech.

I wanted to bring some toy to play with in church so I could make the time go by faster. But Father let me know on no uncertain terms that such actions were completely unacceptable in the house of God. Even more frustrating, these services encroached on my Sunday-morning cartoon times. My favorite shows were over by the time we got home.

One Sunday, as a nine-year-old, I got into the typical fight with the parents.

It’s too boring. I don’t want to go, I said. I’d rather watch Spider-Man.

I will never forget their responses. Mom started first. It’s not that bad. You make it sound like you’re suffering hell when we take you to church.

That’s when Dad added, "We’re actually taking you there so you can avoid hell, son." So he recorded Spider-Man on the video recorder, which took away my only other valid argument, and off we went.

At age eleven, Mother told me about a youth-group event at church. No long sermons, no hymnals. Just a little waterslide party in the church’s backyard, led by the youth pastor. I was bored of staying in my room all day, so I decided