I walked away from that spot on the campus of Abilene Christian University where my lay dying under the hot West Texas sun to my car, which was parked on Washington street, by my friend David's house, which I usually parked it. My head was spinning with questions for the next several weeks? What do I do with my life now? How do I tell my wife? Will she still love me? What about the rest of my family? What about my friends? I'm a minister... Do I tell my church? Do I step down? What do I believe now? Where do I find morality? How do I find meaning? I was so confused. I was so afraid. The only thing I knew was that the belief I'd based my whole life, including my career up until that point, was a lie.
I was, believe it or not, terrified that I wouldn't have any reason to be moral and that my life wouldn't have any meaning. A book I'd read during my tenure as a youth minister had convinced me that without faith in God, people didn't have these things. So many of my religious friends believed this too. It was something people said in church. It something people said to atheists. Now, it's something people say to me... It's absurd looking back, but I truly believed it. And I was terrified.
I you know me, I probably don't have to tell you that I did lose friends. My wife was initially unsupportive, hostile even, but she came around. And my career... I guess these are all stories for another time.
What I can talk about is how my fears concerning meaning and morality were resolved, at least partially, within the first few weeks of my becoming an Atheist. I no longer remember the exact order of the events, so I will tell them thematically instead of chronologically.
A thing about me, I'm more or less always in motion. I walk, run, whatever more or less constantly. When I'm sitting still, I fidget. So, one evening after my deconversion, I was walking around the block. I stumbled upon a wallet that contained both cash and cards. It was my first real moral dilemma as an Atheist. No one would know if I simply pocketed the money. But I didn't. Instead, I turned it into the local police station, because that's what I'd have wanted someone to do for me.
This moment was reassuring for me, but I have to say that I really struggled with what to do. Up until that point, I'd used my religion as my moral compass. Instead, I had to think through the morality myself and my moral muscles felt weak.
It was a little bit later that I was driving to the newer side of town (probably to Walmart) when all of the sudden, it began to pour. Sitting outside on an island alongside the road was an elderly homeless woman. She was getting drenched. Immediately, I pulled over, grabbed my umbrella ran and handed it to her. I didn't about - I just did it.
It was later, walking and thinking again that I realized that I didn't need to act as a representative of some other figure. MY LOVE for my fellow humans was enough to guide MY ACTIONS. I still feel the power of that realization. I'm not someone else's emissary. I have my own love to give. And as weak and imperfect as that love is - its mine. It comes from me.
My revelation concerning meaning was similar, but came about in a much less dramatic was. Sarah and I used to live in this huge old house. We inhabited this room that was brightly lit with several large windows. One morning, I woke up before Sarah to the sunlight coming in through the windows. I watch my pretty wife sleep while taking in the morning light. And it hit me, I didn't need universal meaning. I had all the meaning my tiny self needed right here, in nature, in my relationships.
I don't know what the preachers try to sell us on a the need for a universal purpose. I don't know why we buy it. The universe is so big, so vast, so billions of years old. I'm not any of those things. Like, I have no meaning on Mars. And I'm okay with that.
And that's how I overcame the false beliefs that without religion, I wouldn't have meaning or morality
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