My journey to non-believer started on December 6th 2006. You see 11 days earlier on November 25th 2006 a young man very much like myself was taking a trip with his family. He missed his turn and proceeded to take the following turn thinking it would take him in the same direction. I’ve done this hundreds of times. Unfortunately that turn would lead him into the mountains where they would ultimately become trapped in the snow. Four days later on November 29th 2006 the Kim family was reported missing. And it began to be reported on the news everywhere.
This is the point in which people began to pray for their safe return. Being such a huge news story, a conservative estimate of millions of believers prayed for James and his family. No one knew what had happened yet. On December 4th 2006 James wife and kids were found in the car they had been trapped in. James had gone for help. Now you have to imagine that millions of people saying millions of prayers for James would result in his discovery alive and healthy.
On December 6th 2006 James Kim was found dead, frozen to death. He was trying to find help for his family and he literally had the backing of millions of prayers for a full seven days. During the majority of that 7 days James was alive and well. Why would someone who was trying to protect his family with millions of prayers behind him freeze to death after making a wrong turn in the mountains?
I put myself in the place of James. On December 6th 2006 after James was found I realized that God only had to answer one single prayer with a yes for James to be found alive and well. What God is saying is that if I were in James position and millions of prayers were being made on my behalf it wouldn’t make any damn difference. But why?
It’s the “But why?” that sent me on a 10 month journey of retrospect and introspection. I began to examine everything I knew about religion and praying. Not once did I use the internet nor did I ever speak to anyone about my quest. I’m for the most part very private, when it came to religion I was even more so. I never liked praying in public or out loud. I was by no means a bible scholar, most of what I knew was told to me. I read parts of the bible when I was a child. I didn’t fully understand the denominations. But I knew that people who spoke in tongues bothered me.
I spent a good portion of my childhood going to church regularly. I remember being age 9 and 10 and getting on the church bus every Sunday morning. From ages 11 to 13 I went to church every time my grandmother went on Wednesdays and Sundays. My grandfather was not a church goer but he spent many evenings reading the Bible. My Mom claims to be a Christian but doesn’t go to church nor have I seen her go to church unless there was an event. My step father who joined our family when I was age 13 or 14 is Catholic. I only remember going to his church once and it was uncomfortable because they were completely different. But he does not appear to be practicing Catholic. At about the age of 14 I went to church much less as this was when I started spending much less time with my Grandparents and more with my Mom.
At age 18 when I was in college I claimed to be an Atheist when I was in fact agnostic. No one around me was changing my mind I just began to come to the conclusion that God does not make sense. Shortly after I claimed I was atheist I started dating Karen Jenkins. She was a believer in God and wanted to share with me all of the wonderful things that God had for me. On a date to the State Fair we passed a booth with some Christians that were helping people renew their faith in God. I was interested because Karen was a believer and wanted to know more about what she knew. I accepted Jesus into my heart. I was not faking or playing around, I meant what I said.
For the next 18 years we would go to church randomly. Early in our marriage we would visit my grandmother and go with her. My Granddad would stay at home and read his Bible. Or we went with Karen’s sister Elaine. While in the Army I read my Bible almost every day (even though I remember not understanding it), attended church every Sunday and during basic I prayed by myself before every meal. I prayed so much in Basic a few guys made jokes that I had special connections with the big man (explained below). A little later we went a few times to her brothers church where he was the pastor. I started a job in 1998 and the friend I met there was considering becoming a pastor. My wife got a job at the church we attended and our daughter went to their school. We made friends at church with many people. For a year or more I attended Sunday school and service every week, many times without Karen being there. We made friends with a couple that left our church to pastor their own church. Once the Sunday school teacher left our class I stopped going to church regularly. Up until last year I thought all people who believed in God were Christians and went to Christian church, I found out that’s not true. I’ve only gone a few times in the last year, I don’t think I’ve been once in the last 6 months. My current best friend is one of the stronger religious people I’ve known, just not in a pushy way.
As an individual with an excellent memory I began to review my history and the role that religion and prayer played in it. I listed in my head all of the prayers that I remember making that I thought were answered with a yes. Logically you know that the important prayers that appear to be answered with a yes are easier to remember. I can remember many prayers that appeared to have been answered with a no. I focused on the prayers answered with a yes. I broke each of them down. There are some standouts. When I was in Basic Training we were on a training mission and it was cold and cloudy and everybody was complaining. I prayed for God to clear the sky. 10 minutes later a sky that had been cloudy for hours was clear.
Another prayer that stands out is when my Grandmother was dying and no one thought she would ever get to go home again. I prayed for her to get to go home and die there. Which is exactly what happened. After breaking these prayers down I did some math. Two answered prayers and thousands unanswered. If these were my two shining moments of prayer then there is no way that they could be construed and coincidence. I used something that is usually rejected when thinking of my religion, logic. I first thought about my life in Indiana where I’ve seen it snow and rain on sunny days. I’ve seen the weather change so fast you would have thought transported to a different part of the world. If I’m fully aware of these facts then why would I believe that God had anything to do with them? I did believe God had something to do with it for more than a decade.
I thought about why I thought my Grandmother would never go home again. Yes, she was very sick. But there was an instance in the hospital when I was talking to my aunt Reida and I said “When do you think she’ll get to go home?” Reida answered “Oh Baby, she won’t ever get to go home again.” From that point forward I never thought she would. But the truth is neither did Reida, there were things happening between the doctor and my Grandfather that I just wasn’t privy to. What I attributed to an answered prayer was nothing more than a series of events that was already playing out that I had no control over. And misinformation lead me to believe something that wasn’t true.
After reviewing my prayers for months I finally concluded that a truly answered prayer could not be concluded as a coincidence. But that’s exactly what every prayer I ever thought was answered with a yes was, a coincidence. How can this be? Why would God let his answered prayers be conceived as coincidences? This lead me to a whole new conclusion.
Added January 26th 2008: Karen and I watched “Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” last night and during one of the many times I paused the movie she asked me how I came to a defining point. I explained that was the introspection part of my journey. She need more detail so I explained that I completely opened myself up, and waited. I was looking for answers about prayer, not answers to prayer or not if God was real because I already believed that he was. I explained it like this, about 2 months into my journey I went into a sensory deprived room, I sat down on the floor and waited. This continued for 5 months, also keep in mind that this was all in my head. For 5 months I waited, anything would have been something. Not only did I not receive enlightenment I received nothing. No false answers, no hallucinations, no might have been an answer, absolutely nothing. After 5 months of solitude I left the room knowing that prayers were not real. There was no one listening to or answering prayers.
In July 2007 Karen and I were on our way to pick up the girls from my Moms. I pulled over on the way there to express me new conclusion to Karen. God is no longer watching over us. My prior conclusion lead me to believe that prayer does nothing. Never has and never will. But I still believed in God, only an absent one. Karen tried to conjecture that James Kim’s death was probably Gods way of getting James to accept Jesus or something like that. I wasn’t interested in guesses. And that’s not why I told her.
For the next three months I continued to evaluate my beliefs. Not once had I looked up anything online nor had spoke to anyone about my journey. In the months prior to October 1st 2007 I had assumed that God was absent from the world he created. The problem with scenario is that it requires both logic and religion. They don’t mix. I opened my eyes to the world around me began to apply logic to things like evolution and how we know that small changes are alway being made because of breading. Whether it be humans, animals or insects. Things begin to become obviously clear about your surrounding. God didn’t have anything to do with them.
This is very hard concept to realize as a believer. Even after determining that God was absent I believed he existed. Why? Because the lack of logic allows it to happen. Eventually, you see that there are other people on this world that don’t believe what you believe. Nor are they praying to the same God. Am I suppose to assume I hit the lotto and lucked out with the real God? Most do. I don’t.
I took my decision very seriously. If God were real then there would some sign that he existed. But the world we live in is a product of cause and effect. The Bible is not proof of anything. If you consider the Bible to be proof then you have to consider the other religious books that people live by. Why is yours the right one? Because of where you were born? That logic makes all of them the right one. That logic is also what made me realize that none of them were the right one.
When all of the cards are laid on the table the truth is that there is no proof of any God. Not the Christian God or the Muslim God. Nor the hundreds of Gods before them.
