I had hopes that my evangelical regurgitation would be detected. I had a crazy idea that someone would call me out on it, that after listening to one of my class devotions or reading one of my papers, a professor would pull me aside and say, “nice try, but this isn’t real.” That would have made me feel better about Christianity and Wheaton.
But no such luck. When I give class devotions and write papers about my personal Christian beliefs, I get good grades and people thank me for my sincerity. It makes me feel terrible. And it makes me wonder whether the people who I admired for their sincerity really were.
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We are all pretty good a wearing masks, covering up who we really are. It’s not just a characteristic of the Christians or Wheaton.
I know…I felt the same way.
My idea of Jesus was someone who would have noticed what was up with me. Who could see through faking.
It would have been neat to run into Christians like that when I was ‘faking it’. Awkward, perhaps – but neat.
That’s one reason I like Off The Map – because their Doable Evangelism approach is all about encouraging Christians to notice what’s going on with other people.
“And it makes me wonder whether the people who I admired for their sincerity really were.”
It would depend on the specific actions that caused you to think they were insincere but..
Just because someone can’t spot insincerity in other people, that doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t sincere themselves. Those are two independent qualities. You can have one, both, or neither of them.
“Just because someone can’t spot insincerity in other people, that doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t sincere themselves.”
True… but once you realise how easy it is to fake it, it must make you wonder how many other people have been faking it and you haven’t noticed.
I wouldn’t call it easy… it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Because of that, I didn’t think it would actually be successful.
I agree with Chris S. . . . “We are all pretty good a wearing masks, covering up who we really are. It’s not just a characteristic of the Christians or Wheaton.” Why waste your time judging others’ sincerity? Focus on being sincere yourself . . . you only have to answer for yourself, not others.
I know what you mean. I too was a “member” of a Pentecostal church for about 2 years after becoming an atheist. I was there for the same reason you are still at Wheaton: I had lost my faith while attending.
It was trying for me too. Luckily, I didn’t have to write any essays so I mostly kept quiet. I made it a point to never lie about my true beliefs. It was simply to painful for me to represent myself as someone I wasn’t. But I also never revealed my beliefs either. That, in and of itself, was grueling enough for me to leave and happily join a UU fellowship I discovered.
So I have no doubt about how horribly difficult you claim it was to write a paper from a perspective you strongly didn’t believe. Personally, if ever put to the same task, I had planned on being completely honest and writing from a neutral ground that both Christians and atheist agreed on (like the pursuit of truth) then working my way logically and indisputably to atheism.
You don’t have to work your way aggressively to atheism in a paper, but perhaps, when possible, your future papers could focus on issues on which atheists and Christians agree? I would think that might grant you at least a slightly stronger degree of sanity if not a substantial one. And if you happen upon a claim which disputes common Christian thinking, you can buttress it with undeniable support based on those things which both Christian and atheist agree. Hell, that is how I became an atheist in the first place.
Best wishes,
Chris
I find this post very comical as I have been experiencing this same reaction by people in my time here at Wheaton. As a freshman coming from public school where my social group’s activities were the polar opposite of what goes on at Wheaton I can certainly empathize with your feelings of lonliness and your disdain for many of the students here (although I have managed to find the small faction of the so called “Wheaton Underground”). I often think of why I chose to come here and the only answer that I can come up with is because of the athletics program. I have also given many devotions that were put together without true sincerity which were readily accepted and on which I was congradulated. It is truely a disgusting fact that people would so readily accept something that at its core is nothing but a lie, but I also think that people here have the decency to let you maintane your own subjective interpretation of the Bible and how you present its personal significance in your life. All my friends at home are atheists and I find that your type are the most interesting to talk to. I enjoy your blog and would be stoked to meet you, but you probably, and rightly so as Wheaton College is “1984”, would not be interested. You should drop me a email though.
I don’t know if this is something I actually saw someplace respectable or if I picked it up from a Sheri S. Tepper novel, but I suspect deception is one of the skills humans have evolved to an extraordinary degree – as in, our capacity for prevarication may be part of how we ended up being such clever monkeys.
Supporting that suspicion, of course, are situations such as your own – it’s not hard to imagine similar ones with more severe consequences for not looking sincere enough. In fact, I suspect they used to be surprisingly common.
I have also given many devotions that were put together without true sincerity which were readily accepted and on which I was congradulated. It is truely a disgusting fact that people would so readily accept something that at its core is nothing but a lie
This again leads me to a question I often ask of believers: “Where’s the holy spirit?”
Isn’t the spirit supposed to give Christians “discernment” so they will know true believers from false ones? Yet that seems to me to be an empty promised.
I continued to go to church and attend bible study and even work for my church for some years after I started to seriously doubt and even for a time after I knew I no longer believed. I “passed” successfully because I knew the lingo and the ideas and I could write and speak convincingly without disclosing my questions and unbelief.
It made me sick to do it – and I finally was able to leave the job behind (financial need had stopped me earlier) as well as the church. But no one ever seemed to have any “discernment” from the holy spirit about my change of mind, and I’m persuaded that lots of other people in church go along with the program without truly believing it all.
This again leads me to a question I often ask of believers: “Where’s the holy spirit?”
My thoughts exactly during my own “undercover” work. No one had the slightest idea that I was an atheist and I was there as an atheist for 2 years.
This a very strange conversation – not ‘bad’ strange, maybe peculiar is a better word.
As someone who has been reading and writing about atheism during the last year and also as someone who just finished a semester of Bible college, I can’t help but wonder: how are they supposed to know you are an atheist?
From what I gather, you are pretending to be Christians and writing your papers from the Christian perspective while attending a Christian college. Is it really fair to criticize people for not figuring out you’re an atheist?
I do sympathize with every one of you for fearing to announce yourselves as atheists. No doubt people do react harshly. In my own experience, reading Dawkins and writing about it on my blog has led me to a number of really neat relationships with atheists. It has helped me understand the atheist perspective better.
I agree Michael . . . why pretend? If you are that unhappy at the college of your choice, leave. Stop pretending. Take off your mask, leave the place that makes you so unhappy and get on with life. Why do you continue to write papers from a “Christian” perspective? Stop. Be real and stop expecting others to figure out where you stand. Every belief system has a point of faith . . . even the atheist. Make your choice and get on with it.
Is it really fair to criticize people for not figuring out you’re an atheist?
Not if you’re convincing and they are just ordinary human beings. But Christians – particularly the fundamentalists I was associated with – claim to have supernatural guidance from the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit that gives them extra special powers of discernment and wisdom.
At least that’s what the bible promises them will happen. But if that magical spirit cannot even sniff out a blatant atheist in their midst, I’m not too impressed with it.
The fact that the Holy Spirit didn’t ‘out’ me led me to further doubt that such a person existed.
If I had been outed that way I probably would have had serious second thoughts about my suspicion that the Holy Spirit didn’t exist. Since I wasn’t, it had the opposite effect.
I still don’t understand why God tells Christians so many other things (according to them) but he doesn’t tell them who is faking.
And yes, it’s hard to fake – it’s not at all easy. But if you’re not 100% sure it seems precipitous to jump ship – I expect most people who leave the Christian faith have a transition time when they are still acting the part but have growing doubts on the inside.
Unfortunately, sleuthing is not one of the spiritual gifts listed in scripture.
I think what you’re getting at is that nobody got close enough to you to REALLY get to know you. Spiritual sleuthing aside, if I was to join an atheist dialog, say I’m an atheist, act as an atheist, and speak as an atheist, you would have to paranoid to call me out as a faker.
There is no magic spirit needed to “sniff out a blatant atheist” in anyone’s midst. You’re not being blatant, you’re being deceptive.
You’re not being blatant, you’re being deceptive.
Yes, but God isn’t fooled, is he? Or is he?
No, obviously he’s not, but whether or not he lets me in on his knowledge of your sincerity is up to him.
Is there a deeper point to the question?
Yes, it’s up to him – what I am saying is that his choice not to let anyone in on it makes no sense to me.
I don’t want any relationships with people who make no sense to me but who I am supposed to think of as good and perfect.
I grew up completely inundated with Christianity, and before coming to college I was barely aware there were alternatives to Christianity. I double-majored in Religious Studies and Philosophy, and halfway through my freshman year, I struggled through agnosticism and into atheism.
Fortunately I hadn’t enrolled in a Christian college, but I do understand why you might choose to keep the facade instead of “being yourself” publicly.
It took me a few years to “come out” as an atheist to my immediate family, and it makes me feel a bit sad (and a bit squeamish) to know that they’re probably praying fervently for my salvation. I can’t talk to them about the reasons behind my change in beliefs – they are so firmly entrenched in the doctrine they’ve swallowed for years to even consider my position.
Facing the kind of judgment that comes with being an atheist (recent surveys have shown that the American public would sooner elect a Muslim or a homosexual candidate to office than an atheist) isn’t easy to deal with. Being subjected to harsh questioning by those who, very often, aren’t going to take the answers seriously is something I had to deal with from the Christians at my school.
I know I could never tell my extended family about my beliefs – it would break their hearts (possibly literally in the case of my grandparents) and I can’t think of a single positive result it could produce for me or for them.
I tried going to church after realizing I was really an atheist. I didn’t sit there and fake it- well I tried at first, I suppose. I enjoyed things like prayer, because it was like a communal meditation and felt good and relaxing. But then, when I was going to get my son baptized for the sake of tradition and to please my family a pastor decided my husband should go through communion first since he hadn’t. We were okay with that, I wanted to give religion another try. So we started doing the bible study thing, and meeting with the pastor weekly. I began asking questions, ones that I was sure he would have a cheesy answer to like ‘Out of all the religions in the world, why would one be right?’ and ‘Does this mean that people who are not Christian do not go to heaven even f they are not a good person?’ He just kind of ended up stuttering…
It was just as well because he wouldn’t have been able to convince me either way. Anyway, I see a lot of atheists that attend Christian schools actually become atheists as they learn more about it- these are independent thinkers those with the ability to think for themselves that are not easily persuaded. Like you. 🙂