(I'll continue in this one so I don't have to keep editing the previous post.)
While I could go into my growth and development as a Christian, suffice to say I read the Bible dozens of times, committing verses to memory, and working to gain a comprehensive understanding of the history and context in which the Bible was written. I wanted to be certain what I knew was correct, and wasn't just something that "felt" right. I had long been skeptical of people who made up directives from the Bible in order to make a point about why you needed to send them money, and why God didn't like that black couple who lived on the corner. To me that was worse than being of a different faith, it was creating false doctrine, and I wouldn't stand for it.
Of course, over time, as I studied the Bible I started to weigh questions against it, and in doing so, began to weigh questions against my own beliefs. That started the journey that eventually lead to my atheism, believe it or not. Along the way, as I studied my own faith and what I really thought I knew, ideas and perceptions began to fall away as I discovered they were never really there, and that some parts of my faith felt like smoke and mirrors. You should know that when I study something, I scrutinize it from every angle, and I test it until it fails. My understanding of how things work constantly evolves because of that nature, and of course a fundamentalist Christian faith wasn't going to stand up to that level of scrutiny. So as I learned more and more about what I truly believed, and the facts behind the people I thought I knew, I began to moderate.
By late 2002 (3 years after I graduated high school), I was still fundamentalist, but some of the stricter beliefs had fallen away. Then I joined TrekBBS. Suddenly, I was meeting people whom I had never interacted with before, including a beautifully sweet gay man. Right down in TNZ, we discussed all manner of belief:; political, social, spiritual, and over time I began to see some things in different ways. My understanding of gay people began to morph into knowledge based on the idea exchanges I had been engaging in for several years up to that point. I began to study the Bible once more, looking for key passages that explained aspects of my faith that no longer made sense, and I found nothing to support them. Nothing. Everything I had been taught, everything I had chosen to believe, had been essentially made from whole cloth and passed on to me as fact, and these were things dear to me so they hadn't been included in that scrutiny up to that point. Well now they were under the microscope, too, and just as readily, I found they couldn't withstand the examination.
I have long held the belief that I would rather know the truth, no matter how unpleasant or painful, than believe a comforting lie. This applies to everything, and especially, at the time, my faith. These so-called pillars of morality that I had contained within me for decades were now shown to be illusions, and so that tower fell. More towers of faith began to fall, until in 2005, I realized that I was no longer a fundamentalist Christian. I was, at best, moderate, and even that was shaky. My political views had gone from ultra-conservative (voted for G.W. Bush in 2000), to iffy (John Kerry in 2004), to outright liberal (Obama in 2008). I had become more liberal with each passing year, and all as a part of my studies. It was around 2008, in fact, that I realized my ethics were being driven by my own personal morality, and realizing the power and strength I had within, I let go of the rigidity of religion as a necessity for morality.
In 2008, I had become a Christian Mystic. That is someone who follows the general spirituality of Christianity, but few of the demanding requirements. It was also in 2008 that I had my dark night of the soul, and doubted my faith as a whole. That would go on, back and forth, for some time until, like the snapping of a rubber band, I just no longer had the faith. I had come to the conclusion it was unnecessary at that point, that I had been without it for a long time anyway, and so I embraced my agnosticism. I wasn't ready to say there was no God, but I was willing to accept that I no longer knew for certain.
It was also around then that I finally accepted who and what I was. Since 2006, I had believed that being gay wasn't a sin, but I still wouldn't accept my own personal feelings because I didn't want to be biased against myself as accepting a comforting lie (I'm really difficult on myself). Over time, I realized my feelings were real, they were authentic, and that I knew my whole life had contained them, and so I accepted that I was pansexual (it means I don't consider gender a determining factor regarding whom I fall in love with). I also began to wear away at my own personal gender biases, because I had long grown tired of living by them when I didn't even like them. I was told as a child that boys liked one thing, and girls liked another, and that's the way it was.
The thing is, it wasn't that way for me. I liked all kinds of things, things that some felt were only for girls. While I never had trouble understanding I was male, and accepted that as part of my identity, I also didn't reject the idea that parts of my mind, pieces of thought and emotion, were most decidedly female. I believe everyone has this to some degree, great or small, and so I embraced that in myself. I'm a feminist, so to me being compared to a girl isn't an insult at all, but just one more accepting aspect of who I am. I am me. It took many years for me to come to terms with that, but it is the truth.
Sorry if I bored any of you with that. I tried not to ramble.
