Rejecting Religion: Personal Narrative Essay Example

I used to be a Christian. Once, there was a time when that statement would have been written in the present tense. Despite growing up within a religious family, I found myself growing out of Christianity with age. Odd or even negative experiences with those who practice the Christian religion resulted in a fair amount of self-reflection over the years. I’ve had to take a step back and decide what communities I want to claim as my own and what I truly want to stand for. 

Turn the clock back a couple of years. It’s summer in Minnesota, the air sticky with humidity. The sun beams down on a secluded collection of lakeside cabins, tucked away between whispering pines and rocks coated with lichen crispy from the July heat. This particular week was to be a fun family getaway with my dad’s side of the family. The side that even then, my brain had dubbed “the religious” ones. While it wasn’t our only subject of conversation that vacation, the merits of Christianity became the hot topic for whatever particular reason. Perhaps it was the alluring chance to hear a different perspective on the workings of the world. After all, these were the cousins who had spent the first eight years of their academic career in a Lutheran school. It was only natural that my siblings and I– the poor fools who got lumped into public education – felt the need to poke holes in whatever the moral dilemma of the day happened to be.

One particular event stands out to me now, still clear as day. It was lunchtime, my siblings and I spread out over a great wooden table in one of the cabins’ screen porch, my cousins sat beside us. The adults were at a separate table a half dozen feet away, engrossed in their own conversation. Precluded by discussions about the faults of science and the nature of sin earlier that day, all of us having been sprawled across the set of bunks my cousins had claimed for their sleeping space for the better part of an hour or two, we fell back into the topic of religion easily. This time, we were having a rather civil talk about the age of the earth. 

I slouched on the log-hewn wooden bench beneath me, nibbling at a cool piece of watermelon. The juice trickled between my fingers, making a sticky mess of my palms, but I ignored it in favor of tuning into the topic at hand. My oldest cousin, Anne, kindly insisted that the earth was ten thousand years old over the remainder of her fried potatoes. She insisted that this was true, as the timeline of the Bible lines up to be so. Emphatically, my older brother disagreed. If that was the case, how do you explain evolution? What of the merits of science? 

My other cousin pointed out that their school never taught evolution, making it a moot point. I tried to wipe my fingers off on my nearly shredded napkin, watermelon rind discarded. Much like the advocates of both sides, it wasn’t too effective.

 The argument persisted, ideas spat rapid-fire between watermelon seeds and the last bites of corn on the cob, messy hands enthusiastically pointing across the table. Bored and fidgety, I stared out through the porch screen, watching the noonday sun glint off of the lake’s gentle waves.The debate was lagging, neither perspective making any headway, the debaters themselves growing tired of the conversation. That was, until one of us brought up a point that stumped the whole group. “Well, if the earth is ten thousand years old,” someone piped up, “How do you explain fossils? They’ve been proven to be far older than that.”

The table fell into contemplative silence. How to explain fossils? It seemed as if maybe the science side had stumped the others. There was no way to justify it, at least none that any of us could think of.

Beside us, the adults rose, gathering up the dirty dishes and sweating jugs of milk to take inside. As my uncle passed, he paused, making an offhand remark about bits of the discussion he’d overheard. We all glanced at each other, sharing the same idea. Here was the man who had brought our cousins up in the church. If anyone, he should have the sort of answer they were looking for.

“If the earth is ten thousand years old,” we asked, “then how do you explain fossils?”

I turned in my seat, peering up at him with interest. Our uncles paused, a stack of plates carefully balanced in hand. We waited with baited breath for the reply. He opened his mouth, and the most absurd answer I could have possibly imagined poured out. 

“The devil put them there to make you doubt God,” he explained casually, “They didn’t actually form over that long amount of time, they were placed there.” With a satisfied nod, he stepped away, off into the air-conditioned kitchen to retire the dishes. I gaped. Everyone else absorbed that answer and moved on, getting up from the table and the exhausted conversation to head out to the lake. I followed like a zombie, trudging out onto the grass with stilted steps, head still unable to wrap around the ridiculousness of that answer. 

Here I was, having looked someone I respected in the face, hoping for an honest answer, and it felt like I’d been lied to. How could anyone possibly be so deluded as to actually think that? To try to convince someone else of it? I couldn’t believe it. From there, the questions grew bigger. They rattled around in my brain as I stood with feet buried in the sand, waves lapping at my ankles. My cousins were Lutheran. So was I. How could I possibly bring myself to claim the same title as someone who might honestly believe a statement that conflicted with so much that I accepted as fact? And if other Lutherans– other Christians, for that matter– felt the same way, did I really belong in that community anyway? 

The waves continued to brush against my legs, a small battalion of ducks floating past. I didn’t have an answer for any of my own questions. Neither did the ducks. The world seemed to be keen on leaving me to wonder alone. 

While that particular July day was only one of many that would result in the questioning of such a fundamental piece of my identity, I feel as though it was the most distinct. It was one of the clearest signs that the religion of my parents, the set of beliefs that had been taught to me since infancy were no longer in harmony with my own. I am a teenager who aged alongside the internet. Each day, I encounter people who use Christianity to justify hate, to justify ignorance, to justify homophobia, and to justify hypocrisy. I see the messages they send, the reputation they build for themselves as a community and shy away. As I’ve grown older, I’ve shed the title of Christian, a task that hasn’t been a particularly smooth or easy one. Reflection on who I want to be as a person made me realize the way I want to see the world seems to conflict far too often with the Christian religion for me to want to stay.  Defining what I want to stand for and finding the communities I feel most at home in has made me realize that the church is not a place I want to belong to. The morals I personally want to live by are dictated by my own gut, not the written rules of others. And that’s okay. While I have no argument about others finding comfort in the practice of religion, I’ve discovered that I now find the most comfort in the label “agnostic” than anything else. This time, it’s a label I want to keep.