de-

"Deconversion," as a term, leaves a bitter taste on my tongue. It seems so heretical. In my life as a church-going Christian (which began when I was just one week old; my mother, being the church organist at the Baptist church of my youth, was unwilling to miss a postpartum week of "serving the Lord." FYI, she doesn't go to church anymore, either, having lived through this bit of cliched church history), there was so much emphatic importance given to what is known as the "conversion experience" that I walked down the aisle no fewer than five times just to make sure I was doing it right, not missing some crucial step and, in this oversight, damning my soul to hell. I lived every day under a blanket of guilt because I, as a shy kid with a nervous cough and a pathological fear of speaking to strangers, had never led anybody to the Lord--in Sunday school or during Bible class at my Christian school, tallies were given, taken, and recorded of souls saved from damnation and signed up for membership in the church (which was to mean, unmistakeably, our church, as all other churches somehow got it wrong, putting every parishioner in jeopardy of hellfire...there was a lot of emphasis on hellfire in those days).

Even in my early days at grade school, I was aware of my SuperChristian classmates, pious preschoolers with a foreshortened arm's-length list of neighborhood children who dirtied the knees of their OshKosh B'goshes and repeated the sinner's prayer with them. My list was non-existent. In later years, I took comfort in the belief that some people can "plant the seed" though Christlike behavior; as I often struggled to pinpoint a specific sin that I'd committed some days, laying in my bed attempting to bring my list of daily sins to Jesus for washing, I thought that being a "silent witness" (these are real terms, I'm not making them up) was the role for me. But--and this really happened--I was told that those who actually made the sale, who convinced the unsaved person to invite Jesus into his or her heart, had done the most important thing and that Jesus favored the good salesman's successful pitch.

I did get a bone once. I'm not being metaphorical, I was actually given a bone...well, it was a piece of cardboard, cut to the shape of a bone and wrapped, shiny side up, in aluminum foil. (That elementary-age children were rewarded in the manner of dogs is concerning, I realize.) The challenge presented to us children was to bring an unsaved friend to church. And this really was a challenge for this particular junior soldier of the cross, as I spent my days in the company of fellow youths for Jesus at the Christian school, most of whom already attended my church and all of whom professed a personal relationship with the One True God. I didn't think I'd be getting that bone and the status bump that it represented, but I managed to pull out a last-minute win in the final week of the competition when one Wednesday afternoon, after riding bikes around the cul-de-sac for an hour with the kid next door, I invited him to have dinner with us and then, when rushing to clean up and get out the door and to church on time, encouraged him to come with us. He accepted and, once the service started, commenced fidgeting, talking, and loudly unwrapping and crunching LifeSavers throughout the evening's hallowed proceedings. Those seated in our vicinity were clearly offput by my neighbor's behavior, and my parents were mortified, but I was able to announce in Sunday school that I'd brought an unsaved friend to church and, after grilling me to make sure the claim was true ("And you're sure he's unsaved?" Yes. "Does he go to church?" I think he does sometimes, like on Christmas. "Where does he go to church?" He said his grandmother is Catholic. "Oh! Good job, Rodney, here's your shiny bone!"), I was rewarded. I treasured that bone, carried it around with me until the cardboard broke and the foil flopped flaccidly, finally retiring it to the corkboard above my bed, where it remained for many years thereafter.

But conversion. So sought-after and sacred. And deconversion, so sacrilegious and selfish. And yet, there's no denying that the reality of the latter is more real to me now than the former ever was. I was told that people who are truly saved don't lose faith; "Once saved, always saved" was our mantra. If a Christian left the church, he or she was never really saved, never truly believed, never really relinquished their love of the world and embraced Jesus.

I did believe, though. I embraced Jesus. And now I don't because I can't anymore, plain and simple.

Yesterday, my eldest daughter was sick, throwing up every ten minutes and unable to keep anything down. I didn't pray for her, instead opted to just hold her hair back and make sure she knew she was fully taken care of. This morning, when I saw her bedside water drained and the vomit bowl empty, I pumped my fist and did a silent little victory dance by her sleeping form, but I didn't thank Jesus. A part of me feels really guilty about this, but overall I'm just glad to no longer be chasing after that foil-wrapped bone.