Breaking the Silence

Okay, it's been far too long since I've made a post here. This isn't for lack of anything I wanted to write about; on the contrary, there are several things I'd been wanting to make posts about. I just haven't had the time. I just started a new job last week, and had to do a lot to prepare for that, and before that there was a convention I went to earlier this month, and, well, my free time has been at pretty close to zero.

As far as the basic topics this blog was meant to be about in the first place, nothing significant has really changed. I certainly haven't gone back on my rejection of religion; as much as I've been tempted--it would certainly be much easier, from a social perspective at least, to just go back to telling myself I believed in God, and being a good faithful Mormon--it's just too intellectually dishonest for me to pretend to myself I believe in something I don't have any reason to believe in. (Though I'm still pretending to others that I believe in it, for the moment...as I've said before, I don't expect that situation to persist indefinitely, but I can't quite bring myself to go public with my atheism just yet.)

Actually, I take that back...there is one significant thing, I guess, that has changed. A few weeks ago...let's see, I guess it was three weeks ago today, to be exact (wow, it's really been way too long since I've made a post here!)...I actually admitted to someone for the first time--and I mean admitted in person, not anonymously like here on the blog--that I didn't believe in God, that I was going through the motions of Mormonism but I didn't really believe in the doctrine. It wasn't to a member of the church, or to anyone from whom anyone in the church is ever likely to hear about it, but it's still the first time I ever told anyone about it.

The person in question was a friend whose mother-in-law had recently converted to Mormonism, and she was asking me for advice on how I should handle the situation if her mother-in-law tried to proselytize her and her husband. I thought it a little strange at the time that she'd be asking me for this advice in the first place, since as far as she knew I was a faithful Mormon (I had been, or had been convincing myself I was, when we first met), and it seemed odd she'd expect someone to give her advice about how to avoid attempts to convert her to his own faith. If she'd asked me about these questions six months ago, while I still considered myself a faithful member of the church, I'm not sure how I would have reacted--I'd probably have told her I didn't feel comfortable trying to give advice on a matter contrary to the goals of my church, or something like that. Still, though, since by this time I in fact was not a faithful Mormon, I had no trouble talking to her about the subject. But I kind of felt I needed to explain why I had no trouble talking to her about the subject, which is why I told her about my unbelief.

It was actually pretty easy to talk about, once I started. It wasn't really a hard admission to make. Then again, I was talking to a fellow unbeliever. (She'd been raised Catholic, but I'm pretty sure she had no religious convictions herself.) Actually telling the church members about it, or just stopping my church attendance--which would certainly result in some people from the church asking me why I wasn't coming, and trying to get me to return, and would have to result in the subject coming up eventually...that, I'm still not quite ready for. Still, though, telling someone about my unbelief was a step I hadn't taken before, and I think it's a step in the right direction, even if it's still a long ways till the end of the road.

Anyway. When I started this blog, I was uncertain that I'd find enough to write about. I thought there wasn't that much I'd want to say specifically on the subject of my religious deconversion, and that I'd quickly run out of things to write. That hasn't proved to be the case--I've had lots of things I wanted to write about; I just haven't had the time to write them. But anyway, I think the worst is over now as far as my hectic schedule this month, and hopefully I'll have time to post more often from now on. I don't think I'm going to make too much effort to post this weekend--I've still got lots of things I need to catch up on--but I think starting Monday, I'm going to try to make a post every day next week. After that week...well, we'll see what happens, but at any rate I'm going to try not to let this long go by without a post again.