I just came out to my best friend!

If you’ve been following my blog, you will know that I’m an atheist. It’s in the title after all. But here’s the thing, apart from a few select non-Christian friends and family, no one knew I was an atheist.

But that is all about to change.

Just today, I came out to one of my longtime church friends from high school over lunch. Will he tell others? Almost certainly. But I am going to be ready for it when the time comes. Here I am going to detail this encounter. For the sake of being anonymous, I’ll call my friend Steven.

The encounter.

Things started off pretty normal. We met up in town for our usual once a fortnight lunch. We both grabbed a sandwich from Subway and found a nice seating spot down by the Waikato River. After the usual chatter, conversation steered towards church and a friend of ours who gave a sermon.

Steven: Did you hear Larry preached a sermon recently?

Me: I heard he was going to a few weeks ago but it was called off for some reason.

Steven: He gave a sermon last Sunday. Were you at church last Sunday?

Me: No I wasn’t.

At this point, I hadn’t planned on telling him right there and then, but I hadn’t gone to church for a while and my friend knew something was up.

Steven: Why not? Is it too far away?

Me: Yeah it’s quite far.

Technically true but ah that was a cop out of mine.

Steven: Would you consider joining a local church closer to you?

Me: Ahh, maybe?

Another lie, stop it.

Steven: Do you still consider yourself Christian?

I think about this for a moment. Is he saying I must go to church to be a Christian? How dare he? But wait, let’s not get offended about this, because we’re not really Christian are we. Also, I’m tired of putting up with this. I then put down my pepper chicken sandwich and take a big breath.

Me: Just recently, I have decided I… don’t believe in it all anymore.

Steven: So… what do you believe in now then? Do you believe there is a God?

Me: I consider myself agnostic. As for there being a God? I don’t really know.

As to what happened next, it’s kinda hard to write it all down, since the conversation went on several different tangents. My friend didn’t seem angry at me, but he just couldn’t seem to fathom how I believe what I believe. In his mind, it would seem, everything is black and white and created by God, and that it must be crazy to believe in anything else.

We started chatting about whether life has a purpose and morals. I told him I believe we make our own purpose, that it isn’t black and white. That we can have morals without a God. Of course, he responded by saying that ‘everything is relative man’ and that there is therefore no right or wrong to me. I insisted that perhaps morals came about as we formed communities since it aided collective survival.

The conversation then steered towards evolution and the Big Bang. He couldn’t fathom as to how I could believe in evolution, which he called ‘all random’, it must require me to have a lot of faith apparently. I told him evolution has been observed and peer reviewed well by scientists who use the scientific method. He insisted that whatever starting point I use can depend on what conclusions I end up making. True perhaps, but then he said he uses the Bible as a starting point for his observations, calling it the most true historical document in existence. I simply smiled because I didn’t wanna push things too much. But then I threw in a couple questions of my own:

Me: So this whole global flood thing, where did all the water go?

Steven: Well the Bible mentions the water pouring out from underground caverns and from the sky. Also, some of it would’ve frozen during an ice age.

Hmmm, that doesn’t account for nearly all the water.

Me: So how do you know the Bible is true then? As opposed to some other book such as the Quran?

Steven: Have you read the Quran? I don’t know if you have. It’s ridiculous and inconsistent.

He then says something along the lines of” ‘When you just read the Bible, it’s not going to do much. But when you read it through faith, it all makes more sense’.

Hmm I’m not convinced he answers that very well. Let’s move on.

Steven then tells me that if I have any issues he is happy to chat with me about it. I told him that the main issue was that Christianity relies on faith, things unseen. Whereas what I HAVE seen and experienced in this world doesn’t match up with what Christianity claims.

At one point the conversation turned really bizarre and we started talking about genders. He insisted that I mustn’t believe in genders anymore, and that anyone can be whatever gender they identify with. I insisted that we do have genders, obviously… but that some people, for whatever reason, don’t connect with the body that they were born with. It’s not something I understand too well to be honest, but it has to be biological surely.

Finally, he started to talk about Hell, but I had to go back to work at that point. I was honestly looking forward to continuing our conversation on this though, because I wanted to tell him how ridiculous and inhumane Hell was. But that’s for another time.

So now what?

Well, the cat is out of the bag. There is no turning back now. Me and Steven share a lot of mutual Christian friends, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they find out soon. But I think it’s gone on long enough now, and that the grass will be truly greener on the other side. So now, I’m going to share with you the rest of my ‘coming out’ experiences as they happen. I’m really curious to know how the rest of my friends and family will react now.

– The (Not So) Covert Atheist.