“John, Do You Regret Becoming a Christian?”

Wanted to take a moment to share this. In the comments over on HuffPo to The Smith Family Chronicles 6: “I’m Tired of the Hypocrisy!”, a reader wrote this:

I have a question for John Shore especially watching these chronicles. You went from atheist to christian right? Do you ever regret your decision? I went from Christian to Pagan, I dont regret it, but I am a bit irked that my mother thinks that I would take to christiani­ty like a duck to water. It wasnt for me, I wanted something that fit me, not a one size fits all tee shirt.

To which I left this reply:

I didn’t go from an atheist to a Christian; I went from a New-Ager type (I studied and practiced Zen Buddhism for … gosh, twenty years) to (out of freakin’ nowhere) a Christian. And I don’t regret becoming a Christian, if for no other reason than it wasn’t at all a “decision” I made. (I wrote a bit about my sudden conversion experience here: http://joh­nshore.com­/2010/04/2­6/i-a-rabi­d-anti-chr­istian-ver­y-suddenly­-convert/.) What I don’t like about being a Christian is how sure so many people who have real and imagined issues with Christianity are to assume that knowing I’m a Christian means they have much if any idea at all about the nature of my spiritual experience­. So many people so happily assume that being a Christian automatica­lly means you’re a mean-spiri­ted, narrow-min­ded, fear-based­, hypocritic­al misogynist­ic homophobe. That pretty quickly gets pretty old. (Though—­and I think this is one of God’s little jokes on me—that’­s pretty much exactly how I used to feel about all Christians before I had the weird fortune to become one.)

Here’s to all of you out there who feel the same way—that is, who tire of so many assumptions being made about who you are, because you’re a Christian. Thanks so, so much for letting me know you’re out there. Knowing you are is what keeps me going.