My Top 5 Favorite Sins
By: Joe Omundson
Tags: Atheism, Christianity, Philosophy, Religion, Life

Some Christians have assumed I abandoned my faith because I wanted to enjoy a “sinful” lifestyle.

It might happen that way for some people. We all know the stereotype of the lukewarm Christian teen who goes to university and stops attending church simply because they want to drink and have sex without being shamed for it.

That wasn’t me, though. I was already married when I gave up on religion, so gaining access to sex was not a motivator. I wasn’t eager to try any drugs. I didn’t descend into depraved debauchery due to deconversion. The fundamental concepts behind religious belief stopped making sense to me, and the rest of my faith collapsed as a result.

Most of the ex-believers I talk to have a similar story. They lost their belief without ever wanting or trying to — and they often still feel guilty for “sinning” years after the fact.

That being said… now that my life choices are unconstrained by religion, I’ve come to realize that some “sinful” behaviors are a pure delight and can actually be very healthy and positive. I’m so glad I gave myself permission to try them, and that I now feel free to engage in them at my own discretion.

Here are my five favorite “sins”:

1. Sex without marriage

I refrained from sexual intercourse until my wedding night at age 20.

It had been ingrained in my mind growing up that the only appropriate time to have sex was after you’re married, and only with your spouse. I was told it was not only the right thing to do, but sex would also be more satisfying that way. My bride had grown up with similar instructions.

All the sexual fear and angst that had been imparted on us in our childhoods did not vanish simply because we went through a wedding ceremony. Christianity had given us no tools to build a healthy sexual dynamic. We were married for six years and sex was always difficult for us. God didn’t make it extra special for us just because we followed the rules.

A year after my divorce I had sex with someone else for the first time. It was great! The experience was immediately better than what I had known before because it was based purely on attraction, emotion, consent, and enjoyment, rather than whatever maze of obligations had always surrounded sex inside our monogamous Christian-style marriage. I think my ex-wife experienced the same thing with her next partner.

It could be the case that Christianity and purity culture were not primarily responsible for our difficulties, and we were simply incompatible as sexual partners. But that’s part of my point. You need to have sexual experience to know if you’re compatible with someone or not — that’s something to figure out before you attempt to make a lifelong commitment of monogamy. I would never recommend anyone to save sex for marriage.

I’ve never felt “impure” after sleeping with someone. Sex is enjoyable. It makes me happy. It feels natural and satisfying; it builds closeness. It’s something humans do like any other animal. It’s an activity every single one of your ancestors has in common, going back billions of years.

The only time sex hurts me is when it brings up the traumas that purity culture inflicted on me. Sex is not the problem; viewing it as a sin is.

There are some important things to get right when you have sex, but none of them necessarily have to do with marital status. You should be honest about your activity, always have sex with consenting adults in the context of mutual desire, and be responsible with pregnancy and STD prevention. Beyond that, you can pretty much feel free to satisfy your human desire for sexual connection however you please!

2. “Secular” music

One year at summer camp, a speaker compared music to dietary choices:

Worship music is like health food.

Music by Christian artists is like staple foods, the bulk of your diet.

Silly music, perhaps from Weird Al or similar, is like junk food; an acceptable occasional treat.

Secular, worldly music, from artists such as Britney Spears, is poison. You should never touch it at all.

Music is fundamentally a promotion of the artist’s philosophy, the speaker claimed. If you listen to music from non-Christian artists then you are essentially letting Satan into your mind, because everything that is not of Jesus is of the devil.

If Britney Spears is poison, the metal music I’ve enjoyed for 15+ years must be a nuclear bomb. Some of the subgenres I listen to are intentionally devoted to being as blasphemous and anti-Christian as possible.

Believe it or not, metal musicians don’t get struck down by bolts of holy lightning even when they propagate overtly Satanic messages, and their listeners turn out fine for the most part as well.

The power, intensity, and rage of extreme music has long been therapeutic for me. It helped me process my open heart surgery, the death of my step-mom, breakups, and other trauma. It’s a practical way I can embody and release strong emotions. There’s a sense of relief I’ve never found elsewhere.

Christian music, for the most part, is limited by severe design constraints. It must fall within the acceptable limits of what Christians should experience and express, and it must promote belief. It’s not that there aren’t good Christian artists; it’s just that when the emotional palette is so limited, it tends to stifle creativity and rawness of expression. Listen to artists who exist outside of that limitation and you’ll find music that is much more viscerally satisfying and meaningful.

I also enjoy electronic music that is associated with psychedelic culture, which brings us to my next sin.

3. Drugs

D.A.R.E. and the church taught me to avoid drugs at all costs. The messaging wasn’t lost on me by any means. To this day, I have an aversion to smoking cigarettes because I perceive it as a very unhealthy and addictive action with no significant reward.

Of course, it is true that drugs are not always a great idea. It is a serious problem when people become dependent on a substance and it causes them to neglect their responsibilities or the loved ones in their life. It’s worth being very cautious with drugs. You’re probably better off never trying heroin or meth, for example.

However, I think certain drugs can also have a powerful positive aspect that law enforcement and religious authorities won’t tell you about.

The vast majority of people, including Christians, already depend on a psychoactive stimulant every day of their lives. They even give it away for free at church to help draw people in. You’re almost certainly familiar with the way caffeine can give you energy and motivation out of thin air. The concept of enhancing your life with one chemical or another is not that weird.

Many Christians also enjoy alcohol, and some smoke cigarettes, because these are legal substances (even though they are highly destructive on a personal and societal level).

I was 22 when I first smoked weed. I remember telling my friend about it the next day: it was everything I liked about drinking, with virtually none of the downsides. I was an instant fan and it was clear to me that it should not be illegal. It helped interrupt my overthinking mind and it dropped me into my body, where I enjoyed the sensations of stretching and movement and music.

A year later, after much deliberation and numerous conversations with experienced friends, I tried psychedelic mushrooms for the first time. I had a number of trips that completely reframed the way I thought about myself, the world, and my interaction with everyone inside it. It gave me a more “spiritual” feeling than I had ever found inside Christianity. I also had some difficult experiences that forced me to confront my dark side and gave me empathy for those who suffer from abuse and mental illness.

I feel that mushrooms and LSD have unequivocally shifted my life in a positive direction and opened me up to incredible possibilities that I might never have otherwise considered.

Psychedelics certainly aren’t for everyone, but most people I know who have tried them had significant positive experiences with them. It honestly makes me sad that many people will never get to enjoy the benefits of these substances simply because it’s taboo inside their religion.

4. Yoga and meditation

I resisted trying yoga for years. Mostly, it goes back to the rhetoric about how anything that is not of Jesus is of Satan, and since yoga is a practice affiliated with Eastern religion instead of Jesus, it must involve demonic forces.

Another obstacle was gender: in Christianity there are men, and there are women, and they are very different and they do different things; and yoga is a women’s thing (on top of being, you know, demonic). The fear of doing “feminine” things is part of toxic masculinity. It took me a while to overcome those ideas after deconverting — psychedelics helped — but eventually one summer day 7 years ago I went to a work-sponsored yoga class.

I realized: “hey, this is exactly what I’ve been doing on my living room floor when I get high and stretch!” I started coming to every single class. I would walk away feeling about as good as I ever had in my life. Gaining mobility in my hips erased my knee pain, I found a sense of camaraderie with the other students, and my mental space felt clear, focused, graceful, and compassionate. I became fascinated with the mind-body connection.

5 years ago I went to a Vipassana meditation retreat — 10 hours of silent meditation every day for 10 days. This gave me another powerful tool for self-examination and centering. Granted, the Vipassana organization can feel a bit cult-like; but it seems absurd to me that I ever worried about “evil spirits” entering my mind.

There’s nothing dark or nefarious about simply sitting and observing your breath and your body. On the contrary, these practices can provide peace of mind and ease of body beyond anything else I’ve experienced.

5. Reaching my own conclusions

Proverbs 3:5 — Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

When I was a Christian, I thought the best plan for my life was to ignore my own understanding and instead rely on an unquestioning devotion to what I called “the Lord”.

Of course, the Lord was never there. What I was actually interacting with and counting on for guidance was my pastor, my Christian peers, my own subconscious, and an ancient book that had been re-translated and re-interpreted countless times.

I’m not saying all religious guidance is automatically bad. I just think it’s a poor substitute for developing the faculty of rational decision-making. Spirituality, if pursued, ought to be integrated appropriately in the context of the objective reality that you deal with every day. It should add to your life, not control it.

I’m also not saying that religion forbids thinking. Clearly, a great deal of thought has gone into theology and apologetics, and Christians are encouraged to study and memorize the Bible. However, that thinking is constrained to a particular outcome. If your conclusions land outside of religion, you’ve thought wrongly.

I treasure having the freedom to look at the facts, the reality around me, to observe and compare and consider, and ultimately use the understanding I’ve accumulated inside my own brain to piece together a perspective of what is most likely to be true. I value having the ability to trust my own conclusions and also to reconsider them when I encounter new information.

It is not a bad thing to lean on your own understanding. In fact, it’s all you really have. Strip away your thoughts, intuitions, emotions, senses, and logical reasoning, and what do you have left to make decisions with? How else will you determine what is true or false? The only alternative is to blindly accept what you are told — which is an easy way to get sucked into whatever religion you’re exposed to as a child.

Relying on my own understanding has allowed me to make life choices that are a good fit for me. Nobody else understands my needs and desires quite like I do. Every time I’ve listened to my own wisdom it’s taken me farther down the road of living the kind of life I truly want to live.