Talking to Casey (Neo-Zelander friend from FB)
Autor: Glaucio | Publicado: 2013-03-04T14:21:00-08:00



Casey: Listening to my old Christian CDs, and one thing that occurs to me, even as an Atheist: there is a certain transcendence and raw integrity in Christian music, be it the modern "Christian rock" or old hymns, something that secular music hasn't even begun to reach. Francis Spufford is well known as saying that Christianity makes a certain "emotional sense", even if it does not make sense to rationality.Me: Whenever I listen to Christian CDs from years ago, it brings me some feeling of mourning, as if I had lost a very close and precious friend years ago, someone I used to say a few words every night before sleeping. Like when you listen to a song that reminds you someone who died and then you feel blue. I guess that's what happened after all in a sense. Sometimes I compare God to drugs: you're not born addicted to anything. But if other people start giving you heroine since your early childhood and then you just drop it at some moment, you'll surely go through withdraw symptons. That means, if I'd never been given the drug, I would have no idea what such feeling is about. By talking to people born in secular/atheist families it seems to me like that.Casey: Thats nteresting about your observation about secular/atheist families. For me it felt so natural to believe...I wasn't born Christian. but it was like I was searching for deeper meaning...and once I found Jesus it was kind of like finding the women you are going to marry. No one told me to believe, but I found it out for myself and it felt so right. I found the emotional rollercoaster when i deconverted really difficult...as you say, it feels as if your best friend just died. I wouldn't call it an addiction...I think is like the imaginary friends you have as a kid, that it is quite normal.I dont feel mourning when I listen to christian music...at least i only feel a little mourning now.Me: Well Casey in my point of view it's really natural for us (as thinking beings) to ask questions like "where did I come from?" or "what's happening after I die?" even for people raised in non-religious families. From your experience I deduce everybody can reach a point in life at which such questioning get to its height, that is, "what do all this mean? There must be something and I want to know at any cost!". I believe I got your point, that is, it's something one may naturally ask himself someday (my secular friends included). Anyway, giving a deeper thought to it, maybe the mourning is not just because "god is dead", but mainly because of the religious community. I mean, as a believer I knew that if I moved to any city in any State I'd find "friends" and "brothers" at a local church there. After all "faith unites people from the same flock" (at least that's how I used to see it in my past Christian life). You know, a big family all over the world under the same father. It's a human need to feel part of some group and that's something I lost forever (unless I disguise my disbelief, but that would be just meaningless as well). It would be like having a wife and lose all love and affinity for her, but faking it just to keep together... What for? Impossible.Back to Christian music and thinking of it again, I suppose it's not God I miss more. I was very strongly tied to the Christian community in all aspects, since they were the only people I was allowed to be tied to. Seriously. And I wasn't raised in a Jehova's Witnesses environment, it was Baptist. The music reminds me of that time. But one thing is to be said: some Christian songs I used to listen were just great, the arrangements, harmony, the way they sang and played and everything. I myself can play a lot of them in the guitar as I played in the church for years.