Editor’s note: In the first in a series on clergy-founders of The Clergy Project, Dan Barker explains how leaving evangelical Christian ministry over twenty years ago has allowed him to see life as it really is. Subsequent posts will feature other clergy-founders who have just recently left the ministry.

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By Dan Barker

When I was a Christian minister, I sometimes preached from I Corinthians 13:12:

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.”

There are many things we don’t understand, but it will all become clear in Heaven. Or so the bible says.

Paul was right, for once. There are many things preachers – and their congregations – don’t understand. The fact that Christian denominations all disagree with each other is the strongest evidence of that truth

I never thought about what that “glass” might be. I suppose I imagined it was like looking through a dirty window, though I doubt there were any glass windows in the middle east in those days. Scholars don’t really know what esoptron meant. Some translations render it “mirror,” which makes sense. Believers are just looking back at themselves. When they pray, they are talking to themselves. When they picture God, they are seeing a glorified version of themselves, in whose image he was created. No wonder Paul said it was dark. There is nothing to see.

Maybe I thought it was like a cloudy lens. Our imperfect vision, corrupted by sin, is unable to perceive the incorruptible nature of God. Or so the Bible says. There were no telescopes in those days, but that wouldn’t have stopped me from using a lens as an analogy in a sermon. So let me try it now. (Once a preacher, always a preacher.)

I think believers are looking through the wrong end of the telescope. I don’t think I was blind back when I was a devout and sincere preacher. I was simply looking at the world the wrong way, like peering backward through a telescope or microscope. Yes, if you gaze through the wrong end, you will get a little light, but what you will mainly see is your own eye reflected in the glass.

That is not how to observe the world. It turns reality into “me, me me.” Believers think the cosmos was created for “us, us, us.” The supposed “fine tuning” of the initial constants was designed so that “we” could exist. Whoever or whatever created the universe did it with us in mind, only us. Religion is very narcissistic. Christians are very self-centered. But if you are framing your field of view through the narrow window of the bible, that’s all you will get. “For his glory we were created” sounds like it’s all about the Creator, but it’s really about how important we are to be designed to serve his greatness. Aren’t we special?

It’s like one of those redwing blackbirds on a fencepost by the highway, chirping its territorial melody:

“I am the king of this fencepost! Look at me! I was designed to be beautiful and important. This fencepost, this road, these fields were all created so that I could exist. Please, somebody notice me and love me. Please! That is my meaning, my purpose of life.”

When I finally gave up religion and left the ministry, after a four or five-year period of reevaluation, it was like turning the telescope around and looking at the actual world for the first time. Finally, the glass is no longer dark! I was surprised at how different—and beautiful!—the real world is compared with the artificial world of faith. The lens works like it is supposed to. I replaced faith with reason, belief with observation, certainty with humility, dogma with science, scripture with freethought. I feel like I am finally seeing the world face-to-face, now, in this life. I stepped down from the pulpit to the level of the congregation and walked out the back door – with many of them – out into the light of the real world.

The passage right before the “glass darkly” verse says,

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

I was a child all those years I was preaching, believing in a book that describes a talking snake, disembodied handwriting on the wall, food falling from the sky, seven-headed dragon, ghosts, angels, spirits, miraculous births, levitations, god-in-three-persons, sin, hell, heaven. The Bible is certainly fantastic (in all senses of that word), but it is like a dark glass. It points away from the light. Now that I am grown, I can put down that book, open my eyes, stand up and look around.

What a wonderful world!

Editor’s question: Those of you who have left religion — what does the world look like to you now?

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Dan Barker, a former evangelical minister, is now co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation and author of the book Godless: How An Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists. His next book, due out near the end of 2014, is Life Driven Purpose: How an atheist finds meaning (Foreword by Daniel Dennett).

Photo Credits

http://trasiah.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/telescpoe-backwards.jpg

http://treeinthedoorvideo.blogspot.ca/2014/05/red-wing-blackbird.html

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