Saying goodbye to faith on social media has become trend: "Return may take years"

“I thought the Christian religion made people anxious and gloomy”

Joost van de Steeg (27) from the Dutch town of Nunspeet attended a conservative Reformed church. In his teens, he said goodbye to the Christian faith, but in 2021, he changed radically.

"When I was a small child, I believed in a childlike way that God existed and that the Bible was true. Around the age of eight, I became convinced that I needed to be converted and prayed for that. A few years later, however, I no longer believed that the Bible was true and stopped praying. I don't remember the immediate reason for that.

I mostly kept my thoughts to myself. Critical questions I never voiced, because I didn't really concern myself with them anymore at that time. I had a certain indifference. I was not hostile, but for me, eternity no longer existed.

Around the age of 16, I started thinking that religion is just a human concept. I thought: we all look for a way to deal with the suffering in the world and find the answer in some religion. Later, I increasingly got the idea that the Christian religion makes people fearful and gloomy, with all its teachings about hell, sin and grace. By instilling fear in people, it sustains itself, I suspected.

Convincing evidence

Incidentally, I did wish I could believe because I also saw that faith provided a foothold. But it bothered me that people appealed to the Bible. I thought: how can you claim that such a book contains absolute truth? I could only believe if there was convincing evidence. And I didn't have that.

I once saw a clip of the Dutch comedian Hans Teeuwen. He picked up a note on which he wrote: "The Bible is not true" or something similar. Then he said: "If someone says to me that the Bible is true, I reply: It is not, because" –pointing to the note– "it is written: "The Bible is not true."" That illustrates how I was thinking. The different opinions I encountered online certainly also influenced my way of thinking.

Never did I find it intrusive when family members or church elders addressed me. Some years ago, for instance, I had some conversations with young people in my close circle who had come to faith. After one of them experienced something of Christ's love, he said, "It feels like you are in love with someone." I replied, "How nice that you believe and experience that, but other things make me happy."

Even if the best arguments for the Christian faith had been put forward, they would not have convinced me. As our preacher said to me, "I can't convince you, but God can."

God was not necessary to make life meaningful, I thought – we should be good to each other and respect each other's religion, but don't bother me with it. I got meaning from life before death. Such vacuous views in hindsight.

Divine election

By then, I was living in Zwolle, and in early June 2021, I wanted to go to my parents' house for a weekend. Then, it occurred to me that we would go to church on Sunday, and I didn't feel like it. My mind made a leap from Sunday church attendance to certain tenets of the faith, such as divine election.

Curious as I was, I googled the word. I saw Romans 8 in the results and started reading. That chapter says: "Therefore the thought of the flesh is enmity against God; for it does not submit to the law of God." And at that moment, that became a reality for me. It affected me deeply: I was an enemy. Then I knew that God exists and that He has always seen me, like waking up and having a blindfold removed from your eyes. I wanted to hide and cried out to God: If You exist, how can I ever exist for You? An exclamation of surprise and terror.

A few months after that, I experienced something of God's love for the first time. At that time, I understood something of the "bonds of death" and "terrors of hell" described in Psalm 116. At that time, I read about the Armour in Ephesus and Psalm 91, which says that God is the Refuge, and His truth is a shield and buckler. Then I saw that Jesus Himself is the Armour. Again, it's like having a blindfold removed from your eyes. They sometimes say, "Love melts the heart", and that is true.

Other people reacted with surprise, often saying, "Nice for you, such a change. But I don't understand why you go to such a conservative church again." But in those "strict" churches, I heard what lived in my heart and Who God is.

The Bible has power and confirms itself. Non-believers don't get that, and neither do I sometimes. Grace is the only reason it becomes truth. I read the same thing recently from Robert Walker. He was one of the best students at Cambridge University in the nineteenth century and, at first, could not be convinced that God's Word was true. But later, he learned to believe like a child. So God's grace can reach everyone because Jesus came to seek and save lost people."