Despite this conservative setting, I always remained quite curious about the world. I read a lot about Japan when I was a little kid and was completely obsessed with that country. My parents think that my interest came from the fact that I had a Japanese friend when I was growing up in preschool. I read about Japanese festivals and Japanese religions like Shintoism and Buddhism. I thought that these religions and ways of life were very beautiful and very respectful. They valued human life and good deeds above everything else.
One day after church, I remember asking my mom, “Who gets into heaven? What about these people in Japan or in China who have never even heard of Jesus but who are very good people and do good deeds? What happens to them when they die if they don’t know about God or they don’t know about Jesus or even if they do, continue to be a Buddhist or Shinto?” She really didn’t have a good answer for me. That was the beginning of me asking myself questions about Biblical justice and having an issue with any religion that would not allow someone into heaven because they didn’t have the luck of being born in a Christian country.
This questioning began at the same time that I started to go to Bible study every Wednesday. As I became more educated about Christianity, I started to have more questions. I became interested in other religions, specifically paganism and Wicca. I continued to ask, “If people of different religions do good things, why should only one pocket of them be accepted into heaven or have a good afterlife?” I was very attracted to paganism and Wicca because those religions teach that one could be a pagan and believe in any God or Goddess; it was all-accepting. I loved the idea that if you’re Wiccan, you believe that God is like a diamond, and He has many facets. He can have the face of Allah. He can be Jesus. He can be Mohammad or Shiva or Krishna or the Buddha, but in the end, God is one thing. To me, it seemed to make more sense that all of the people in the world are actually worshipping the same God. At the time, that idea was very attractive to me. I became more and more sure that Christianity wasn’t for me.
I was open with my parents about my changing beliefs. When I started learning about Wicca, I found a book about it in the New Age section of a bookstore, and I asked my dad to buy it for me. He said, “Of course I’ll buy this for you. I want you to know as much as you can about everything.” The book I got is called Teen Witch, by author Silver RavenWolf. It’s amazing thinking back that my dad let me buy the book. It talks about what it’s like to be a witch, what it’s like to be a Wiccan, to be pagan. As you can tell, Wicca has some Harry Potter elements to it.
I started talking to my parents more about Wicca and paganism. When my dad told my mom that I was getting interested in it, she freaked out. I don’t know if she was uncomfortable with me not being a Christian or me getting into a weird, New Age religion. She ramped up her efforts to make me go to church and Bible study, which I think was her way of coping with the fact that I didn’t want to do something that she found very important in her own life. The more that my mom acted this way, the more I became interested in Wicca. She didn’t want me to tell anybody about it. I continued to read. For about two years, I got more and more into it.
My interest in Wicca caused some issues in my parents’ otherwise wonderful relationship. I remember once being in my house doing homework, and I heard sounds coming from the family room or in the kitchen downstairs. I crawled down the hallway and sat at the stairwell. I heard my parents having arguments, my mom asking, “How did you let her get this book? Why would you buy it for her? She’s going to be ridiculed! People are going to make fun of her! Only crazy people believe in this stuff!“ My dad rebutted by saying, “I just want her to know everything that she can about religion. If she knows about it, she probably won’t be into it anymore.” Those fights made me realize that these subjects are serious, and that my interest in them can have an impact on other people. My parents’ religious differences must have been a source of disagreement in their lives. When I was growing up, I never realized that my dad was an atheist. He would drive us to church, but he would never come in. I always wondered why. He would come to church for Christmas or Easter service, but he would always stay in the pews when we went up for communion.
Interestingly, a few years ago, my dad became born-again Christian. I really don’t know anything about why he converted, and I wish I did. He’s a Christian now, and he goes to church with my mom. He’s not an intense evangelical; I really wish that he had been more open about his beliefs when I was growing up because all I wanted when I was young was talk to somebody about religion, and I felt like I couldn’t.
My dad is a recovering alcoholic. It’s not something that I experienced firsthand because by the time my siblings and I were born, he was in recovery. But around the time that I was 16, he started going back to Alcoholics Anonymous for the community. Part of the 12-step A.A. rehab program includes submitting to a higher power. I think it was a rather natural progression for him, becoming more religious as he went back to those meetings. Regardless, he’s very happy now. He reads the Bible, and his favorite book is Ecclesiastes.
Back to my story. I’m very thankful to have had people in my life who have encouraged me to become a critical thinker. When I was young, I was pretty gullible and would believe whatever people told me. At one point, when I was a teenager, my brother said to me, “Lucy, I love you, I respect what you believe in, I will always support you, but I want you to think about your Wiccan beliefs. Just because something makes you feel good doesn’t necessarily make it true.” That was hard for me to hear because I really loved Wicca. It made me feel very good, thinking that everybody who does good deeds and believes in whatever God that they want to believe in will get into heaven. My brother pointed out that just because I believe in something doesn’t really mean that my inclusionary beliefs about religion actually match up with the teachings or the content of the Koran or the Bible. It’s funny how what one person says can impact you so dramatically. It was at that moment that I started to think, “Maybe I’m not really being intellectually honest about this. Maybe I need to think about this in a more logical way.” That was the beginning of the end of my religious faith.
After going from Christianity to Wicca, from Wicca back to nebulous agnosticism, I didn’t really believe in anything. Every step of that was very hard for me. I had really believed in God with all of my heart. I’m looking at a tear-stained diary entry that I wrote in 2001. I was 12 years old. It just says, “I’m so alone. I’m so heavy-hearted. I don’t know who to turn to.” Losing my religion was absolutely heartbreaking.
Growing up, I felt like I could talk to God. I felt like I could feel the presence of a divine being wherever I went. I would walk outside, the sun would be shining, and the light would stream through the leaves. I would think, “Only God could have made this. Only God. He put me on this Earth to enjoy this life.” When I started to think about the fact that maybe there isn’t someone looking out for me, that maybe I was just born of my parents, that maybe there’s no heaven, and that maybe I’m going to die like everyone else some day, it was very hard to accept.