'Dear God, I'm an atheist'

My earliest memories are of sitting in church with my thumb in my mouth, staring at the sun through stained-glass windows. My mother was a part-time pastor so my Sunday mornings were booked for prayer, hymns and instant coffee until I was 16.

Every Easter, my family would mount our bikes and ride the mile or so to church. Until I was old enough to balance on two wheels, I rode in the plastic seat on my dad's bruised, ancient bike, the color of a 30-year-old school bus.

March mornings were often cold, and by the time we arrived at church, I felt like a pop can that had been propped up in the current of a river. In those days, before the church's ideologies and people began to seem hollow, I anticipated church simply for its warmth.

Halfway through the service, all the kids were deported to Sunday school, and we walked out of the church like convicts who were just granted parole. In Sunday school, we could yell and laugh, and the songs had easy-to-understand lyrics like "Jesus Loves Me."

"What's an atheist?" I asked between songs one morning. On the wall, there was a list of all the world's religions, and "atheist" was the only one I didn't recognize.

"An atheist," the young, redheaded teacher said as she leaned toward me, "is someone who doesn't know the difference between right and wrong. They lie, and they cheat."

That was almost exactly how my grandparents had defined the word "communist," so I figured they meant the same thing. I was halfway through middle school before I knew the actual definitions.

Before sixth grade, I subscribed to the religious beliefs of my parents and our church wholeheartedly. I even began to enjoy the sermons and attended church camp three years in a row.

Then, almost suddenly, I lost interest. The angel on my shoulder somehow contracted laryngitis, and my id took over. My departure from Christianity was not on ideological grounds; it was purely hedonistic. I figured I could have a lot more fun if I weren't a Christian.

Armed with my newfound atheism, I became openly hostile to organized religion, especially to the pragmatic Presbyterian values held by my parents. I thought it was just a way for them to avoid making decisions, a dictator-like moral compass that kept them from choosing their own path.

As time went on and I saw my parents give their time and money to nearly every charity with a hat in front of it, my scalding atheism cooled to a simmer. Their moral compass may have been a dictator, but it was a benevolent one.

My parents say my refusal to accept Christianity is one of the biggest disappointments in their lives. If they were good parents (and good Christians), they would have a son who sits next to them on the pew every Sunday and sings the hymns with as much emotion as they do.

I have let my parents down in millions of ways, but their disappointment in my decision to be an atheist is the only one that still stings.

Even though the logical part of my mind sees God as a figure that humans created in their own image, part of me is still the kid on the back of my dad's bike, waiting to get into the warmth of the church.

It was years after I declared myself an atheist that I stopped praying. When I was studying for a test I knew I was going to fail or stuck in traffic five minutes before a job interview, I fell into my old routine, and my thoughts began with "Dear God... "

It was harder to exorcise God from my inner monologue than it was to remove him from my actions. Even now, I sometimes find myself wondering if anyone can hear my silent pleas. While I don't think anyone is out there, I find the slight possibility, at the least, reassuring.

Mike Baab is a Western Washington University senior. E-mail: NEXT@seattletimes.com