Why should you risk everything to admit that you're an unbeliever?

I couldn't help but expose my thoughts to the light of day. I shared them all along my trek from christian fundamentalism, to calvinism, to atheism. And there were prices I paid as I made my way. Was it worth it? My feeling was and is, this is who I really am, take me or leave me. I must be true to that person.

Here's a bit of advice columnist Cary Tennis's take on it that I found sagacious:

One of the principles of “coming out” is the presumption of innocence — that we are innocent of our own existence, that we did not make ourselves and we did not make the world, and that in revealing who we are and what we see, we simply reveal what is already there. We are not confessing to a crime. We are revealing our existence.

What we ask for in doing so is simple recognition: We desire to be seen. We put aside for the time being the question of our effect on others. We leave it up to others what they should do about who we are.

That does not mean they will do what we want. If we have been sufficiently skillful in constructing our false self, those who love us may indeed love this false self, and may greet with consternation the arrival of what we consider to be our authentic self.

So in coming out we ask, Can you still love me, knowing who I am?

Perhaps the answer is no. Perhaps our partner has fallen in love with the character of our creation.

[...]

So you risk a lot. But you risk it for the biggest prize of all: to be loved for who you really are.

[via Black Sun Journal]

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