That’s the title of a song that I get stuck in my head sometimes. It helps me feel better, when I am feeling sad or lost or overwhelmed since leaving Christianity. I’m never going back to okay. Things are always going to feel slightly uneasy without the promise that the almighty god is going to work everything out according to his good plan, or that, even if things suck for me here on earth, I get to experience a totally awesome afterlife. I cannot go back to that superficial life, where I never felt the natural highs and lows of life because I stuffed everything down and covered it with a shiny god veneer.
It’s been a rough couple of days and last night I found myself singing, “I’m never going back to okay. I’m never going back to easy. I’m never going back to the way it was. I’m never going back to okay.”
Then, I wondered, who is that song even by? So, I googled it. Oh, yeah. The Afters. A Christian band.
I don’t think that song means what I think it means.
Obviously, the singer is saying that they (it’s “we” not “I,” as I sing it) are never going back to the way they were before finding Jesus. I am saying that I am never going back to the way I was after I found Jesus. It’s rather ironic, no? I sing a Christian song to encourage me in my unbelief.
Let’s look at the lyrics from my perspective, that of someone who felt like she was not really living her life, but playing it safe by relying on Christianity to tell her how to live and thinking that prayer is actually an active way of dealing with her problems.
It’s not the end, but it feels like it is
I’m waking up, like I’m back from the dead
I’m stepping out, and I feel so free
But as long as I’m moving it’s all rightI feel alive, and it hurts for a change
No looking back
It’s hard to believe that I was cool
With the days that I wasted
Complacent and tasteless and bored
But that was yesterday…We’re never going back to OK
We’re never going back to easy
We’re never going back to the way it was
We’re never going back to OK
Wow. It is uncanny how spot on that describes how I feel about my old life as a Christian (complacent, tasteless, bored, the days I wasted) and how I feel now (alive, waking up, back from the dead, so free).
And it hurts for a change. One of the things I have realized is that I never felt extreme pain when I was a Christian because I believed with all of my mind and heart that God was handling everything and I did not need to worry. I really believed that for a long time and it made my life relatively worry-free.
That might sound great. It is an appealing claim that Christianity makes and it really works, if you can make yourself believe it strongly enough.
But then there is the other side. You cannot suppress one side of your emotions without it affecting the other. So, while I was insulated from extreme pain and worry, I also was not feeling the extreme joy and pleasure that life has to offer. Everything was just a moderate lukewarm.
I’m waking up, like I’m back from the dead
I’m never going back to okay.
