1118: Jon Steingard’s Deconversion from Christianity
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/04/27
How does someone go from boldly running after God, believing the Bible secures our salvation, to publicly wrestling with doubt, questioning God’s very existence, and finally embracing agnosticism — while still praying for a God who may or may not be there?
2015
“‘Sold Out’ is one of my favourite songs on the record because it speaks so boldly and unequivocally about our desire to run after God, regardless of culture or circumstance.”
“Our relationship with God is already secured with what was done on the cross. What if we went into life with confidence of knowing we are already loved?”
“For me, the chorus is a prayer… In reality, God’s interested in the condition of our hearts and our lives will flow out of that.”
2020
“After growing up in a Christian home, being a pastor’s kid, playing and singing in a Christian band, and having the word ‘Christian’ in front of most of the things in my life — I am now finding that I no longer believe in God.The process of getting to that sentence has been several years in the making.”
“I’ve been terrified to post this for a while … I want to be open. I want to be transparent with you all.”
“I didn’t sleep too well that night … but what I come back to is that this is true. This is how I really feel.”
“I was not entirely prepared for that. It’s been really cool because it’s enabled me to connect with so many people … in the same boat as me.”
“The boat for me is that I really thought that I would post that and be done — but what I discovered was … I felt so free, but then very quickly I was like, ‘OK, so what do you believe?’”
“I even have a hard time saying I don’t believe in God because I’m sort of like ‘oh, maybe.’”
“A lot of the things that you would need to believe in order to say that you’re a Christian, I have a hard time believing. But then I also don’t feel satisfied with just a completely atheistic perspective.”
“I’ve never had more conversations about God than I’m having right now … There’s so much I didn’t know.”
“I still pray. When I pray now, it sounds something like ‘God, I don’t know if you’re there … but if you are … can you show up in my life?’”
“Or you could just love them.”
“I was ensconced in this culture and my career was a part of that, and questioning it would have meant undermining my career — so for a long time I just didn’t.”
“So often I would say, ‘You know, I am really wondering about this,’ and you would just see this look of relief … ‘Oh, thank you for saying that, I’ve wondered that too.’”
“I noticed there were a lot of people in Christian culture my age … beginning to ask the same questions … so I just found myself being like, ‘Well, I’ll go first!’”
“The things that I am seeing here do not dovetail with the idea of an all-powerful and all-loving God.”
“There is no way that I can believe in God the way that I used to.”
2021
“I really did believe and I had questions, but I was afraid to even ask them alone by myself. I was afraid to present them to myself.”
“And that kind of thing wrecked me … I came back from that trip and I was just like, ‘There is no way that I can believe in God the way that I used to.’”
“Why is it that God is so mysterious that we don’t seem to have more direct access? I’ve never actually seen — never heard God’s voice directly.”
2022
“I have publicly said that I don’t believe in God, but more than ever, I find myself motivated to live in such a way that sort of indicates that I do.”
“For example, I still pray … ‘If you’re not there, what I’m doing isn’t harming anything. But if you are there, can you show up?’”
“How much time do you have? Problem of Evil, Divine Hiddenness, irregularities in biblical texts, wide-ranging interpretations … history of use by empire for conquest, and the state of Christian culture in America.”
“It’s funny because very little about my lifestyle changed. There weren’t many things I wanted to do that the church wouldn’t approve of.”
“It’s vacillated between ‘Oh, this is an interesting conversation’ and ‘Houston, we have a problem.’ But both our sets of parents love us well … I’m really grateful for that.”
2023
“Grew up: Evangelical | Currently: Agnostic | Could see myself becoming: a general theist that mostly rejects religion.”
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