Many, maybe even most, of us who grew up religious at some time find ourselves in a crisis of faith. Some of us come out on the other side with our faith battered but ultimately intact. Others walk away from their faith altogether. Whichever way we end up traveling, whether we stay or leave, many of our scars are the same.
I want to share the stories of a couple of my friends who walked away. If your first instinct is to offer solutions, to defend Christianity, don’t. Just listen to what my friends have experienced. Practice empathy. If you can relate to their stories, know that you’re not alone.
If you’ve walked away, I sincerely hope you come back. Not only do I believe it’s true, I also believe that Christianity is a truly beautiful thing, and I want you to be able to share in my joy. But more immediately, I hope for healing from the things that have hurt you. I hope these stories show you that you’re not the only one who struggles or who has been damaged by the religious environment that so many of us strain against.
Friend #1
My journey out of faith started as simply an intellectual one. It was the realization that certain doctrines I had been taught as non-negotiable were maybe not as clear in scripture as I’d been told. There were interpretations, translations, or contexts that took these teachings in a very different direction. And when these teachings were among those that had shaped the course of my life and my view of my self-identity, even the potentiality of a very different interpretation required a serious step-back for evaluation.
It was here that I found myself, for the very first time in my life, willing to ask the hard questions in a purely objective way. It wasn’t as if I’d never before questioned my faith or the reliability of the Bible (which, let’s face it, are pretty interchangeable concepts for many evangelicals), but every other time I had done so, I had very much wanted to find that the truth was where I’d left it. That any scrutiny would prove that I’d been standing on the right answers all along, at least when it came to the biggest questions. Is there a God? If so, what is this God like? Who am I, and what is my purpose? What does the future hold? This was no nitpicking of doctrinal minutiae. I needed to know, truly and honestly: had I founded my whole life on a lie?
What I was able to see once the blinders were off was that every defense for faith was rooted in circular reasoning and wishful thinking. It was true because it had to be. It was true because these circumstances had proven it so; this anecdotal evidence, at the expense of all other examples to the contrary, was irrefutable. It was true because without God there is no standard for right and wrong, no gauge for morality. It was true because it could be felt, the reality of it, because the hope and joy and love of Jesus were life-changing.
It didn’t mean anything. Because those answers only make sense to those who desperately need to prove to themselves that they’ve built their lives on the truth, and when approaching it without emotional dependency on the answer, it becomes quite clear: it doesn’t hold up. The universe is vast and unknown, and we’re all just guessing.
Once I’d finally accepted the possibility that the truth may not be what I had been told, the bottom dropped out. My whole life had been built on the Bible as I’d learned it. It defined the universe, my sense of self, the past, present, and future. I’d built a city on this foundation—my marriage, my parenting, my goals, my hopes and dreams, my very personality. When the foundation crumbled, everything came down with it. And in the rubble, it quickly became clear that dictating a narrow view of the universe to a person from the day their life begins is one of the most damaging things you can do, even when it’s done with pure motives and the belief that you’re simply imparting truth and life to them. What it does is teach them not to think, and it deprives them of the human right to define and discover oneself. You’re told not to listen to and trust yourself, because who and what you are is inherently flawed and weak and wicked, and instead to trust only outside sources. When, from before it ever occurs to you to ask the big questions about life and identity, you’ve already been handed all the answers on a platter, what room is there to question? And who would dare do so when the possible penalty of questioning is eternal torment?
I was told what life on the outside was like. There was no real morality out there; good deeds weren’t really possible without the power and motivation of the Holy Spirit, and all other good was counterfeit. There was no hope without Heaven, no true joy without Christ, and love held no meaning without the Cross. I felt it in my bones, the truth of it. I believed with every fiber of my being that I was nothing without him. It was real for me. Not a thing on earth could have convinced me I could walk away.
But once I found myself outside the door, I was struck first by the fresh air. I could still hear all the voices I knew inside, the music and laughter, but the air had been thick and stifling, and suddenly I could breathe. It was dark, but there were fireflies. So I started walking.
And here’s what no one told me:
I could leave and lose nothing.
On the surface level, yes. People leave you. People will reject your story, tell you that you never really believed. But you know the truth, and you learn that you don’t owe them anything. Not anymore. So you let them go.
You walk through the dark until you see a light ahead, and it’s a campfire, a family. You’re a refugee now, and they offer you food and a bed, let you tell your story, and they tell you theirs. They like you for you, your individuality instead of your successful conformity, and you find the oxygen loosening something up in your soul. Maybe who you are wasn’t the mold you forced yourself into but something deeper, something that lay sleeping, dormant, but finally has the freedom to come out.
Everything I was told only existed in Christ was a lie. Maybe they believed it themselves, as I know I told many people the same thing and genuinely believed it to be true. But the fact is that there’s hope outside. There’s love, every bit as profound as the love I’d known before. An arbitrary standard of right and wrong established by a higher power is not the only source of morality; it exists in humankind’s desire to make a better future for our children, for the world’s children. And the wisdom and guidance I relished in the indwelling Holy Spirit has turned out to have been my own voice all along. Nothing has changed. I just spent decades thanking someone else for what was mine all along. I’m not flawed and weak and wicked. That was a lie to keep me needy, blind and dependent.
I’ve lost nothing and gained everything. Everything I need is still out here, but I’ve gained myself. Self-loathing and self-distrust are slowly being replaced by confidence and acceptance. I’m learning to make my own destiny, to love and trust my own body’s wisdom and beauty. I’m learning to relish the life in front of me instead of always focusing on an unknowable future. This is Heaven now. This is the life after.
This is everything I need.
Friend #2
I realized before my first child was two that I was done with the church. I was more scared that he would hear the rhetoric of the church than not. The same rhetoric and empty theology that had pushed a friend of mine to end his own life after he came out. The same rhetoric that allows for believers to spend more time talking about “biblical concepts” than effect any meaningful change in our world. The church’s agenda became something I was terrified my child would ingest: restriction of women’s rights, gun ownership, the American dream. Where was serving the poor, giving of one’s self, and seeking justice? I’ve always been a questioner, and I’ve never been shy about my dissent with church ideas that literally made no sense to meand had weak biblical support. But I, along with so many, did the mental gymnastics to accept the reality that I was a sinner who could only be saved from eternal conscious torment by saying a magic prayer. The more I stepped back from that machine of evangelicalism, the more I questioned, the more things stopped making sense.
I recently talked to a friend who has also left the faith, and she and I both went over Christian phrases and theology, almost laughing as we said, “what does that even mean?!?!!”.
The pieces I had been given stopped making sense. I couldn’t find the puzzle picture anymore, try as I might to make the pieces work together. Biblical inerrancy, substitutionary atonement, eternal conscious torment, the political agenda, the view of people not like us… if anything, the puzzle did come together in a strange, dark, and abusive picture. Worse, the more I examined each piece, the more I had no place for it in my life. I didn’t miss it when I threw it out. I didn’t miss trying to fit my own self into that puzzle.
I began to trust myself, to find good in other places, and to research somewhat frantically how to raise children who are going to make the world better and be whole, healthy individuals. When you do that work, you find out you have to do it for yourself, too. When the research shows you how to give that love and wholeness to your child, you have to extend it to yourself as well. As I did it, new pieces came to light and fit together in a beautiful way. I am enough. If there is a God, we are his children and that’s enough. I recently listened to a podcast about original blessing in the place of original sin, and though I am fairly agnostic, it was a beautiful concept. Looking for the image of God in every human, and seeing that goodness and cultivating it when we can. I have loved seeing that good in the people I meet, and calling it out for them. Maybe it is light, maybe it is God, maybe its energy. But it’s something with value. I am now someone who looks for and pulls out that goodness. I’m going to keep chasing that goodness.
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