COMING OUT THE CLOSET: Losing my Religion

I’m finally disrobing my cloak of shame and posting publicly: I’ve lost my faith. I’m no longer a Christian. No longer a “believer.” This isn’t coming from someone who barely attended church and was a “lukewarm” Christian. Rather, I taught Sunday school, led religious book studies, and have read the Bible daily since I was 16 years old, likely a total of 7 times front to back, and went to church, often 2-3 times per week. 

I’m coming out, basically because I’ve recently discovered there are others like me…Hiding in secret shame among our believing friends and family. Why in God’s name our society functions in such a way as to shame those who have doubts about Christianity, I do not yet fully understand. But I decided now was a good time to initiate this discussion of religious shaming. Very few in my life are aware of my crisis of faith. I’ve experienced responses on both ends of the spectrum; from a high five, to literally being prayed over out loud, and reminding me of my inevitable eternal damnation. 

Losing Jesus was not easy. In fact, it completely disrupted my identity. The initial feeling was that of hopelessness and doom and gloom; an utter lack of meaning and purpose. Interestingly, I could never shake the feeling of faith in a higher power or some sort of powerful link between all of humanity and nature, past/present/future. However my belief in the Christian God was dismantled slowly as I began studying the origins of the Bible. The bottom line is that once you have come to doubt the legitimacy of “the inerrant word of God”…the rest of it sort of falls apart. Christians have this belief in scripture being “god breathed” and “inerrant.” Translation? Don’t question this book…It was created by God and it is directly from God and there are no errors to be found within it. Within the church, if you start asking doubtful questions, the responses become more and more ridiculous. 

So I began studying for myself the history of the Bible and how it was compiled, and it’s most likely influences based on the research of Biblical scholars. Basic day to day reality, the world I experienced, was no longer aligning with my paradigm. The irony is that because I was such an avid reader of scripture, my questions never ceased…Every time I read the Bible, I discovered more question marks….Evolution versus Genesis, Gayness versus Sodom and Gomorrah, Social Justice versus Judaic laws on slavery…the list was endless. 

When I shared the beginnings of my doubts and questions with close Christian friends, I was honestly shocked and heartbroken at their responses…I was literally ghosted by people who had been in my life for 10 plus years. Again ironically, this only clarified my loss of belief in a religion that promotes severing relationships with people based on a belief system. Luckily, I was in therapy and Al Anon during this traumatic shift in my understanding of the universe. Where the void remained from the departure of my dearest friends, the universe was kind to me, and replaced those unhealthy friendships with mutually loving and respectful relationships. I was lucky to have found special people at this exact moment in time, who supported and guided me through the darkness. It was a terrifying time in my life; a depressing and traumatic experience to lose my faith. However, as slowly and unknowingly as I lost my faith, I regained a new faith. And in all honesty and truth, I have never felt more redeemed and joyful in my life. All the things that Christianity promised and never provided, I finally found in the form of a new holy god within myself– I am…