A lot of people in my life don't really get why the past year or so has been so difficult for me. There are a lot of reasons, but I wanted to address my faith, or lack thereof. I have touched on this before, but I wanted to talk about why leaving Christianity behind me has been such a heavy task.
I became a Christian when I was four years old. I am 26 now. I dedicated two decades of my life to Christ. I have been a regular member of only two churches in that time, for that whole time, and the first church merged into the second church. I went to (and led) bible studies, I went to youth group, but most importantly, I believed in God with all my heart and my life was dedicated to Jesus Christ. (No, I don't think I was capable of that when I was 4, so I'm not really sure how long that's applicable.) This is not coming to you from the perspective of a casual, occasional church-goer or something like that.
I had been struggling with faith for awhile, I suppose due to a very traumatic ordeal with a person who called himself a Christian. About a year ago, I sat in church and I just could not make it through worship. Crying (and hiding it) during worship was something I had been doing every Sunday for about a year, but this time was different: I couldn't stop crying. I felt judged, and I felt like I did not belong there. I was overcome with the need to run away. And so I did. I just left. After that, I started to feel like my prayers were not only unanswered, but unheard. I started to feel silly for ever thinking my prayers had been heard, for even saying them in the first place. I had felt abandoned before, but after I guess I just felt like there was nothing.
And now I just feel lost. I want to name and identify my struggles for myself, for anyone who may be going through this, and for people who have no idea what this is like to go through this but have been wondering what the heck is wrong with me.
My main struggles have been:
- Identity. Christianity is an identity. You're created by God and for God. Without God, what am I? Who am I?
- Hope. Hope is such an important notion for humans, especially for those of us prone to depression. If you have a strong faith in God, all your hope is placed in God. Where do I derive hope from now?
- Church. My church was a home to me. There was a time in my life where I went to church, youth group, and bible study once every week, and all my close friends were people I knew from church. Church is my family. And now I feel like I've sort of betrayed them, and will be leaving a lot of them behind.
- Morals. I guess I don't believe in sin anymore, there is only right and wrong. So what does that mean? How do I figure out what's right?
- Labels. In some ways, I think I will always feel like a Christian. So much of my life was dedicated to it, and still, so many people I love are dedicated to it. I guess I'm not a Christian anymore, so am I an atheist?
- Death. I was never afraid of death before, at least not for myself. I knew that I was going to heaven under no uncertain terms. I no longer believe in heaven, so death is just an unknown void, and that is scary as hell.
- The Unknown. Generally, I don't know what I believe about much of anything anymore, like creation for example.
I struggle with at least one of these things every single day. Everything about me, the foundation of who I am, has shifted and there have been so many other changes in my life, it feels like I'm being physically attacked by change and I can't find one constant. It feels like this is going to be quite the process. My heart goes out to anyone who has changed their belief system.
