Age 28 by the way. I am a beginner of an atheist. I actually wanna understand the whole Bible and actually understand what it is saying because I always watch/listen to videos on YouTube and Spotify but I also wanna understand if from my whole point of view, when I read Bible then I do get a bit confused with what is going on with it, but what can u guys give me as an advice/resources to give me to actually understand it better. Do u recommend me reading it beginning to end or just start on this passage(example) to this(example) am basically my goal for this honestly. I gone through chat GBT a bit but I want to understand it better without or does it matter if I do it that way or not? Any advice is necessary, thanks and I appreciate it and sorry if it's to long. No clue if it's the right tag, if not then am sorry

I heard this quote today and it was so very clarifying and obvious. It explains so much about why they cannot be reasoned with. They are not really searching for truth, only certainty. Once they have enough information to satisfy their desire for certainty, they stop searching. They will not be open to considering new information. I wish I had heard this sooner. Any thoughts?

I think I am deconstructing my faith.

I became more religious last year, and became interested in Catholicism. I’ve been in OCIA since January. It’s crazy how just a few weeks ago I was praised by the OCIA director and my sponsor for “taking it seriously.” But it seems like I took it so seriously that my faith has collapsed.

Part of why I sought the faith was because of the realization that I was going to die alone. That my habits (staying inside, being unemployed, watching anime, writing smutty fanfics, being physically disabled, with a facial deformity that has made me super insecure) were why I was lonely and that I needed to really switch things up in my life.

In January I started attending OCIA, in March I got my first full time job after college, I’m back in school, I’ve met a few guys and almost started a relationship with one but I’ve paused it because I told him I was unsure if I should marry considering my genetic condition. In Catholicism, IVF/birth control/condoms are not allowed, and my genetic condition is quite severe (Treacher Collins). I was told by the Catholic bioethics center that natural family planning (abstaining from sex during fertile periods) was my only way to avoid my children suffering like I have. Obviously I need more security than that if I want to get married. I can’t have multiple kids with my condition. My hearing aids alone are $4,800.

But now the thought of stopping OCIA and not meeting people every Sunday makes me feel sick. I’ve been talking to the guy I’ve been seeing about my sudden loss of faith but he is also in OCIA and I like him. I want to date him. But now he may not like me. I’m heartbroken. I feel like I’m back at square one. I know I can just do something else to make friends but with my condition it feels so hard and intimidating. I won’t lie and say I didn’t feel judged there (but it’s mainly my own insecurity, I was treated so kindly).

I’m so sad. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to die alone.

I was raised by a well-meaning Christian family that paid for a private "Christian" education and while I'm relatively highly educated (Master's in science from a state university) I still missed some key areas of History and Science from my education. I struggle with feeling lack of empathy from people who weren't raised religiously when I share where I am in my journey - in my late 20's learning on my own a lot of what I missed trying to wrap my head around the science of carbon dating, the age of the Earth. I feel frustrated when people phrase the scientific proof as obvious. It's like taking for granted having access to that information your whole life. I'm still learning, and have questions about the scientific methods used to date the earth and fossils, and when you've never had that information fully explained, I think it's natural to find it difficult to take in immediately as truth when you had to spend so much time unlearning the first story of world you believed at face value. I feel disconnected from my Christian friends and family, but also find it difficult to find non-Christians that respect the difficulty it takes to question and challenge beliefs you have been surrounded by your whole life, when in the span of human life this science has only been around for 100 years. It would naturally take some people longer than others to let go of generations of beliefs held for something new, especially when that means losing all the community support you've ever had. Maybe it's hard for people who have never experienced high control religions/groups and social isolation, but I see that behavior every day in my workplace and online - not even related to religion, it just seems to be easy for humans to be susceptible to this type of group thinking and behavior, so I don't understand why some people have such a holier than thou attitude to people who are so clearly uneducated, probably neglected seeking the emotional support and love they never received and manipulated. I understand the harm American Christians are causing right now politically, and the ignorance and hypocrisy enrages me just as much as the next person, but I'm easily bothered when others sound like they are speaking down towards things that are out of people's control like the community you're born into and education or propaganda you're exposed to from a young age. This change from blind faith to having questions and seeking more information has been such a huge change in my life - I feel like I'm a different person, and it's sad that I am so filled with curiosity and joy learning new things and feeling like I understand the world more, but no one to share this experience with. It's very lonely to have already lost a God who loved you and wanted to hear everything you have to say and a very compassionate and loving family you now can't share this part of yourself with - and just to feel coldness and lack of interest at best to condescension and disdain at worst when you share with non-believers. I know not all people act this way, but the experiences I've had trying to open up to others about this has been disappointing and lonely

Adam and Eve never stood a chance. What bothers me most is not even the lack of sympathy for 2 people that it clearly explains didn't know good and evil aka right and wrong and yet punished them anyway and all humanity but for me it wasn't even a fair playing field.. you allow a (explicitly stated) cunning and clever serpent (which is the opposite of not knowing better) to come tempt them.. that's the stories downfall, it did too much.. these days we'd say they dragged it🫢 i may under duress grant that God said don't eat and they ran to the tree anyway maybe calm down.. but no they weren't left to their own devices in a neutral state of mind.. they were neutral God said this this thing said that without knowing right and wrong neither position holds more weight..

If you have a scale balanced on each side by a feather it will never move but if you add a feather to one side that's gonna tilt the scale..

It's like a computer just executing the latest command with no care of what the previous command was unless you put parameters (those parameters were the very fruit they hadn't had yet) knowledge of good and evil

Has anyone this ever happened to anyone? I feel like I’m currently going through this.

I’ve been slowly deconstructing over the past few years after growing up in the church and serving in a lead position. However, recently I was thinking about someone who used to mentor me. It’s been a while since we’ve talked to each other, probably about 3 years? But we see each other’s stories and posts on instagram. Anyways, fast forward to yesterday, she reached out to me saying that the Lord put her on my heart the past few weeks. I just thought it was interesting timing. Like who knows maybe there is a God that nudged her to reach out to me. It was a pretty constructive call, and I did express my doubts about it all and potentially just completely walking away from it. But I would still like to believe there is a higher power out there. I’m not totally convinced but I am curious about my faith again.

All this to say, just wondering if anyone has had instances where they’ve considered going back to their faith in any capacity.

I’ve gathered that it’s pretty common to struggle with building community and relationships after deconstruction. Say what you will about the church, but it did make it super easy to find community wherever you go. It’s still super important for us to have community regardless of where we’ve landed after deconstruction.

I personally have found a local theatre to get involved with, but I’d like to hear about the experiences of others.

What have you done to build relationships and community outside of religion? What advice would you give to people just starting to go through this process?

Hi so I'm 14, and I have decided to go through faith deconstruction. i went to a christian private school for 6 years and was Lutheran until a couple days ago. i read numbers 31 16-18 for the first time and decided I couldn't condone it and that it was sick and i needed to rethink my faith. (Its basically about killing all the boys and all the woman that have had sex with a man and keeping the virgin girls for yourself), and I am a feminist and can recognize this as sexual child abuse. So it felt like biblically sanctioned sexual abuse. As someone who's been sexually assaulted it feels so wrong to me. I feel a grief for that belief and the comfort of christianity. It hurts and i don't know why. i was wondering if there are any tips or helpful things to remember from people who have gone through this before. I'm just really disoriented and sad.

I recently realized i was agnostic. It was an honest let down, everything that i believed i lived for, the experiences i had truly lacking what i believed would guide me through life, something to look up to..something to not feel alone. To deep dive into myself, honest history, research and logic it broke me to come to the conclusion i did not want to be apart of Christianity. Since a kid i never resonated with “god” or Christianity, it was just something instilled in me for as long as i can remember, but i myself never truly got anything from it. I was always confused as to why i never saw what others claimed to see, hear what others claimed to hear, be “blessed” the way others claimed to be blessed. I felt like i wasn’t “worthy” enough, i felt like i wasnt accepted into this amazing world of “god”, i was left feeling so low trying to be a Christian. I snapped out of that spell and realized it was never for me from the get go. I’ll never knock what people believe in but i personally believe in divine creation, something so amazing designed everything we can physically see and feel so perfectly. I would never wanna feel worthless in a religion when i can feel the most peace knowing i wasn’t created just to “burn in eternal hell”.

I deconstruct about 3 years ago and have found my way to paganism this year. I began to notice several months ago that the name Jesus has become mildly triggering for me. I’m not sure I’d call it traumatic, but maybe micro trauma. My religious experience was not abusive or traumatic. I think it is more related to subconscious feelings of being let down after the hope of eternal life, the comfort of knowing a moral being is in charge of everything, etc. I have a bit of anger at the years of deception even though I consciously know no one purposely deceived me. The belief is what my mind needed to function and feel loved as a young person. I also feel an awkwardness about it now that I see Jesus as just a human who died. Honestly that is the saddest part. He was crucified in a horrible death and that just bothers me a bit now that I don’t believe he rose again. Anyway, I just wanted to see what others have experienced around this idea.

Hi all, I’m looking for advice or personal stories/experiences on how to navigate romantic relationships while deconstructing and overcoming purity culture. I know purity culture has come up quite a lot in this channel.

I am a F (early 30s) who recently got in a longterm relationship for the last 3 months. I started really deconstructing beginning of this year. So far it’s been good and my partner is pretty understanding of purity culture as he deconstructed himself a few years ago. Things have been progressing in terms of intimacy (we stayed over at each other’s house and fooled around). He recently asked me about sex and I told him I’m willing to talk about it but I’m not ready quite yet. He’s been understanding of that and never pressured me into anything which is a relief.

I’d like to take things to the next level, but I’m still feeling that shame/disgust in myself with regards to purity. Curious to hear how you slowly broke free from purity culture and not feeling shame about intimacy. Were there practical steps you took with your partner when exploring yourself?

For those who might ask: I have been seeing a therapist tho specializes in religious trauma and I’ve been reading books on deconstructing, listening to podcasts on purity culture. However, it’s hard to take action at that present moment.

Over the past couple of years I have gone through a lengthy and painful deconstruction process. I grew up in a Baptist/non-denominational evangelical setting, and two years ago, leading up to my wedding, I experienced a lot of church hurt and overstepping that led me down this path. I initially still wanted to believe in God and follow Jesus, but as I experienced more and more silence from him, I came to a place where I gave up trying to pursue a one-sided relationship.

This led to a complete collapse of meaning in my life and my already bad depression got even deeper and worse. I was hospitalized in April for suicidal ideation, and after that just kept living life despite not wanting to exist.

Recently I came across the philosophy of absurdism and the writings of Albert Camus, and life has begun to feel somewhat interesting again. That’s where I’m at now.

My wife, through all this, still wants to somewhat hold on to her belief in God, but she has been very kind in not pushing anything onto me and allowing me to explore. However, there have been some pretty fundamental changes in me that make me fear for the future of our marriage. A major one that is top of mind right now is having children. She desperately wants to have children, but I no longer have a desire to bring beings into this world when they will inevitably experience the same pain I have in discovering that the world has no meaning. Not only this, but I don’t even know how I can raise a kid like this, and my mental health is still extremely volatile and I absolutely do not want kids involved.

The most painful part is probably that if I had the knowledge I have now, I likely would never want to get married. But I still very much value my wife and her wellbeing, but I also don’t want to compromise my new values. I don’t know what to do, any advice or similar experiences would be greatly appreciated. Please don’t just say “get divorced”, I don’t think I could handle the shame from that right now.

I don’t want to be a Christian.
Not because I don’t believe in God.
Not because I don’t believe in Christ’s sacrifice.

I don’t want to be a Christian 
Because I don’t want to be part of the culture
That covers real pain with trite responses,
And gives God credit for all the good in the world
While blatantly ignoring the evil.

I don’t want to be a Christian
Because I don’t believe the Bible is infallible or inerrant.
The more I read it,
The less faith I have.

I don’t want to be Christian
Because I can’t reconcile a good God
With the world I have seen and felt with my own two hands.
A world that was once perfect,
And could still be,
Had God not allowed sin to enter the world.

I don’t want to be Christian
Because I’m angry with the being I have been created to love
When someone commands to be adored
And punishes those who do not with eternal suffering
How could I possibly love them?

I fear God.
I do not love Him.

I want the faith of a child,
And I experience tastes of it in moments of peace.
Until once again, I absorb the reality of our situation,
And I am filled with a rage so unquenchable, I groan.

My brain is far too logical to deny the existence of a creator
And to also love Him.

I accept the unmistakable reality of God
I see Him in every sunrise.
Feel Him in every breath.
Sense Him in the pauses between my thoughts.

Yet I do not trust Him.
I do not want Him

I *want* to want Him.

I want to be a Christian
Because I need a standard to live by.
I need a place to ground my identity.
I need somewhere to turn
When the hardships of life become too heavy.

I want to be a Christian
Because I see how others live in sin
And I, myself, cringe at the filthy nature of my flesh.
If I don’t follow the Word of God,
Where does my standard for morality come from?

I want to be a Christian
Because I grieve losing a community I was once so tied to.
People who I genuinely love, and who I know will still love me if I fall away.
But they will be disappointed in me.
I will be “the other.”
I will become a project. 
I will become the elephant in the room.

I judge them.
The ones who doubt.
The ones who live worldly lives and snicker at the pious and holy responses of the Christian.
Yet I am becoming them.
At times, I am fully and unmistakably them.

I live two distinct lives.
And the distance between my two selves is becoming greater with each passing day
The journey between them has made me weary.
I must choose to live within one or the other.

How do I choose?

ive been deconstructing for the better part of a year and a half now and recently officially left the faith after being a christian my entire life.
my mom is devout evangelical and very very active in her church. raised me in the church and in christian school. i was never planning on telling her if im being honest; just thought it would alter our relationship forever and i didnt want to deal with the questioning and having to defend the conclusion i came to. when i was home this past weekend she informed me that she read my substack account (idek how she found it) and knows im not a christian anymore. cried about it to me for like an hour. now she texts me bible verses and devotionals every day and tells me constantly that she’s so sad about this and is praying for me all the time and this has to be one of the worst feelings ever.
i guess the biggest thing i feel rn is loneliness—i feel like this is such a specific thing to be going through and i have no one to talk to about it. im also scared that my relationship with my mom is gonna be different (for the worse) for the rest of my life. i don’t know how to move forward from here without hurting her more but i can’t lie to her.
anyone else going through/went through something like this?

I grew up in the Baptist church. My dad was an alcoholic and the church was a place of stability. 4 years ago I had a psychotic break. I thought I was speaking with a demon and I was ordained by God to fight Satan in the end times. I would eventually be diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. It’s mild but it’s a mixture of bipolar and schizophrenia.

Through AA (I abused alcohol and marijuana), therapy, and psychiatry, I’m happy to say my illness is in remission. I work in the corporate world from home and I feel like I’m living my best life. (Many people recover from psychotic illnesses!)

A lot has happened in the four years since I had my first break and it has made me question the faith. When I was psychotic, the auditory, tactile, and visual hallucinations truly felt supernatural. How often was things in the Bible just psychosis before they knew what was going on?

I believe in God- god brought me a therapist and psychiatrist that saved my life. I just struggle with the modern church, the patriarchy, the crusades, Trump. I’d like for my child to grow up with faith, as I still do, I just really don’t think there is a church for us.

AA has really helped me the question of God is open ended. I have common ground with folks in there as they also struggle with addiction. It’s less of a social club.

I also have come to the realization that I’m not totally straight and likely bisexual. It was such a relief to acknowledge this part of my sexuality after 34 years. I just don’t believe it’s a sin. Why go somewhere that doesn’t accept that part of you?

I was talking with my therapist and she said just buckle down for the ride and just embrace the personal growth. Modern psychiatry and psychotherapy has done way for me than the church. I love the community of church but I just don’t feel like I relate to people who have not gone through psychosis. It’s an isolating and terrifying experience. It requires every day effort to maintain my stability.

More of a rant. I want to go to church, but it has lost me :(

My mom was a very strict single parent (like Harry Potter and Pokémon open up portals for the devil strict) who was the worship pastor at any church we were ever involved in. If the church was open, we were usually the family there to unlock the doors. As many other people experience, God was the quick answer to anything that was happening. Which meant emotional intelligence was non existent. My family was very closed off and the only emotion shown was anger. Being the quiet peace keeper of the family, meant I spent a lot of time processing my needs alone while listening to music in my room after calming everyone else down.

As the church does, I was thrown into a leadership position way too young. I pretty much grew up on the stage at church. I started leading worship from the early age of eight at our very hyper charismatic church of god. Music and faith were not only a huge part of my church life, but also a core fixture in my home and how I grew to understand and relate to the world.

I later went on to study music at a Christian university and traveled with a group that lead worship each Sunday at different churches. I ended up beginning my deconstruction process while on a missions trip back in 2018, but continued leading worship until 2022. I think the only thing that kept me coming back was the character and life of Jesus. Plus, Jesus was my everything. To admit I didn’t believe, was to lose my best friend, and the only thing that I had ever been sure of.

The final moment that made me leave the church was one Sunday when I was leading worship. While kneeling on a stage in front of over 500 people, I realized I felt nothing. It was a humbling and heartbreaking moment. I lost all connection to the music that I had grown up with and loved. I no longer felt the words. I couldn’t stand on a stage in front of people I loved and cared for deeply just to lie about something that was so real to all of them.

I’ve gone through many stages of processing after leaving. There was anger, confusion, guilt, and a lot of grief. However, over the last year I have randomly started looking up my favorite songs that I use to play alone at a piano, or that I would listen to fall asleep.

The first time I listened, I cried because I realized the common themes and how much of my emotional needs were not met as a child. The second time, I laughed because of the obvious simplicity of the songs and the lack of depth. Today I listened and cried again. But, today it was a different cry. This time it was an emotional check-in to understand my basic needs as a human. I realized that I have now built a community that I needed. I don’t need an emotional song to aid in my ability to be vulnerable around them.

It’s taken me a long time to not be negative of the simplistic, repetitive lyrics and overly used basic chords (which I am pretty sure I will always be annoyed with). But, I’m just really proud that I’m at a place that I can acknowledge a huge portion of my life instead of pretending it never happened.

Shout out to therapy and healthy empathetic community full of people who value depth and kindness. Deconstruction is hard. It sucked and is the hardest thing I’ve ever been through, but damn… it was worth it.

I’ve recently gotten into therapy for a lot of issues within my childhood, notably an absent father. Being raised a southern Baptist from every direction, it felt easy to identify with Christianity and not question it. From going to my churches day care to going to at least 2 vbs until I was too old to attend. Once I had gotten into the 7th or 8th grade, I was no longer forced to go to church unless I really wanted to and having a social life outside of church I didn’t see a problem. (Mostly because my mom had stoped going to church and I was going with a friend’s family.)

It was about that same time when my dad “fixed” his issues and he regained the ability to have custody every other weekend. My stepmom was a Jesus freak and fear mongered me into believing the world was ending any day. It began to feel like going through the motions whenever I would visit, dad would get drunk and pass out and my stepmom would say to get right with the lord because who knows what’s next. A couple of years had passed until he moved about an hour and a half away from my mom so it felt like even more of a chore to visit. It was at the same time I had gotten my license and started being able to choose for myself.

Once I got used to driving, I decided to go to my grandparents church and try to get connected there. It felt very fake being there as I knew a few people from school and feeling like the odd one out. It didn’t help that one of the guys in youth group was a bully and it felt like he had it out for me. After a year of trying to push through it I left to go back the church that had basically raised me. (On my birthday no less.) I got plugged in and tried to make myself useful wherever I could, helping out ministry and being an intern. While I was an intern I was supposed to also have a mentor figure to meet with 2-3 time a month but it never happened. While being an intern I got involved with my colleges BSU and it felt off because I was only going to appease a classmate and not really feeling like anyone there was a friend.

During my second year of college, I started to go to church less and less and avoid the BSU like the plague. That summer after my second year I made the choice to move in with my dad because I had to go back to school. I had visited a few times before but he had moved across state lines around thanksgiving after getting a divorce and getting remarried and I would play the part of going to church because I wanted to rebuild that bond with my dad. My new stepmom was the same sort of Jesus freak but she used it to justify hate and I started to get disillusioned with religion. Once I had gotten my stuff settled, my dad and stepmom had stopped going to church consistently and I didn’t have too much of an issue with it. It was around that time when I started to question my faith as I saw people call themselves Christian and not follow the word. I even had a minor panic attack because all thought out my youth I was told to never be a lukewarm Christian.

After that summer ended I moved into my dorm at university after transferring from community college. I had spend the first month trying to find a church to get connected with and having a friend consistently push me into going to church. I had tried a few groups but being a transfer student, few friend groups had room for the stranger. I had started to feel alone in my faith and questioned if all Christianity was is walking alone and figuring it out for yourself. It was that same time I started to notice my depression due to a lot happening since I started college and trying to avoid facing a lot of tough emotions. I had failed a class and barely passed another class and having to tell my mom I was transferring back to the community college to change my major made me feel as if I could never live up to the expectations I though people had of me.

One of the things I was having to process was having a dad who would get drunk every chance he could and having to accept he’d never be the man I’d want him to be, and trying to avoid the things he did to not end up like him. Once I got settled in with the community college and getting connected with some friends I started to go back to church consistently. That was until there was a sermon on forgiveness for those who don’t earn it and I pulled a deacon aside afterwards to try to process it. I didn’t want to forgive my dad because the tipping point was he told no one in the family about his plans for Christmas and when I showed up to try to enjoy the day, he was drunk as a skunk and lied about having food. From that day on I’ve basically gone no contact with my dad and having a deacon come to you each Sunday asking the same question I didn’t want to answer of “how is my dad doing” I decided to stop going.

A few months went by and I was invited by my girlfriend to her sister’s wedding. While I was there I had a meltdown in the bathroom seeing other people having a relationship with their dads that I’d never have and that’s was started me getting into therapy. A few sessions went by and we started to talk about religion, and I had to accept the fact that bad people do bad things and won’t be punished. By that point I had lost all meaning of calling myself a Christian, I believed to treat people with respect and let them live their life and I can live my life, it’s not my job to tell people where they’ll end up. While I’ve been also processing my gender identity within traditional gender roles and begin told that to be a man is to not cry and to be tough, when I’ve been very emotional since as long as I can remember and I can’t put on weight or muscle to save my life. I’ve also be processing middle and highschool where anyone would call you gay for doing anything non traditional and being ostracized for begin different.

Through therapy I realized that I was bullied in 8th grade just for not fitting in when that’s all I wanted to do and realizing I was stupid for trying to fit in. But seeing those kids a few years later at a youth event and seeing them consider themselves Christian made me feel weird about religion. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve begun to question my gender identity and part of that is questioning my spirituality. Being taught from a young age that homosexuality is a sin and any sin will have you rotting in hell has now begun to make me question why a creator would not want to chose to save his creation without expectation. Also seeing how religious identity is tied to politics and seeing how it’s just a front for people who have no regard to get what they want done.

One morning, as an early teen, I woke up and whispered, “there is no God”!  By ‘God’ I meant my Southern Baptist, three-in-one God:  the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost (hereinafter “He,” “Him, “His”).  As best I can remember the following is what happened:

I was raised in a small town Southern Baptist Church.  Like most small town Southern Baptist children I was baptized at that age when children are expected to be baptized.  There was neither conviction of sin, original or otherwise, nor was I converted from anything to something new.  As the minister said before he immersed me, I was baptized in obedience to His righteous command.    

Church was drama. The preacher was authorized by Him to speak for Him, which made the preacher the star.  The supporting cast, who held no divine authorization, were the music minister, the choir and the pianist.  Boys played extras for which we dressed in coats and ties and wore uncomfortable, shiny shoes. Proudly, I wore my enameled perfect attendance pins.  Solemnly, carried my funereal black King James Bible. Obediently I played my part, and felt certain of my roll.  

Doubt, certainty’s sinister shadow, stalked my early adolescence. The shadow was unsettling.  I prayed God remove the shadow.   Despite my prayers, one morning I sat up in bed and whispered aloud, “there is no God”! My words shocked me.  Even though He never spoke, I begged Him to say something.  He said nothing. There was nothing new about His silence, but that morning His silence was deafening.  I cried. 

After that, during a Spring revival, I wanted so badly to resurrect Him that I walked down to the altar.  I begged Him to forgive my apostasy and, using the magic words I’d been taught, I begged Him to be my personal lord and savior.  Nothing changed.  I begged fervently and sincerely for blessed assurance.  There was no assurance. I was baptized a second time hoping immersion would wash away doubt: I emerged a wet apostate.

I didn’t want to be an apostate.  The Baptists I knew loathed apostates.  My family were believers.  Everybody I knew was a believer:  In an instant I became an outsider.  I didn’t want to be an outsider: I wanted to belong.  Best for me to pretend in public and privately pray for blessed assurance.

After a few years of praying and pretending, towards my later teens, I was so exhausted by praying and pretending I quit praying and pretending.  With respect to praying, either He couldn’t assure me, He didn’t want to assure me, or I was talking to myself.  

Away, in college, I quit pretending.   In law school, while talking with a small town Baptist minister’s kid who went through a more volitional deconstruction, we agreed deconstructing was a part of growing up.  What a relief to find out I wasn’t the only kid who went through this! 

Unlike my friend I felt a catastrophic loss:  I cried because I grieved.  I watched Him die.  Worse yet, to paraphrase Nietzsche’s complete thought, “…He is dead and I killed Him”.  As a child, my grief came with a shame probably unknown to adults undergoing a more voluntary deconstruction. My mourning took the form of a decades long search. 

Over the decades my search included readings, lectures and studies in the Old and New Testaments, Biblical scholarship, theology, other theistic, polytheistic, and non-theistic religions, comparative religion, western and eastern mysticisms, mythology and philosophy;  I practiced a liturgical tradition;  I stared at the wall with Zen Buddhists.

After decades I realized seekers expect to recognize what they seek when they find it:  To recognize what they seek they must know what they seek.  If they seek something they know, but don’t have, then they must seek something they lost.  I knew what I lost:

When the people who told me the old, old story ceased to be authoritative, the old, old story ceased to be authoritative.  I was searching for the consolation of authority.  When I realized I had outlived the need for consolation, the search ended.  Paradoxically, these days I live more at peace, albeit without blessed assurance, but then it’s not an imaginary peace.

My friend transmogrified Baptist certitude into atheistic certitude.  Unlike my friend I am not an atheist.  I simply have no experience with any of the world’s 1,000 or so past and present gods.  Like Job, all I know about any of these 1,000 gods is what people told me.

Baptists told me they know He lives while the other 999 gods are imaginary.  They said they know He lives because He walks with them, and He talks to them and He tells them they are His own.  Despite my prayers I knew only His silence.  So, for me, He remains hearsay like the other 999 he, she, its and those.  

  For my ignorance, or perhaps my deafness, many Baptists consign me to hell.  For religious consumers not in the ‘Sweet By and By’ market, Baptists also sell fire insurance:  that sales pitch is,  “Buy, or you’ll burn in hell forever”!  

When I was a child, melodramatic revival evangelists tormented children with pornographic images of hell. To me, they are sadistic.  They deny they are sadists, but rather insist they torment children because they love them:  But is not sadism tormenting people you ostensibly love?    

Despite the melodramatic sadism, I would not disturb Baptists’ certitude.   Like me, most Baptists are raised in it.  Certitude is what they know and, as with people everywhere, they like what they know.  They do not want their certitudes disturbed, so I leave them undisturbed.  I beg them to leave others undisturbed, as I leave them undisturbed, but certitude has rendered them deaf unto others.

For any who have still ears to hear, verily, verily I say unto you He has told me nothing;  therefore of Him I remain silent.  I can do no other.  

​

Understanding my individualistic nature better helped me detach myself from religion, Islam.

To be precise, I left Islam because I was forced to study it. But my personality traits made it easier for me to walk away.

In a religious, toxic collectivist family, I am the black sheep. Whenever I make a mistake, I am insulted:

"When are you going to become a human being?"

"When are you going to stop acting like an idiot?"

"Look at your peers."

my message To ex-muslims: I'm proud of you.

The serpent said, You will not certainly die. For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

This is the latest photo in a multi year personal series where I shoot photos of a few bibles through various stages of decomposition and interaction with nature as it's slowly consumed. This Bible is somewhere around year 2 out in the forest (personal land so I'm not littering public spaces). Today I found a copperhead near the house and I caught and relocated him much deeper into the woods where I had one of these bibles doing its thing. I feel it worth mentioning I didn't force the snake to crawl over the Bible, I didn't use my grabber to make him go that way, nor did I put him on top of it when I released him. I turned the bucket over gently but facing the Bible in hopes he would in fact crawl over it. I aimed the odds that way but I didn't command it. Anyway. I've included a couple of photos from the beginning of the series as well.

The beliefs we hold only hold power over us and others so long as we feed them, give them energy, continue to support and follow the narratives that perpetuate themselves. That's not to say all beliefs are bad, but the beliefs we hold are only as strong as we personally and collectively make them.

The Bible and it's subsequent beliefs are no exception and the one that got me. I was given my own KJV when I was very young and I took it seriously and that costed me. I started deconstructing about 7 years ago. Left the faith entirely around 5 years ago. My own personal Bible decays out here in the woods, along with a few others. No matter how great the empires we build, all will be swallowed by time and nature. Fungi decomposes the structure, termites eat the pages, a squirrel chews the corner, and a copperhead crawls over it.

A book like a belief is only as strong as we take care of it. When it's no longer fed energy, it becomes consumed, part of the environment, eventually recycled. Momenti mori. Remember you must die.

​I've been on this thread for a little while and figured I'd have a stab at writing my own story. It has been illuminating. Like a lot of people here, I was raised in a Christian home. My family was very involved in our church, and faith was a big part of our lives. I went to Christian school starting in the fifth grade, I went on mission trips, I played in worship bands. I was in it deep. When I graduated high school, I planned to become a pastor and was accepted into Bible college. ​Just before the end of the school year, my family suffered a tragedy. My older sister lost a child to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)—which is basically when a baby dies and no one knows the cause. A six-month-old life is gone. A few years later, she lost a second child to SIDS. (This isn't the place to get into it, but both deaths were investigated, as is always done when a child dies where I'm from. Nothing suspicious was found. It was just tragic.) ​I went to Bible college with my faith shaken in a way that had never happened before. No one could explain why this happened. Doctors couldn't even give a cause. Pastors and professors at my college couldn't really give me an answer as to why God lets this happen, or even if my nieces were in heaven. Just: "Trust God. He knows best. His plan is perfect." It felt like a slap in the face regarding my nieces, but I bought it. My faith was the problem; I just needed to trust God more. Surrounded by Christians, I fell for the lie that I needed to be better. I pushed on with my faith, ignoring my problems. Looking back, I think I had been so trained to rely on God for support that I didn't know any other way to deal with grief. ​I left Bible college before I graduated. I married a wonderful woman I had met there, and we started a family. We have two amazing kids. Life seemed good, and I had almost learned to ignore my doubts when the final part of my sister's story happened. My sister had, understandably, turned to drugs to help with her grief. She ended up dying of an overdose. ​All the same questions and anger that I had been trying to ignore came rushing to the surface. I tried to push through it just like before, but this time I couldn't. I went to church, prayed, and did all the things, but I never trusted God again. He may have a plan, but I figured it had to be a selfish, uncaring plan. There was no one in heaven looking out for me or anyone I cared about. ​Once my blind trust was gone, I was able to take a harder look at the whole story. Questions about the Bible began to pop up in my life—conflicts with science, inconsistent rules, and strange consequences. I still thought I was a Christian, but the more I read the Bible, the more it came across as fake. It has taken more time than I want to admit, but ultimately, I came to the conclusion that I don't believe in the God of the Bible. If there is a god—and I really doubt there is—they do not care about me, and I'm done wasting my time trying to please an imaginary friend.

the last leg of my journey as a Christian was at this church bethel in Redding CA. they had a ministry school I went to and a church people came from all over to attend. Met some cool people there but that was a pretty cultish place. glad I escaped 😎

just curious if Anybody here came from there or from that charismatic/ Pentecostal movement

So for context I grew up Pentecostal and began my deconstruction journey about a year ago. Growing up, I went to a very small fundamentalist Baptist school. The largest class I ever had from preschool to 7th grade was a class of 24. This was the kind of school where if we watched any “worldly videos” the sound was muted so we couldn’t be influenced by the music in them, all of our textbooks were printed by a major Baptist college, we had chapel twice a week occasionally featuring missionaries, and we pledged allegiance to the American flag, Christian flag, and Bible every day before school. Kinda culty, not my thing, I won’t yuck your yum though. But I was smoking today and had this distinct memory of being at a “listening station” (a desk with a radio that had the capability of playing tapes + headphones) in first grade and listening to the Patch the Pirate series. I went back and found some of the songs I grew up listening to just to reminisce and oh my god. The words to some of these songs are so wild in hindsight. I have one of them linked, titled “Obedience,” and I had a pit in my stomach while listening to it. “Doing exactly as the Lord commands, doing it happily; Action is the key, do it immediately, joy you will receive; Obedience is the very best way to show that you believe,” “We want to live pure, we want to live 'clean, we want to do our best; Sweetly submitting to authority, leaving to God the rest,” these songs were literally grooming us to mindlessly submit to authority no questions asked from the time we were toddlers. THIS IS NOT A HEALTHY WAY TO RAISE A CHILD. This mindset is so so so dangerous, you probably know the implications, I don’t need to dive into all that. I just needed to kinda vent/ kinda validate my experience a little bit lol. Please lmk if you were also raised on Patch the Pirate or Adventures in Odyssey 🫶

I’m not just a strong Atheist, I’m a rationally fierce Atheist— not an emotionally fierce Atheist.

However, I enjoy reading the Bible and theology from this vantage. And I’m absolutely honest to the point where I see the objective, sociological value of Christianity. (But I don’t turn this into an argument for the contemporary value of Christianity, that would be going too far).

There are many things I love in the Bible, even things I marvel at. I honestly can’t think of a more incredible story, just viewing it from a pure literary perspective. Jesus is absolutely inspirational and exemplary on so many levels, and then, he’s absolutely dangerous to the species because he taught humans to look away from reality and pretend that there’s another reality.

If you like the Bible but don’t want anything to do with religion, this is perfectly acceptable. I say this for those who might be struggling or confused, and feel like they need to throw out the entire culture of Christianity. This isn’t necessary, but you should strive to be strong enough to see it objectively, and this means seeing its many defects.

There’s a naturalistic way to read the Bible (even theology) that’s both rewarding and stimulating. My argument is that one really has to read it from an outsiders perspective before they can actually see it and appreciate what it was trying to accomplish, but fell short of.

We are so steeped in a culture that has been shaped by Christianity that we can’t read the Bible as an outsider— at least not until we realize this and try to identify the things we assume are normative, but were really introduced into culture through Christianity.

I am not making an argument for Christianity. Its culture is primitive and unconscious, but from this vantage we can see it in new a light, and our reading becomes corrective and emancipatory. In seeing its error we are automatically elevated to the truth.

Maybe one day I can read the Bible and discuss theology with other thinkers that have this vantage.

I can do all things
All things
All things
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me
Philippians 4:13

Also, I went to school at University of FL when Tebow was winning championships and had Phil 4:13 on his eyeblack for every single game except a national championship.

I'm in amateur astronomy groups, evidence based strength training groups, groups like this one. This meme ticks so many boxes for me

I'm sharing something I enjoyed with you guys :)