My story of deconstruction: Deciding what NOT to believe

*This post feels particularly appropriate given the huge divide in the United States right now between more conservative (and largely evangelical) christians and the more progressive, liberal-leaning believers as we approach a major election. Many christians are finding the courage to separate from their traditional and familiar communities to align themselves against Trump. The point of my post today is that you DO NOT have to commit your life to a particular set of beliefs in order to be loved and accepted by “God.” To put it politically, you can be a conservative christian and NOT vote for Trump. You can be pro-life and NOT vote for Trump. You do not have to reduce yourself to a 5-point or 12-point system of faith. You do not have to be defined by one single issue when a host of other equally concerning problems remain unaddressed. You can look at the big picture and decide what kind of world you would like to live in and how you think a President should treat people. I’ll say it again in case anyone needs to hear it: You can be a Republican and NOT vote for Trump. You can be a christian and NOT vote for Trump. YOU have the ability to think for yourself and choose what you want to – or don’t want to – believe. It’s not easy to stand apart from the crowd, but there is a wild freedom to it that feels more like God’s presence than anything else I’ve ever know.

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Until November 2019, I had defined myself by my evangelical christian faith for 30+ years. I did not know who I was without my core beliefs about Jesus, God, the Bible, salvation, heaven, hell… I remember crying to my atheist husband last December, saying, “I’m not sure I will be a good person without my faith…I don’t know who I’m going to become!” Because I wasn’t sure! There were SO MANY TIMES in the past when I had wanted to throw in the towel on our marriage, on friendships, on my family relationships, on life, but I didn’t because it wasn’t the “christlike” thing to do. My faith stopped me from breaking those ties. I sometimes loved people out of obedience to God, not just the goodness of my own heart. So, what would happen to all that stuff if I took my faith out of the picture?!?! Would I just become some angry, mean, unkind woman?? I honestly didn’t trust myself to be a good person without my Christian beliefs to determine my behavior. (And, yes, that idea right there is certainly something to unpack in future posts.)

At this point, I was sad and confused and I was also still really angry. Angry at myself for allowing this McDonald’s incident to knock me off track, and angry at myself for not realizing sooner that I had been letting some denominational interpretations become the authority in my faith. Because this issue of faith was key to my identity, I couldn’t just let it go. My faith crisis became all-consuming. I desperately needed to keep moving forward somehow.

Once I realized that the denomination(s) I’d been following and adhering to for so long had dictated most of my beliefs (which may or may not have actually been biblical truths), and they had decided so much of who I was, I decided that there were certain things I was going to stop believing. In a fit of journalling rage one day, I made a list of all the things that I didn’t want to believe anymore.

My question was: what has believing in the Bible (from a decidedly evangelical point of view) made me feel/think/believe? This is what I wrote:

• that Matt (my atheist husband) and I would have a hard time being happy together because we were “unequally yoked”
• that Matt and I couldn’t share a “true” love
• that I could never be soul-satisfied in our marriage because he was an atheist
• that he was wrong/was living condemned: would go to hell
• that having a lot of money was selfish/wrong
• that it’s bad/wrong to care about having a nice, decorated house
• that it’s wrong to spend money on material things
• my value lays in my willingness to sacrifice for others
• God doesn’t care about my happiness
• safety is an illusion
• sexual purity is godliness and defines you
• my value is in my absence of a sexual nature
• my value is in whether others see me as an example of Christ
• guilt is good
• shame is necessary
• my gender = submitting; my role is to submit myself to my another
• asserting my needs/my desires is wrong, ungodly
• as an attorney, I am wrong to assist with divorce
• I have a moral & spiritual obligation to submit and serve others (not a choice, but a duty)
• I’m only supposed to find joy/happiness in Christ/God alone, everything else is an idol
• I’m bad – all my wants/desires outside of Christ are bad
• I can never be good or “worthy of love”
• I need to conform to certain behaviors, beliefs, ideas even if I didn’t fully believe them in order to be accepted
• I have no control over the outcome of my life
• God is the one who changes me, is responsible for changing me
• I have a spiritual obligation to confront and judge wrongdoing in another’s life
• I have a spiritual obligation to convince others to conform to what scripture/my God says
• there is nothing in me that is good
• nothing in me, except Christ, could ever please God, even though He is the one who created me like this in the first place
• selfishness, in any sense, is evil, even though selfishness, in many ways, is what has enabled society/creation to survive
• feel ashamed of choices I’ve made out of fear
• feel ashamed of choices I made out of desire
• feel ashamed of not conforming to others’ standards
• angry that God /Bible talks of compassion but doesn’t really let compassion overrule all else
• adhering to rules of the church/bible was more important than love, compassion, mercy, grace
• made me feel bad for offering grace over judgment
• made me feel wrong for not condemning others
• made me feel wrong for not forcing/voting for/speaking about “biblical truths”
• made me feel condemnation; “speaking the truth” is more important than showing love/grace/mercy
• convinced me to spank my children
• convinced me that my kids were born “in rebellion”
• I was responsible for showing my husband an example of Christ
• I am the sole one responsible for raising my kids, being the spiritual leader of our home
• Bible is the end all-be all of everything
• Jesus is NOT enough; must believe all these other things or else you’re following a false doctrine
• prayer changes God’s mind
• our prayers, behaviors can influence God to act
• God cares about every tiny detail of my life
• God controls every tiny detail of my life
• God should protect me if He cares about me… why doesn’t He protect us for real??? why doesn’t God care about our physical well-being?
• God’s desires are more important than mine
• having the “right” heart/behavior and telling others how to get that same thing is the only way to live
• God will only be pleased w/me if I become a doormat for everyone else
• God will only love me if I – who I am, my deepest desires & needs – cease to exist, are put to death
• God doesn’t actually love me for who I am, He only is pleased when who I am is completely destroyed, defeated, and His control over me is absolute
• God doesn’t/won’t love me unless He can completely control me, but He created me such that such control is impossible until I die = how kind and loving is that??!?! He puts us in the ultimate conundrum…
• God gets mad when we act in a way that exercises control over our own life/circumstances –> doesn’t want us to take our own lives back into our own hands…
• having an abortion is one of the worst sins one can commit and the experience will/must rightly haunt me forever

Since then, I’ve added more things to my list, as I uncover just how deeply ingrained all these evangelical tenets are. And, it has gotten harder to set them aside because certain ones are entangled with other identity and social issues and mindsets that I’m having to address. And, as you can see, I was writing stream of consciousness… putting down whatever came into my mind as I thought about what my beliefs had told me about my life and myself. And, I want to say that not all of these things were bad or wrong… But I knew that I had to clear away all the clutter and completely start over again.

As I was writing out my list, my anger was fueling it all. Part of me was convinced that God was about to smite me down… that I was abandoning Him and renouncing Him and my salvation forever because I was calling it quits on all these ideas. I wondered what was going to happen to me now that I no longer felt like a “christian.” My list wasn’t just a letting go of specific beliefs, but it was my way of walking away from the God who had demanded these ideas of me. With every word I wrote, I was saying, “I don’t believe in you anymore.” And, at the same time I was denying this “God,” part of me also feared I was condemning myself to His hell. After all, I knew what the Bible said about people who turn their back on God and renounce their faith. I knew what the pastors had preached about those backsliders who had known the truth and then turned away from it. I knew we weren’t supposed to test God and that Hebrews 6:4-6 says it is impossible to restore those who have “tasted the heavenly delights and then fallen away.” But, I chose to throw down the gauntlet then and there that I would not worship a God who insisted I live my life according to these beliefs.

The CRAZY thing was that as I continued to dig deep into my doubts, the treasure I found was freedom. I couldn’t believe the lightness I experienced. When I thought God was going to smite me dead, it gradually felt more like He was smiling down on me saying, “AHHHHH, there you are.” Kind of like when your kids tell you something hard and confrontational and you look at them with a newfound respect for their ability to challenge you and assert themselves. You see them trembling and nervous as they bravely state their case and you’re not mad, you’re proud of them! You see their strong inner nature coming to light, and it’s beautiful! This strange buoyancy gave me the confidence to go on, to keep pressing forward into my doubts, to continue reaching deeper.

The freedom was intoxicating. Now, letting go of my beliefs wasn’t scary – it was invigorating! Like when you’re tentatively Marie Kondo’ing your closet and you finally get to that point where you are tossing clothes left and right because nothing sparks joy! I couldn’t wait to just get rid of it all. I recognized that all of these beliefs and ideas I’d accumulated were weighing me down. At some point in life, they had been a buffer, a warm blanket, a security comfort, but now they were stifling, suffocating, and it was time to shed them for good.

After I made that initial list, I felt relieved, as though I had finally gotten all my secrets and shame off my chest. I sat in that stillness for a little bit and then realized… If this was what I knew of “God,” I didn’t want to believe in “Him” anymore. This shedding of beliefs felt SO GOOD, maybe it would be best if I just didn’t have any beliefs about God at all.

I had to laugh at the irony of it. Maybe God did know, after all (if He existed), what He was doing 10 years ago when He inspired a good Christian girl to marry an atheist. Of course, my experience with atheism didn’t last too long, but it felt like a strangely beautiful gift in that God allowed me to understand, for the first time, exactly how my husband had felt for most of his life – both in his lack of faith and also how he had often felt judged and condemned by christians.

So much for us not ever being able to have a soul-deep connection.