I Left the Faith / Part 1
I gave away my body and gave away my morals. I tried on versions of myself like hats. The entrepreneur. The party girl. The traveler. I felt like there was fire inside me waiting to be lit...
If you met me today, there would probably be a few things you realized were prominent themes in my life. My love of God, my love of family, the obsessive way I document my life in photos.
And if you stuck around for a bit, maybe I made you a chai with some honey and cream, I could tell you a story— a story about God and how I’ve spent most of my life feeling out of place. Can we do that?
I grew up in a Christian family, in the church, and with influences from an ultra-conservative organization that had a lot of their own ideas about what it meant to rightly follow God.
The mornings in my childhood, I’d stumble downstairs with my brothers and sisters and sit sleepily around our breakfast table eating unsweetened cheerios topped with way too much raw sugar. My sleepy fingers tracing the little scratches in our large family table, while our mom read to us from the Bible, connecting our hearts with tradition and faith.
In the evenings we’d gather together on the living room rug, kids scattered around the room, some in chairs, some of us on our backs studying the texture of the ceiling, mom usually stretching, while dad read us inspiring stories of Christians; missionaries giving their lives, sometimes unto death, for Christ.
I love both of those memories.
I participated in Christian youth activities and memorized hundreds, literally hundreds of verses of scripture. At one point I could quote the first 15 chapters of Proverbs.
I belonged to Christianity the way some people belong to their cultural traditions. It wasn’t a decision; it was my lifestyle, my heritage.
As I grew older, I began to feel a chasm opening up inside me. A distance between who I was and what I believed and others.
I wanted to know the God we discussed, but I didn’t, not really.
In place of a relationship, I had rules.
Do this, do that, don’t do this, don’t do that. We don’t wear bikinis, we don’t say “crap”, we don’t go to concerts, we don’t look like ‘the world’.
And as I grew, it seemed the list of expectations for looking right did too.
Everywhere I turned there was another older man, or someone’s (probably well-intentioned?) mother giving heavy-handed instructions, laying out the map to conformity, telling me how they believed God wanted me to act and dress: down the the length of my shorts, the cut of my skirts, what I was swimming in. Instructing me on how to behave, how to act like the ‘right kind of Christian’.
The rules, the clichés, the lingo: everything was so performative. It seemed to me, everyone in the ‘in crowd’ in these communities spoke and acted the same ways for other Christian’s approval.
It seemed the community was trying to start from the outside of the children and move inward.
If they could get compliance on all the outward things, surely their children would learn to love God.
This was the prosperity gospel promise provided and reassured often.
But emphasis on outward appearance and actions overshadows the true essence of faith — a heart transformed by love and grace.
Those things that appeared to make others feel or look like they belonged as a Christian made me feel… fraudulent.
I struggled in this storm of confusion for many years.
I desired relationship with the Creator. But I must not love Him like they do, because their version of Christian living didn’t look what I believed. He must be so disappointed in me.
I felt whiplash from the desire I had for God to love me, and fear I had that I was always getting it wrong, always letting Him down, always always falling short.
I ached to belong to an Ultimate Author and story, and only in small moments of hope did I believe that that was true.
The acceptance of a Creator has never been hard for me, but rarely did I believe He wanted anything to do with me.
There were glimmers though.
Like being 16 and in Illinois in the fall, walking between trees older than I was, their branches outstretched like ancient arms, forming a natural tunnel overhead. The canopies of golden leaves filtered the sunlight, casting a warm, amber hue upon the ground beneath my feet.
I listened with intention to the soft rustling of leaves, the gentle breeze often coaxing a leaf to break free from its branch, and it would dance to the ground in front of me; a fleeting performer in the grand spectacle of the season. I’d see Him here.
Okay, He must love me.
And then I’d be sat down with an older couple and told I could never be modest; they could wrap me in a choir robe and it wouldn’t be enough. And I’d shrink back. If this is what following God comes down to, I don’t think I can do it. I don’t want to do it.
I was always aware of the ways I was or could be doing it wrong, living wrong, offending Him. Not just disobeying the commandments, but not adhering to made up version of what the proper Christian life should look like in the early 2000s.
It appeared to me that the outside mattered more than the inside. Look right. Act right. Shove that sin out of sight. Shiny, happy people. “Be a light.”
I looked around and thought, really you guys all believe this stuff? You don’t have questions? You don’t feel like frauds? Am I the only one struggling?
And the stories I did hear of any struggle were either stories of warning to attempt to scare me into repentance, or struggle presented with the overcoming, and paired only in ways that aligned with their specific view of right living.
Even in my closest circles, it didn’t seem like anyone actively had both a love and desire for God AND the same questions, concerns, and fears that I did.
Or perhaps I wasn’t brave enough to find out.
I spoke the right words, or tried. I talked with Him, when the ache was great enough.
But what those years were for me was a long and painful period of my insides not matching my outsides. And feeling like it didn’t seem to matter anyway, as long as I played the part.
It’s excruciating to not belong with yourself, to have words on your lips you don’t believe in your heart.
And it seemed that the was the case for others, too? I can’t judge a heart, I don’t know. But I know I was sat down by a respected evangelical leader and he held my hand while he asked to describe with details all my previous sexual encounters. I was 15. I know I was horrified, terrified, betrayed by a pastor caught watching me naked in a shower on an international mission.
I can’t judge the heart. But I stopped believing in people.
Legalism erodes authentic connections with both God and others. Christian legalism dangerously replaces relationship with superficial displays of piety.
And I think the the largest negative impact of legalism is the way it misrepresents the character of God.
When faith is reduced to a checklist of do's and don'ts, the grace, compassion, and mercy of God are overshadowed.
This distortion of God's nature leads to a skewed perception of a loving Creator, perpetuating the notion that His acceptance is conditional upon flawless obedience.
This tarnishes the true essence of God's boundless love and grace.
I know for me, that’s exactly what happened.
Looking back, I refer to this God of my youth as God+.
He was the God I had made up in my mind based on assumptions and wrong teaching. He was God, plus all of the things I assigned to him.
An idol of my own making. Except, instead of being an idol I worshipped, he was one I didn’t trust very much. Or like very much?
In my understanding, God turned his back on me when I wasn’t living spiritually or rightly. I was taught “sin separates us from God” and I understood that as— God separates himself from us when we sin.
So in my estimation, God always had his back turned on me, arms crossed, and a frown on his face when he checked in to see if I was finally getting my shit together.
At 19, I wanted nothing more to do with this way of living.
I ran away—not literally, I didn’t live at home at this time anyway—and tried to carve a life out for myself outside of the Christian community.
I didn’t want to live out other peoples stories or values.
The ache I had for relationship with God was great, but lacking.
You can want to be with someone earnestly, but if you never make space for relationship, then it’s not going to build itself in the vacuum.
Since I hadn’t found a place I belonged inside the church I assumed I would find it easily in the world.
I gave away my body and gave away my morals.
I tried on versions of myself like hats. The entrepreneur. The party girl. The traveler.
I felt like there was fire inside me waiting to be lit and I kept trying to find the spark, kept looking for the right match. Is it alcohol, boys, success, creativity, travel?
I didn’t find it.
It started to appear there was nowhere for me to belong— I was still too Christian for the world and too worldly for the Christians.
And nothing stilled the storminess or the ache on the inside.
When it didn’t happen—when I didn’t feel connected, and alive, and finally complete— I felt disappointed, let down, tender to the touch.
The wrath of God didn’t strike me down, didn’t crush me, but I felt alone and wanted more than ever to really taste sweet grace.
From the outside, I probably appeared to be hard-hearted rebel living out the opposite of my upbringing.
But on the inside I was soft and a little scared and I really wanted to know God wanted me and wanted relationship with me, but I didn’t want one more person telling me to cover up my shoulders or to not wear short-shorts or that love songs belonged to married people, because somehow that’s the stuff God cares about?
Oof. This is dark.
But it gets better.
And you want to know about the moment, right?
Because I live in joyful freedom now.
I do live in relationship with God these days.
I know how loved I am and rest knowing the Creator desires relationship with me.
I don’t try to follow rules to look like the right kind of Christian to anyone else.
I no longer believe God has his arms crossed and is mad at me for being a failure all the time.
But this is getting too long, so let’s finish this later. (See you Thursday. 💞)