MY PERSONAL JOURNEY TOWARD FREEDOM
When I first began to question my beliefs and the things I was taught in Evangelicalism, I was terrified. I wish I'd known the process would be so long and difficult when I began. Not sure if that would change my direction, but at least I would have been a little more prepared for the onslaught of emotions, tears and deep hurts I was about to experience.
You see, when you believe something so much for so long, it becomes your identity. You can't imagine life without it. It is the lens by which you see your life. And when that lens gets a little cloudy, you begin to panic. Your worldview is rocked. What would it be like to live without believing every single thing I was taught for so long? Was God going to be mad at me and take away my ability to speak, write and connect with people? After all, he gave me those gifts so I could share his truths, right? Was God going to strike me dead because of my thoughts and questions? After all, he seems kinda mad and angry. Was this just Satan trying to deceive me? If so, why is God allowing it?
The thing that made me pause and reconsider all of those toxic thoughts was my son, Tommy. See, he was raised in our very Bible Belt, Evangelical home. But he never fit in with the churches we attended. He was very artistic, thought through things very philosophically and loved everyone he met very deeply. The things the church was teaching us did not line up with his ideas of how life should be lived. But just because he questioned things, that didn't make me love him any less. It didn't make me want to disown him. It actually helped me to understand that not every human being born is designed to think like all of the others.
I always felt loved by my son, accepted by him and I could sense his frustration with trying to connect with me when all I did was cry and beg him to please believe what I did, or else he may be going to hell. There was one time when he said, "Mom, I don't think I can come home for awhile. I love you so much, but when I'm here, you just cry all the time and I can't keep doing this to you." I was dumbfounded. Perhaps my fears were not serving me well? If my own son, who I loved so deeply, didn't want to come around, could I perhaps look at things differently? If I, being a human being, could love my son this much, could Almighty God perhaps love me, no matter what I believed, too?
But when you're in a religion that is one hundred percent convinced that they are the only one that is right and true, these thoughts are crippling. Not believing everything could mean a death sentence - an eternal death sentence in the pits of hell. The entirety of my religion was about living for the next life - not so much this one. Living for what is to come, as translated by different people written in a book that was called "The Word of God". Anything outside of that book was not even to be considered as true. Our entire existence was to bring glory to God and share the gospel so that other people wouldn't go to hell. Not doing this would have dire consequences.
Yes, there was joy in serving God, knowing God, praying, believing. But there was not much joy in actually living. Living for myself was selfish if it wasn't for the glory of God! Anytime I enjoyed something outside of church or ministry, I felt a tinge of shame. I didn't realize it but I was slowly beginning to believe that I couldn't wait to die so I could actually live without fear or shame and I could be less selfish. There was nothing good in me except Jesus, there is nothing good in this world, and it was not my home. These are the things I was taught. And I believed them hard.
Being human seemed like a bad thing because all humans are born sinful and unacceptable to God. The only time you're considered to be acceptable to God is if you trust in Jesus as your Savior, because then when God looks at you, instead of seeing you, he sees Jesus. This gave me the impression that I was, on my own, not acceptable or loved by God at all - even hated by him. Even when I finally felt accepted by God after my conversion, it wasn't because of me or anything I could ever do - it was only because Jesus covered my sin and made me righteous.
Believing that you are a worthless, disgusting human being created by God who can only be accepted when you say a prayer and ask for forgiveness for basically being human (which is how God created you) was simply horrifying for my self confidence. That's why we were always taught that confidence should never be in yourself, just in Jesus who sacrificed his life for you. Jesus came to be killed in my place by His own Father because I'm a disgusting sinner with nothing good in me and I'm hopeless on my own. God had his own son killed to restore a broken relationship with me that was only broken because I was a human being, who he created. That's a lot to take in.
It began to make zero sense to my mind as I sat back and looked at it critically. And when I'm questioning religious beliefs, I always try to look at the character of God. God says he is the definition of love. If that's the case, nothing I'd been taught lined up. My beliefs were crumbling. But with each crumble, I began to feel more and more free. Free to think more clearly, free to be less afraid and free to be curious, accepting and affirming of other humans who were just trying to live their lives, too. Perhaps God loves us all? Perhaps Jesus came to show us that. But we made him into yet, another religion.
This is just one of the many beliefs that I began to deconstruct. Deconstruction means I began looking at each thing I was taught, held it up to the character of God, and slowly began to untangle myself from the toxic beliefs that held me back from really living the life God created me to live. It's been unimaginably freeing.
This is one of the many reasons I decided to get more vocal about my deconstruction, my shift in beliefs. I can't deny the immense peace that I feel now that I'm no longer afraid. I want to help other people who are struggling in their beliefs to find peace and freedom, too.
I hope that if you have begun to question or doubt your beliefs that you just know that you are definitely not alone. There are so many of us who are waking up. It's not because we want to make a ruckus, come up against anything or be mad at people who still believe that way at all - it's simply because we want to be free. If your beliefs are working for you, that's great! But if they begin to not make so much sense, there are ways to work through that. That's the thing that I feel most passionate about right now - helping people work through their doubts and questions. It can be very scary and lonely. But it doesn't have to be.
So much love to you!
Leslie
