Making the Cut — Part 1: I Don’t Believe in God
My separation-from-religion experience
This is the first part of a 6-part series chronicling my journey away from religion. If it offends you, I’m sorry, but you really shouldn’t let other people’s experiences trouble you. This is my experience and isn’t intended to discredit your experiences or beliefs in any way. My journey is mine and your journey is yours. I respect them equally.
Part 1: I Don’t Believe in God
There must be lives that separate from religion easily, as if they were perforated from the beginning. Mine was not one of them. On a wet Tuesday afternoon early in 2011, a friend sat on the couch across from me, her stare brimming with injury as if I had physically attacked her.
“I don’t believe in god anymore,” I repeated. It was the second time I had ever said it. Twice in a row made my lips feel free.
Her mouth remained void of sound; her eyes leaking disbelief.
“For me,” I chose gentle words, “god was only real because I believed it was real. Which means if I stop believing, then it stops being real. Turns out I’m right.”
I knew that four decades of embodying The Body of Christ meant the separation wouldn’t be easy. Wedging my fingernail into the rift between myself and The Body — as it was referred to by the members — took nearly two years from start to finish. It began like a simple, calming loss that wove its way to a strange and polished new land. During that time, my marriage was ending, my cancer was healing, and my depression was lifting.
I didn’t blame my then-husband for his near-miss affair. We shouldn’t have married anyway. Thanks to The Body, we possessed several fractured beliefs like relationships that are consummated without the benefit of legalization should result in marriage. My personal favorites were women must submit to their husbands and christians don’t get divorced. These kept us together and miserable for 28 years.
Telling my father was another vital part of my split from The Body. I’d start with the divorce and see how that went before telling him I was leaving god and church too. Maybe that wouldn’t even come up. If anyone understood the struggle and pain of leaving a marriage, it was my twice-divorced christian father.
I knew I could count on the man who used to lean down and whisper into my 6-year-old ear, don’t tell anyone, but you’re my favorite. Even through my pre-teen and teen years, he allowed me more latitude for slacking off and offered extra patience for my mood swings and bad attitudes. Throughout my childhood and most of my adult life, I honestly believed I was his favorite.
Now standing between the two walls of his tiny apartment that day, I wasn’t his favorite anything. His arms flew over his head, and his words filled the room.
No, I can’t believe this. You’re being deceived by the devil. Satan is blinding you to the truth. What’s next, will you leave the church too?
No use lying to him at this point. He already saw me as the rope in a tug-of-war between god and satan. When I said yes, he turned his back to me, speaking aloud to all three of us:
You’ve been deceived by the devil.
Satan, I rebuke you, get behind me.
God, open her eyes to your truth and The Body of Christ.
I touched his shoulder to calm the twirling thoughts scraping his heart with my deception and disbelief, but he shrugged my hand away. Can we talk, dad? Can you sit down and listen for a moment? No longer the apple of his eye, it was clear he saw only a snared casualty before him now.
As he paced from wall to wall his ranting encircled him and pushed me away. Satan is blinding you, you’ve been deceived by the angel of darkness. Get behind me, satan, you have no power here. I rebuke you, Satan, you will not have my daughter.
I left him there in the misery I’d brought him and drove two hours home to my daughters, mulling over the depth of loss he was suffering because of me. We had worshiped god and rebuked the devil in the same pew together for decades. After I married and moved away, we still shared the basics on the father, son, and holy spirit. And now, just like my marriage, I was the one leaving. I was the one causing pain.
Guilt was a solid part of my past — the caulk filling the seams of my experiences — and it was no different now. Yet, on the drive home that day, I displayed the grandest fanfare of guilt I’d ever mustered as I gagged with regret on the years of religion I had already shoved down the childhood throats of my now nearly-raised daughters.
Making the Cut — Part 2: A Seamless Connection
A Seamless Connection
I was brought up to believe I knew unknowable things. Ideas labeled spiritual and biblical had floating roots for nonbelievers, but for us — god’s chosen people — these truths made me feel . . .
Don’t miss Making the Cut: Part 2
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In peace and light,
Joolz
