Making the Cut — Part 6: The Final Slice

My separation-from-religion experience

This is the sixth 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 6: The Final Slice

Although my childhood was irrationally acceptable— I felt included, part of a hand-picked delegation — it left me without a proper education and without a solid sense of self. By the time I was able to fully separate from The Body and from the damaged beliefs that had consumed my being, there was much to look forward to but so much I had to leave behind as well.

Bit by bit, from the age of 6 years, I exchanged myself for the knowledge of god — letting this mind be in me that was in christ jesus — leaving gaps inside. My earliest memories include guilt for being a sinner long before I had time to sin. I watched as adults around me created rich emotional experiences associated with deity while drawing sharp lines between good people and bad people. For years I handed over the personal complexities of who I was to strangers; I allowed the church to possess and explain all the important items of my personal psyche. My dismal church school education left omissions that continue to surface to this day. The small struggles continue, as they always will, perhaps. Loops of guilt remain like lint in corners, regret traps surface like land mines, and knots of social unease pester like gnats.

The loss — the undoing of the person I could have been and the continual striving to be someone better, the misplaced knowledge that was never realized and the pseudo-education wedged in its place, the irrecoverable time wasted on ideas and thoughts that proved to be useless not just for me, but for all of mankind — still leaves me unbearably sad at times.

What happened in my childhood seems at times to still be happening. The flow of breath, blood, and inner thoughts burning with intention to know more, to please more, to become more — remains a measured force between myself and reclaiming my person-hood.

Don’t get me wrong, there were nudges of compassion and bumps of empathy along the way. My childhood was anything but insincere. My parents and the church elders — they truly wanted me to be part of The Body, they wanted me saved, they wanted me to be a member of the chosen 144,000 who would meet jesus in the air at his second coming. They truly believed and that belief made it real for them. They offered me their most treasured beliefs from a place of certainty, never realizing they were paved with philistinism.

Even though my life started out inaccurate, their input was sincere. Even though it was built around delusions, they were genuine. Yet we all know that inaccuracy and delusions — regardless of intent — are hardly trivial.

For me, being fully conscious of my own ignorance was the final step before walking out the swinging church doors and leaving The Body behind. As if stepping into an alternative universe inhabited by all that is not said, spoken, or acknowledged, I simply stopped believing the falsehoods and chose to believe in myself, in humanity, and in love.

This separation didn’t arise from a place of rebellion or disobedience but from my own conscience reflection. I realized that what should have been a single window — revealing one version of the world — became a mirror that reflected untruth after untruth.

I will never be able to change how easily my life was written upon — without my permission. But once I realized that a story I played no role in creating was the atmosphere in which my life hung, it was time to take responsibility, to slice off what didn’t suit me, and to let scar tissue become my destiny.

I declared my own beliefs, “I believe in life, its connections, and its beauty.” And from this solid declaration, carved my own truths.

Believing that humans are divided into sinners and believers — here I made the first cut.

I embraced equal respect for all persons and reverence for human life and potential.

Just south of the lie about an omniscient, loving father was another about a suffering, understanding son —another slice.

I laid a foundation of self-love by respecting and loving myself enough to walk away from anything that didn’t support me, love me, or value me. My life is about me . . . and I’ve only got one shot at it.

Confining people to boxes labeled good and evil— a deep cut here.

Working from the assumption that everyone is doing the best they can with what they know fosters the same understanding toward myself . . . “I’m doing the best I can with what I know and understand about life.”

It took decades, but one by one, I rotated my beliefs, realizing that I could leave my life better than how I had found it. All I had to do was make the cut.

Because regardless of how we began, it matters how we finish.

If you found this article interesting, I accept hugs in the form of

— Generous highlighting and applause

— Copious comments spilling with gratitude and deep-thoughts

— Scads of followers Julie Nyhus MSN, FNP-BC

— Positive thoughts directed my way

In peace and light,

Joolz