Leaving the Church and Where I Ended Up

This blog post has been over a year in the making. It reflects the most poignant portion of my personal journey to date.

The last 4 1/2 years of my life have taught me that the person I thought I was, was just an illusion. The little kingdom that I built around myself crumbled in a day. Everything that I thought I was faded like a dying ember.  It's truly astounding how fast people will drop you like a lit firecracker the moment a hole gets poked in your character.

Most of my life I've tried hard to be what I thought was Christ-like. I was a good kid, tried to please my parents and teachers. Went to church. Helped with youth group. Didn't drink or smoke, volunteered at the church, eventually became a pastor. But it was all me just trying real hard to be a good person, keeping up appearances of having a good spiritual life, being a good husband, father etc. People looked up to me, wanted to know what I thought about this and that, asked me to lead, to teach, and I oh-so-humbly obliged, all the while slowly becoming convinced that I actually was something special.  I learned about grace and legalism and how striving for Gods approval was pointless because his love was unconditional. So instead, I garnered people's approval wherever I could.  I thought I was becoming Christ-like.

That was then.

Today my story is different. The last 4 years have left us reeling from having the rug pulled out from under our feet. After getting let go from the church, I've been through a failed business start-up, been unemployed, found myself scrubbing toilets and mopping floors at 3am in the city only to get completely shafted and unpaid. I took any job I could find from shovelling snow to packing chickens to put food on the table. We were evicted from a rental we were only in for 6 months. Then I thought I landed my dream opportunity in a recording studio only to lose my shirt in the process. I fell deeper into depression every day. We cashed in my retirement plan to pay debts and feed the family and still ended up being chased by collections agencies for bills we could not afford to pay. We didn't buy presents for Christmas, we got a food hamper instead. My wife and I would skip meals so the kids could eat.

This would have been a great time for the church to help out, but I couldn't reach out to those people. The person they had known me as no longer existed. I felt entirely rejected, worthless, hungry, and poor.

And then I started to think that maybe this is what it meant to be Christ like.

You would think that having a revelation of being "Christ-like" would mean that a light fell from Heaven and things started to turn around for me.  They did in fact turn around, but not in a way I expected.

Finding myself a distance from the church I had gained a new perspective. I saw a world that marches on whether or not I attended church. I met people who were genuinely good and nice and generous who had never been to church and didn't care whether I had been or not. I wondered what made them tick. If you don't have God, how can you be good? If you don't have guilt or even gratitude for grace, what motivates a person to care? This opened up a door in my mind where I keep questions that I don't have answers for. I try not to open that door because the things inside don't fit my predefined Christian world view.

But now that door was open and my mind became awash with questions I never allowed myself to ask, like Is Hell real? Is God really sending us there if we don't "love" him by going to church and praying the sinners prayer?  Is the Bible really true? Is it really "inerrant" as the church says? Is the Bible complete or are there parts missing? How do we know? Why is the church obsessed with "taking things on blind faith" and shunning research and knowledge and science? Why is stubborn ignorance a badge of honor in the church?

In short, I opened the floodgates of curiosity. I was no longer satisfied with pat answers to everything that usually just boiled down to the words, "God said it, I believe it, that settles it." This ignorant statement basically sums up my entire spiritual education. It's not good enough anymore.  How do you know God said it? How are we sure that we have interpreted it correctly?

I took my questions to a lot of people. Friends, strangers, pastors, bible school professors... these were all Christian people. I thought that maybe within the same faith I would find some who were willing to ask the questions and consider other answers. I wish I could say I was surprised, but I was not. I rarely got past the "Is Hell real", question before I was shut down. The most engaged response I got was from the Bible School professor who said, "You know, there's a lot of different schools of thought, but none of them really hold any water. At the end of the day, we just have to take it on faith and it's best not to question it."  Clearly I had to expand my audience to find answers.

--------------------------------

"It's the question that drives us." - One of my favorite quotes from The Matrix, which has become an allegory for my life in a new way. The unanswered and forbidden questions did drive me. I finally resorted to asking Google at 2am one sleepless night, whereupon an interesting title came up in the list of searches. One that I was certain would have something for me. I looked at the web address... it was Ex-Christian.net.  I stared at the screen. I can't click that. I can't go there. Thirtysome years of cult-like conditioning raced into my brain with a surge of adrenalin that made my heart pound against my rib-cage. This was forbidden territory. I had torn a little hole in my evangelistic bubble and was peeking through to the outside world. It was my red pill/blue pill moment. Could the answers I was looking for lie outside the realm of Christianity?

I clicked the link with hands shaking and a nervous glance over my shoulder. I read the article. It was a research paper about people who had left the church and how they had handled it and where they were now. Not only did I identify with every word, I found that I fit into the extreme categories. My exodus from the church was wreaking havoc on my mental well being the same as someone leaving a cool-aid drinking cult. I fit the description of people having Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. My life was being run by fear. Every decision made by what I thought other people would want me to do. I had no sense of self, no boundaries and as a result, no self respect. This explained why throughout my life, even though I'm a talented person and had picked up a lot of skills along the way, none of that truly benefitted me. It was all done for others and I had developed a OCD like pattern of taking my empty cup, squeezing a little more of myself into it and offering it to people who would take it, use it, but could never validate me in the way that I needed.

And I did this all because of fear.

Fear of what people would think. Fear of what would happen if I rocked the boat. It would be hard to explain the sheer power over me that this has to someone who grew up outside the church bubble. I had been brainwashed, and had grown up in a closed community of brain-washed people who were all taught not to question anything.  I would willingly give up control of my life to anyone who would use it because I was so unsure of what to do with my own life. The way I saw it was that there were those who were leaders and authorities, and then there were people like me who were compelled to meet the (real or imagined) expectations of the leaders.  In short, I was a textbook case victim of cult mentality and I had developed Stockholm Syndrome in the process.

Never in my life had I felt so lost. I knew that I had burst my bubble and was now faced with the terrifying reality of freedom of self. This was my Matrix moment when Neo had taken the red pill and woke up sliding down a sewer pipe, helpless and terrified, only to splash into a pool of waste waiting to be fished out by Morpheus who greets him with "Welcome to the real world."  I imagine at that time he was thinking "Oh shit. What did I just do?" because in reality this was my exact reaction. Did I push too far and step over the edge of a cliff? Was I suddenly an Ex-Christian? Did that kind of thing just happen or did I have to make a decision now? Would it even be possible to get back in the bubble if I wanted to?

I let the question hang and lay awake in bed for another 2 hours.  By morning it had sunk in. I wasn't going back. I needed to live my own life, without fear. Whatever being a Christian was, I wasn't it anymore. In fact I hadn't been for quite some time, but I had refused to admit it to myself.  I'm not a Christian anymore.

Over the next while I saw the world differently. There was no more "us and them" - Christians and non-Christians. There were only people. People from all different walks of life. They were all interesting. Fascinating. I was no different than anyone else and for the first time I felt connected to the world in a whole new way. And I liked it. This was a pleasant surprise after a lifetime of hearing from my fundamentalist teachers that "The World" was an evil place and we were to have nothing to do with it unless we were trying to witness to people in it to win them over to our side.

A quick side-note:

Now, a lot of Christians would interject here and say that perhaps I never understood Grace. Within the church, there is legalism and grace, two opposing camps, one set on earning Gods favor and one saying we have already received Gods favor and need to do nothing to earn it. Along my journey I discovered Grace, and at the time it was the best news I ever heard. No longer did I need to work and strive to earn God's love and keep my salvation, it was just a done deal. I understood Grace. I owned it. I taught it. But I was still faced with so many nagging questions. Grace may be exactly what we think it is. But the reality is that church and Christianty in general are still neck deep in tradition, repetition, and so-called godly living because of a sense of obligation. Grace is about freedom, but within a church context it generally looks like people finally being free to have a glass of wine, say the odd swear word or miss a church service once in a while. That's not freedom. That's like sneaking your own snacks into a movie theatre.  They may even admit that going to church won't save your soul, but too many are still afraid to really take it at face value. They might even say that the church isn't a place, it's the people, and how we don't GO to church, we ARE the church. But these same people that understood grace would still not field my question about Hell or the reliability of the Bible. And in fact, in my experience, many people who teach grace teach it with the same unforgiving authority that drives legalism. The my-way-or-the-highway approach is seemingly intrinsic to whatever camp you are in, and this, in the end was equally repulsive to me as legalism.

Back to the matter at hand...

Being free to be curious now, I took a well beaten path of other Ex-Christians who had gone before me and turned to Buddhism. Could the answer be there? I mean, they make light of religion and emphasize well-being and love, right? Now that the shackles were off I could explore. I started meditating. I read a few books by Thich Nhat Hanh, I followed the Dali Lama on Twitter and watched him on Netflix. I learned a lot about self-care and how you can't really care for others if you don't care for yourself and how a mother's love will do more good in the world than any social program.  I looked for God (whoever that is) within myself, which I found very helpful. I did find God there, as well as a scared inner child. They were friends, thankfully. I didn't reach enlightenment though. I got discouraged when I discovered that within Buddhism there is a lot of new terminology that I would have to learn, much like a new Christian would have to learn words like propitiation and predestination and ecclesiology.  I joined /r/Buddhism on reddit and witnessed a lot of discussions amongst Buddhists and found that there are many differing versions within Buddhism, and that they argue over a lot of fundamentals as well. These sort of things put me off and I decided that although I generally liked Buddhism, in the end it seemed to suffer from too many of the same problems as Christianity.

This, in fact is my general feeling towards all religions and faiths. I doubt I will find a place in any of them.  This of course led me to secular humanism, whatever that is. The title suggests that it consists of being a human who is not a part of any religion, so if I needed to label myself with anything, that would be it. I don't know if there's a Secular Humanist Bible or a handbook or anything, but I also don't really care. Maybe I should just stay with the no-name brand of being human.

I have learned that it's okay. It's okay to not be okay. I embrace the not-knowing as a refreshing change from having pat answers. Asking questions is exhilirating, and fear is fading. I should probably comment that I still believe there is a God. I don't believe that Christianity has the corner on knowing who or what God is. I would be okay if God was female. Or an alien. I know that whatever I think or believe God is, does not actually change the reality of who God might actually be. This is why I tend to think of it as "God (whoever that is)". As far as who Jesus is, I can't comment. I'm questioning everything, even Jesus, and I don't have an easy answer.

Let me provide a nutshell view of where I'm at -

Regarding the Bible:
I don't believe that the Bible is perfect and should not be used as an ultimate authority. I believe it is missing giant pieces and that it contains errors and exaggerations and that while it is a unique collection of writings, and has some great historical value, it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The Canon of scripture was decided by fallible humans who had opinions, societal pressure, and political slants that affected their decisions. The Western Protestant canon was by far the most restricted selection of books included in the Bible compared to every other faith. The decision to close the canon was arbitrary and sends the message that God no longer speaks.
Regarding the church:
In it's current western form it's a man-made invention and is actually dangerous because it leads people to believe they have actually found spiritual fulfilment, when really they just have a club full of like-minded people who like to hear the same message, sing the same songs and generally either pat each other on the back, or argue about nitty gritty details.  Also I would say that it is virtually criminal that we have giant posh churches but still have a poverty problem.
Regarding Jesus:
I don't have any conclusive thoughts about who Jesus is. I believe he existed - even other faiths mention him. I'm not sure he was the son of God (If you just thought "Blasphemy! You can't say that!" then congrats, you are also a product of Christian brainwashing). Did God need a son? Did Jesus really come back to life? Did he really heal blind and sick people? Did you know that historically there were other teachers before Jesus whose followers claimed the same things about them? Have you considered that Jesus might have had romantic interests? I have a lot of questions. I don't know the answers, and that's okay for now.
Regarding Christianity:
It falls in the same category as all other faiths to me. Buddhism. Islam. Mormonism etc. They are all faiths that are attempting to bridge the gap between God and man, life and death, suffering and joy and find a good way to live. All faiths are susceptible to being exploited by humans for personal gain in some capacity and seem to have suffered from "too many cooks" syndrome to possibly know what is true and what is not. This is why I'm choosing to live my life free of any religion.
Regarding God:
I cannot deny the existence of God. Although I sympathize with the Atheists that the world can easily seem like a godless place, I have no real reason to believe that there isn't a God. Looking at a tree or a blade of grass and the intricacies that brought it into existence is too great a marvel for my small mind. That said, evolution makes a lot more sense to me than a 7 day creation and I find it unecessary to write off God's existence to accept the idea of evolution.


So this is where I'm at. It's been a long exhausting journey and I feel like I'm just getting started. I needed to get this out so that I can properly leave religion behind and move on with my life. I don't feel like I owe anyone an explanation, really, but here it is for those who might be interested. And for those who fear that I am going to Hell, I appreciate your concern, and I also appreciate you keeping your concern to yourself. I don't want to hear about it.  To the very few people I have told this story to who have offered to pray for me, that's fine. Please feel free.

On a side note, if anyone really wants to help me by praying, consider a more practical help: please feed my family or hire me to fix your computer or buy my music online or come to Arts Academy shows or anything that actually helps support our physical needs, as it's been very difficult to start from scratch after what we've been through.

If you're still with me, you may wonder how I feel about the 10 years I spent in ministry at Linden Alliance Church. There are a handful of things you need to know if you knew me then or were a part of the congregation. Rather than post that here, I will make a separate post that you can see HERE called Coming Clean: Dirt on the Ex-Pastor. Sounds scandalous, right? It's not really. It's just honest.


For anyone who might be interested in more in-depth details of why I no longer believe things that I used to, this guy says it much better than I can and I suggest you read his post.

Also, if you are curious as to the timeframe of when this all went down... I've been an "ExChristian" for close to a year now. I may have had spiritual talks with you since then about church and God and yes, I still know all the things to say to keep people off my case, but I made the decision that I was no longer a Christian nearly a year ago at this writing and I've been waiting for the right time to come out.  I think it will be a relief to have people finally know so that maybe I can escape all those talks about what's wrong with their church (because honestly, I'm about as concerned about your inner church struggles as you are with the internal staff politics at Reitmans).