Deconstructing Christianity - Part One
My Road To Being an Exvangelical
I was raised in a very oppressive religious sect of Christianity. In my home life, my mother was a devout Christian who read the bible daily and had a quiet, but firm faith. My abuser, a pastor, never cracked the bible around us, and I often felt he didn’t really believe anything he preached from the pulpit. A few times, I suspected he was an atheist at heart. Outside our home is where most of my religious teaching took place, and it was not pleasant.
I first became aware of God at a very young age. I felt a presence in my life that was everywhere around me and was comforting. Every time I looked up at the moon or hung out in my favorite tree, I felt that presence profoundly.
My children’s bible story book that my mom read to me told me about Jesus, and the illustrations portrayed a man who loved children. My mother explained his association with God, but didn’t go into the hellfire and brimstone theology. I identified God and Jesus with the presence I felt, and I accepted Christianity as truth.
It wasn’t until I left the nursery at my church for the young kids and entered Sunday School that I was introduced to the hellfire and brimstone theology that would dominate the next two decades of my spiritual life.
Looking back, I can see how much fear supplanted the joy and contentment I felt when I was a little girl enjoying nature and feeling the loving presence I associated with God. Fear started to rule over every aspect of my life as the abuse at home ratcheted up.
I had a lot of anger at God because he never saved me from the abuse. I didn’t understand why I had to endure so much pain, physically, emotionally, and mentally on a daily basis. Worse yet, the teaching of my “unworthiness” was constant in church circles. This included Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, Church Camp, and Youth Group. It was made very clear to me that I was damn lucky that God was willing to sacrifice his son for someone as evil as me.
Which translated in my adolescent brain to “I am evil and unworthy, so therefore, I deserve the abuse. That is why God isn’t stopping it.” Therefore, I had to be GOOD, so God would stop it. But as anyone who has dealt with an abuser knows, there is nothing a victim can do to be “good” in their eyes.
There were good things about the church. I loved hanging out with my friends between Sunday School and Children’s Church. I also loved the church potluck socials. I even enjoyed the Sunday School lessons until they turned much darker, and fear became the dominant emotion I associated with the teachings of the bible.
Despite my fear, I was an inquisitive kid. I asked hard questions, and sometimes those hard questions got me ousted from my Sunday School class. I wanted to understand the WHY, but oftentimes, you’re told just to BELIEVE.
When I reflect on what I consider the “good days” of my church experience as a kid, I realize that I was being hardcore brainwashed. I didn’t realize it, but neither did my mom. She wasn’t raised in the church, so she never experienced the emotional brutality of hellfire and brimstone theology or the mental burden that comes from being told constantly how unworthy you are.
I remember listening to a Christian leader one day, and they said, “The opposite of fear is faith.”
And I thought, “Then why are we all so afraid?”
Deconstruction starts when the questions become too numerous and need to be answered.
My deconstruction has taken place over multiple decades. It started in my twenties, but has accelerated in the last three years or so. I still believe in a god, a supreme being, creator of the universe, and I am still very devoted to the teachings of Jesus Christ, but I no longer call myself a Christian. I believe that modern-day Christianity, as it exists today, is about political power and not the teachings of Jesus.
In the end, deconstruction for me is all about answering “why?” Why was I taught certain beliefs?
The more I learn, the more liberated I have become, the closer I feel to the God and the spirituality of my childhood, and the freer I feel.
Here are a few things I learned that helped shake off the terrible fear that dominated my spirituality so long:
The original (main) God of the Hebrews was El, not Yaweh.
El and Yaweh both had a partner/wife named Asherah.
Hell, as we’re taught about it in church, doesn’t exist
The rapture is a recent theology.