September 9, 2021
If you’ve been deconstructing your faith for a while, then you know it’s hard.
It’s hard for many reasons, all of which I’ve discussed before in my book and on this blog. But there’s another reason why leaving religion is difficult that I haven’t touched on yet:
Leaving religion means you must take personal responsibility.
I’ve written before that fundamentalist Christians don’t take personal responsibility. They don’t need to. According to their own belief system, taking too much personal responsibility is indicative of “not trusting God.”
These Christians have a big sky daddy that has their back in all ways:
- All money that enters their life comes from, and technically still belongs to God. Wanting more is greedy.
- All health—good health or bad health—is attributed to God and his divine plan. There is nothing you can do about it.
- Your friends were brought into your life by God for specific reasons. Anyone who happens to enter your life and leave your life was preplanned by God for his mysterious and divine purposes.
- Your relationships and marriage are all predetermined by God. He had a plan for your partner since the very beginning, and there was nothing you could do about it.
With just a little bit of close inspection it’s apparent that the typical fundamentalist Christian lives his life on autopilot.
When you deconstruct your faith and leave the Church, you suddenly realize that all of these things that you thought God had control of are actually under your complete control and have been for a long time.
On one hand, that’s very encouraging. That means you can make your life whatever you want it to be. You don’t need to pray about it and trust “God’s timing.” If you want it, go out and get it, and do so whenever you want.
On the other hand, it’s terrifying. After a lifetime of believing God had everything handled, it’s kind of a lot to drop onto one person all at once. Additionally, all the time spent believing God was in control was lost time. That was time you could’ve spent learning how to be self-sufficient and building a life for yourself. It’s overwhelming. After finally coming to the conclusion that your life is yours and only you can make it what you want it to be, it can feel like there’s a lot of making up for lost time.
One of the hardest parts of landing on your feet after deconstruction and leaving religion is finally coming to fully understand that all you need to live the life you want is already within you. It can be so hard to understand this because a lifetime of religion has taught you the complete opposite. Religion taught you the complete opposite because it never wanted you to understand that you were enough without God. They wanted to keep you in a place of fear.
Another unfortunate trend I see among people fresh out of religion is their tendency to place their identity and self worth in yet another external entity (albeit without the supernatural deity). Most often, it’s certain politicians or social movements—usually ones that adamantly oppose to religion.
I did the same thing when I first left religion. But then after some time went by I realized the problems I perceived weren’t going to be solved by switching my identity or label to a different “team.” Depending on politicians and social movements to fix things is just another way to avoid personal responsibility. In the end, all the changes that I wanted to see ultimately had to come down to me.
Taking personal responsibility is hard. When we mess something up, it’s entirely our fault. There is no one else to blame. It’s quite uncomfortable living a life in which there’s no potential external person or group to blame for the bad things that happen to us. It makes us feel vulnerable. It forces us to take long, hard looks at ourselves in the mirror after making mistakes. It results in sometimes learning harsh lessons the hard way.
But ultimately, in the end, a life lived with full personal responsibility is really the only way to go. At the end of the day, I would much rather say to myself, “Yeah, I messed that up” rather than saying, “someone else messed that up for me.” The first statement puts me in a place of power. The second just has me blaming someone else (and I could even be wrong about that blame).
Embrace personal responsibility. Reclaim your autonomy from God and the Church. Trust yourself. Invest in yourself. I strongly believe this is the best way to live a life post-religion.