May 3, 2021
Some of the teachings I remember most from my time in the Church had to do with strength and power—essentially, God was strong and powerful, and I was not. I was expected to not be strong and powerful because I was supposed to rely on God’s strength and power as my own. If I was faithful enough, then God would lend me his strength and power. If I chose to build, hone, and develop my own strength and power, then it could potentially become a “stumbling block” because of pride.
Back in the day, I took a lot of comfort in these teachings because I’d been skinny my entire life. Most of the other kids at my school were stronger than me. Some of them were really strong for their age.
I never looked at these stronger guys with any kind of envy (not on a conscious level, at least; it’s entirely possible I did on an unconscious level) because I had several Bible verses in my back pocket that promised the meek would inherit the earth and that the strength of God was available to me whenever I needed it.
However, declining to build your own strength—physical strength, physical endurance, or mental strength—for the sake of relying on God for all of those things now seems silly for those who’ve deconverted (which I assume is most of you reading this blog).
At some point in my deconstruction, I started contemplating on how my health and wellness was entirely my responsibility. God had not predetermined my death date. He had not programmed me to get certain diseases or illnesses. When I did get sick, he wasn’t going to be the one to heal me. All of that was on me. While it was terrifying at first, it soon became comforting. That meant I had control, and I’d had control all along.
This also meant the strength that God was supposed to give me wasn’t there at all. It also meant that the meek would probably not, in fact, inherit the earth. I realized that if I had no strength of my own and there was no god to lend me his strength despite the promises made by my pastors and contemporary Christian music, then that meant I had no strength whatsoever to draw upon.
One day it clicked. I needed to get my ass in the gym.
When it comes to conversations about faith deconstruction and leaving religion, there’s a ton of discussion on mental health, and for very good reason. Admitting that one’s religion is a lie is almost guaranteed to cause a huge blow to someone’s mental state, at least for a period of time. However, what I see talked about less often is physical health. By leaving this out, we’re missing half the equation. The mind and body are connected, after all, and improving your mental health improves your physical health and improving your physical health improves your mental health.
For me, and for many men, one of the most obvious steps to improving physical health was to build physical strength after a lifetime of being told real strength comes from God. So I committed to a gym schedule and workout program and was determined to make it happen.
It was slow moving at first. I’ve always been one to over analyze and get analysis paralysis, so I spent tons of time gaining head knowledge about compound lifts and strength training. I also watched a bunch of YouTube videos explaining how to do barbell exercises. To be fair to myself, I highly recommend everyone spend some time learning how to lift weights when just starting out since doing it incorrectly could injure you. But once I started to feel ridiculous about watching a bunch of jacked dudes lifting weights on the internet, I went to the gym on my predetermined date, picked up a barbell, and got started.
I quickly realized why many men love lifting weights. It’s simple (yet not easy), it’s linear, it’s a progression, and you see the rewards in the increasing numbers for work you did not that long before. In short, it’s addicting.
For me, every little bit of weight I added to the bar represented strength that I no longer needed from God. It represented strength I was building for my own natural body, in accordance to how my body naturally works, using purely biological processes. For the first time, I had a say in my own physical strength. I got to choose and decide. I didn’t have to pray for God to lend me any of his; I could do the work and build my own.
Having a workout routine improved my mental toughness as well. This process required me to develop self discipline, wake up earlier, monitor what I ate and drank, and do the work even when I didn’t feel like it. All of this spilled over into other areas of my life outside the gym. This mental strength was another thing for which I was always told I needed to rely on God.
There’s no need to take this to the extreme. You don’t need to get utterly jacked and shredded (unless you want to). There will always be someone stronger than you. Unless you plan to competitively power lift (which is a great hobby, in my opinion), then a moderate amount of strength training and conditioning should be enough for most men to get a boost of confidence toward how they perform, feel, and look.
What about you? Did you start taking better care of your physical health during or after your deconstruction? Let me know in the comments!