March 8, 2021
One thing I’ve noticed that many (not all) fundamentalist Christians have in common is that they haven’t done much traveling.
And no, a mission trip doesn’t count. When you travel as part of a mission trip, you’re arriving at your destination having brought your church culture along with you. You already have preconceived notions about what you’ll find at your destination. Even worse, your goal is to convert your destination’s people and culture so that they resemble your own.
That’s not real travel.
Rather, travel is the exact opposite. It’s a way to step outside (sometimes way outside, depending on where you go and where you’re from) your version of the human experience and get exposure to someone else’s.
I’ve been fortunate to travel to some places that are very different from my home country of the United States. I’ve backpacked through Morocco, summited Kilimanjaro, partied in Lebanon, and road tripped throughout India, as a just a few highlights.
The peak of my international experience, however, came from when I lived and worked in the United Arab Emirates for several years. This happened during the very tail end of my own deconstruction and this time period contributed a lot to the end of any faith I still had remaining.
Because when you spend as much time as I have living and working in a totally different culture, you can’t help but notice a few things.
For one thing, it was impossible for me to retain the notion that I was lucky enough to have been born in a location that practiced the “correct” religion and worshipped the “real” God. Every single practicing Muslim I met adamantly believed the same exact thing.
Another stark realization that hit me during my travels were my encounters with people from more liberal western countries, such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. For the most part, these people had not been raised to believe in any religion whatsoever. And they just seemed so much better off for it.
They didn’t use religion to define their entire existence like people who were indoctrinated from a young age. They didn’t rage against religion like people who deconverted later in life. They were indifferent. They didn’t care. If someone wanted to believe in a religion, that was fine with them. They just shrugged and moved on.
I met Europeans—usually from places like Ireland and Spain—who identified strongly with the Christian or Catholic labels and believed in God, but their lifestyles looked nothing like what I was used to. They swore, drank, and fucked around as happily as their atheist and agnostic friends, and did it openly without any kind of guilt.
That would never have worked in my Bible belt hometown. You could live that way in secret (many people did) but if you did so brazenly and openly and on social media, then you wouldn’t have lasted long in your church.
This taught me that your local culture has more influence on what you consider an appropriate lifestyle for God rather than the specific religion you professed.
With all of these new revelations cropping up throughout my travels, there was absolutely no way to avoid questioning everything I’d ever been taught about what it meant to be a Christian and live like one.
I could’ve done what most fundamentalist Christians do and concluded that everyone else was wrong except for me. But I knew that couldn’t be the case. This needed a proper, honest evaluation.
As I’ve said before, my deconstruction began with finally reading the Bible all the way through to finally learn what it said. After that came other nonfiction works about the Bible and its history from prominent atheist and agnostic Biblical scholars.
My deconstruction began as a theoretical exercise and gaining head knowledge. When I struck out traveling (on my own, more often than not) that was the direct life experience that rounded out the deconstruction I was going through. I finally got face-to-face with people who lived differently, believed differently, were raised differently, and lived their everyday lives in locations and cultures that were completely different from mine.
While I do believe reading books, watching videos, and listening to podcasts is an excellent way to learn new things that help your deconstruction journey, I also think all of that should be capped off with real life direct experience. And perhaps the best way to get that experience is to travel. And when you do, to travel somewhere as different from your home as possible.
I understand that travel requires time and money, two things that can be in short supply for a lot of people right now. Like everything else important and worth doing, travel must be prioritized, otherwise it’s doomed to languish in the “some day” purgatory that we all have. If traveling is something you’d like to try out, I’d urge you to start devoting some thought to it now.
What about you? Has travel helped you deconstruct your religion? Let me know in the comments below!
Excellent article! I traveled the world in my 20s, mostly Muslim countries (including the Emirates!) and mainland China, and although I did not seriously question Christianity until more than 20 years later, the travel opened my mind and sowed seeds that would eventually lead me away from my religion.
Thank you. I think people have to adamantly be traveling with blinders on to NOT return from their trip with new questions and insights about how the world works and how diverse life can be.