When is it Time to Move on From Deconstruction?

December 6, 2021

Faith deconstruction is hard, but there’s no doubt that the internet makes it a little bit easier. Maybe not emotionally, but definitely when it comes to finding new information to help you on your journey.

For the first time in human history, all the information you need to completely destroy your paradigm and change your worldview is only a click away! I don’t know if that’s reassuring or scares the hell out of me. I flip-flop depending on how I feel that day.

I realize the readily-available information is the easy part and it’s the emotional labor of changing your beliefs and lifestyle that’s difficult, but there was once a time when both aspects of change were a challenge.

When it comes to deconstructing, most people turn to the abundance of resources online to learn information to critically examine their faith and make a new decision about how to handle it moving forward. There are podcasts, YouTube videos, and blogs (like this one!) and the more you search, the more the social media algorithms learn what kind of content you want and thus feed you even more. Even after consuming content in this area for months, you still can never predict when you’re going to uncover some new podcast or YouTube channel or website that you’ve never heard of despite the fact that it has a million followers, leaving you to wonder how you didn’t know about it for all this time. You then proceed to binge their entire back catalog.

With the seemingly-endless amount of content out there on the topic of faith deconstruction and why religions may not have the best answer for the Truth of reality, how do you know when enough is enough?

I remember when I hit that point. I was listening to one of my usual podcasts. There was nothing wrong at all with that particular episode; in fact it was quite a good one with an interesting guest. But halfway through it, something just kind of clicked in me like a flipped switch. I froze, paused the episode, and just said to myself, “I’m satisfied now.”

The thing about recently Deconverted Men is that they tend to be quite intelligent. Most of them used their intelligence and curiosity to navigate their way out of religion by finally entertaining well-reasoned arguments as to why religion might be false. Almost like an overcorrection—as if embarrassed by a perceived “intellectual failure” at having believed in a religion in the first place—they binge on tons of new information. In the process, they essentially become amateur Bible scholars. Since well-reasoned debates and logic led them out of religion, many of them want to do the same thing and engage in intellectual debates with believers (usually online) for the purposes of trying to lead other people out of religion.

I understand this desire. I myself am a big thinker. I love to learn new things, know as much stuff as possible, and wish I could consume all the content in the world. There was a point in my life where I would’ve told you that I’d absolutely love it if I could just disconnect from the real world for the rest of my life and just learn stuff about the world and universe.

But unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. There’s life. At some point, you have to turn off the podcast, pause the YouTube video, and put down the book and get up, go outside, and live life in the real world. You have to interact with people who do not agree with you. You have to deal with situations that are tough and seem to be no-win. You have to make hard decisions that have very real consequences.

If you’ve been deconstructing for a while, then be aware that there’s likely going to come a point when it’s time to move away from the whole thing. Take all the time you need to learn what you need to learn and process what you went through and are currently going through (a mental health professional can help a lot with this) but it’s very likely that this stage of your life will not last forever. Eventually you’ll have to decide that you’ve learned enough, you know what you need to know, and that it’s time to proceed onto other things in life.

How do you know when this time has come? For me, it was an intuition and a gut feeling. As I said above, I was just doing my normal thing of consuming deconstruction content until I suddenly felt satisfied. Even though there was nothing wrong with what I was hearing, I’d just heard enough and was ready to start learning about or doing other things—things that had nothing to do with religion or leaving religion.

I’ve said it before, but in a way, spending a lot of time consuming deconstruction content is still a low-key way of giving your time away to religion. And one of the biggest regrets of people who spent half their life in religion was the time they lost. They’re right to feel this way since time is one of your two most important assets. However, spending time in online deconstruction communities and consuming content is still, in a distant way, giving your time to religion. It may look and feel different (because it is technically different) but there are so many other awesome things out in the world that have nothing to do with religion.

Here’s another challenge you can try: take a break. You may read this article and tell yourself that you’re definitely not ready to stop learning and consuming deconstruction content. That’s fine. But still try an experiment with yourself and take a break from your regularly-scheduled content and see how you feel. You might surprise yourself and find you don’t miss it as much as you thought you did. Maybe this break can help prevent you from running on a content treadmill longer than you actually need to.

It may sound strange for a creator of deconstruction content such as myself telling you to gradually wean yourself off of deconstruction content, but my ultimate goal here is to help you develop better life post-religion, and I strongly believe that one major step to finally improving your life after leaving religion is to get to the point of being able to not rehash your time in religion over and over again. I don’t think you need to completely forget about your time in religion (that would be impossible) but there are some weeks—sometimes many weeks—in my life that go by where I don’t pay a single thought to religion or the time I spent in the Church. Instead, my thoughts are on to better and more constructive things.

And that is true freedom from religion.