April 18, 2022
The Truth sucks sometimes. Actually, it sucks more than sometimes—it almost always sucks.
That’s why we as humans have gotten very good and avoiding the Truth.
What is the Truth? Truth is simply “that which is.” No more, no less. If you haven’t already, I’d suggest reading this article about the Truth before continuing on with this one.
If you’re like me and spent a significant portion of your life in Christianity—and have since left—then you know how important it is to seek the Truth.
Deconstruction is quite the word being thrown around these days. It brings to mind images of taking apart religious beliefs piece by piece, analyzing them separately and apart from the whole, looking under the cracks and crevices and shadowed corners of your mind to investigate areas where perhaps you sensed there were problems, but avoided facing them out of fear they’d hurt your comfortable notion of reality (such as inconsistencies in the Bible, instances of churches hurting people, pastors behaving badly, or how mission trips don’t actually work).
What is this process of deconstruction really? It’s the search for Truth. When you finally feel ready to deconstruct your faith that means you’re ready to acknowledge that perhaps the entire paradigm of your life is possibly built on faulty ground, or is downright wrong. At this point, the Truth becomes much more important to you rather than living within a comfortable church bubble made up of falsehoods and dishonesty. And you’re ready and willing to discover the Truth even if it hurts. Some might say this point is inevitable. It’s the classic red pill/blue pill dilemma as presented in the film The Matrix.
So after a few years (or however long it takes you to deconstruct your faith), you come out on the other side and you’re ready to move on from both religion and deconstruction. You may feel light and free because you’re finally “living with the Truth.” You aren’t wrong—you’re definitely living more in alignment with Truth than you were when you were wrapped up in fundamentalist Christianity. But does leaving religion mean you are now living 100% in the Truth? No, unfortunately not.
One of the biggest themes of my work here on this website and in my book is that deconstruction is a life skill that need not (and should not) only apply to religion. Read this article for a more in-depth exploration of that idea. As I said above, deconstruction is really just a process of closely analyzing a belief system you hold and seeking the Truth within in it, or perhaps investigating it to see if there is no Truth to be found in it at all.
You should be seeking Truth (deconstructing) in every single aspect of your life, not just religion. That means that even though you’ve done the hard work of leaving religion (if this describes you, good job!) that means you still have more work to do.
Think back to your time in religion. With some hindsight, you can probably pinpoint some times (probably right when you started questioning your faith) where you intentionally didn’t allow yourself to “go down the rabbit hole” of looking into the claims of Christianity to see if they actually held up to scrutiny. Why? Because it’s a defense mechanism that we humans have developed over the millennia. It isn’t fun to be confronted with the idea that our comfortable belief sets are wrong and totally out of touch with reality.
With that in mind, it actually makes perfect sense that we would’ve developed the capacity to do this with everything in our lives, not just religion.
Here are some ways in which you are probably avoiding Truth that have nothing to do with religion. I’ll start out simple to illustrate the idea, and then progress up to bigger things that are bit more scary to deconstruct:
Not Checking Your Email at Work
Many people will relate to this one.
Do you avoid checking your email at work? Probably. You do this because your inbox is likely full of “action items” meaning that as soon as you see them, you now have some sort of responsibility to address it. And the longer you put off looking at the email, the longer you get away with not being responsible.
But that dreading feeling of “what might be in the inbox” is as bad, or possibly worse than knowing for sure what’s in the inbox, isn’t it?
This is small way of avoiding the Truth that many people do every day in their jobs. At some point, you finally muster the courage to check your email and dive into the list of “action items” you now have to handle. You fought through the fear and discomfort, learned the Truth, and then made a plan for how to proceed.
Not Checking Your Bank Account
Have you ever done this? I sure have.
This is where you avoid checking the balance in your bank account because once you know how little money is in there, then you have to deal with that reality.
This is a situation that demonstrates how avoiding the Truth actually harms you if you do it for long enough. If you avoid the Truth of your bank account balance, and then continue on without learning the Truth of the actual balance, then you risk overdrawing the account and getting hit with fines and fees.
Much better to do the uncomfortable action of checking the balance and accepting it so you can make a plan in order to not overdraw the account until more funds can be deposited.
Your Politics
This is a big one.
Do you believe that your political party or preferred politician(s) are 100% correct, accurate, moral, and honest? If you do, then you’re avoiding the Truth somewhere in this area.
Do you avoid checking other news sources besides the single one that you prefer? Do you avoid looking at the stories and perspectives that your preferred source of news declines to cover? Do you think that your single preferred source of news is 100% unbiased and honest all the time? Do you refuse to acknowledge, consider, or educate yourself on the missteps that your preferred politician(s) have made in their career(s)?
If any of these describe you (and honestly, it’ll probably be very difficult to even admit that to yourself) then you have some deconstructing to do when it comes to politics. You’re very likely not operating with the entire Truth in this area. Because if you get to the point where you think your political party or preferred politician is somehow infallible, then think back to the time where you once thought the same thing about the Christian god. It’s entirely possible to make politics your new religion.
Avoiding Your Health
This is a big one, especially for men.
Are you experiencing some symptoms that have been going on for a while, but you’ve avoided going to the doctor to check them out?
Similar to checking your email, once you go to the doctor and get a diagnosis, the health problem now becomes a real and ever-present thing in your life that you now have to deal with. Maybe it necessitates an extreme lifestyle change that you don’t want to do. No wonder many people prefer to continue on in blissful ignorance, pretending as if they’re perfectly fine.
But is that the best thing to do? Wouldn’t it be better to face the Truth now and put in the hard work to get your health back on track? If not for you, then maybe for your family?
Your Relationship or Marriage
Are you avoiding deconstructing your own long-term relationship or marriage?
After leaving religion, it gets easier to let go of notions like “the one” and the single way that the Church says relationships and marriages should be.
But what implications does that have on your own relationship or marriage? Did you get married simply because you felt like you “had to” because the Church put pressure on you? Did you get married simply because you were “tired of being single”? Are there some aspects of your sexuality that you’ve repressed but now can’t explore because your partner wouldn’t like that?
These are aspects of your authentic self, which is part of the Truth. As with the other things on this list, it pays very much to dive in deep and determine what kinds of relationships you actually want in your life (if any) rather than just accepting what the Church told you that you should want (or even what society told you that you should want, for that matter).
Conclusion
These are just a few examples off the top of my head, but you get the picture.
Stepping outside the narrow box of religion sharply improved my happiness (after some time healing, of course). Deconstructing other areas of my life was just as uncomfortable as deconstructing religion (sometimes more so) but the result was the same—increased happiness. Therefore, bringing your life into alignment with the Truth—even when it’s uncomfortable, unpleasant, or inconvenient—is one of the best ways to increase your happiness in life.
Where are you avoiding the Truth? Do some contemplation and start unpacking some of these other aspects of your life with the same fervor and enthusiasm in which you did your religion.