God

Note: I am not using pronouns to refer to God which can make it a little annoying to read but I don't feel it's right to gender God.

I deconstructed my Christianity in 2024, but It has been a really gradual process that has continued to solidify over time into the framework of a belief system, so I figured I may as well write about it.

For context, I was raised in a Christian household and want to Presbyterian Church when I was very young, and then a Methodist Church with my Father or a non-denominational Evangelical Church with my mother, depending on the weekend, from ages 13-17. Throughout that time I always had a sense that God was not real, or at least, the God that my parents told me about, wasn't real. Despite the wonderful stories and ideas that the Church introduced me to, I couldn't shake the feeling that they were just that; stories. 

I also want to highlight that I still follow the teachings of Jesus, I think he was a very inspirational figure and I believe in a lot of what he taught. My deconstruction was not because I disagreed with those teachings, but a more nuanced result of the state of Christianity as a whole and the Organized religion of Christianity which Jesus didn't even believe in himself.

Why I don't believe the God of the Bible exists:

The Bible tells us that we were put on this earth by God to love, praise, and worship God. However, if that was the reason we are here, why is it that humans seem most gifted at having sex with and killing each other? If God's true intention was for us to love and praise him, you would think God would give us some incentive. There is no incentive, there is no motivator. We are designed to have sex, and wired to fight. 

Christianity encourages us to pray, promising that God is listening and that our prayers will be answered, but when I pray, I whisper hopeless cries for help into a void that never responds. My pastor once said that making the choice to give your life to Jesus is a hard one, and that once you do, your life will become so much harder. He said that the devil would start fighting to make you turn your back on God. I made the choice to be saved in 2017. I got water baptized at 12 years old, and chose to live my life for Jesus. In that moment I felt a huge weight lifted from my body and that nothing could possibly go wrong. That feeling passed in about 45 seconds. Despite all the emotional buildup, nothing really changed. I must have just been excited about making a decision that my peers seemed to think was significant. I found out very soon that it was all just a ritual. Nothing changed in my life. 

I was already suffering from depression, and despite the claims by some christian folks that I just needed to fill the emptiness inside with Jesus and everything would be ok, there was no change after that. I still felt like the same person and there was no benefit at all to my newfound "salvation". Even my pastor was wrong, I didn't suddenly feel like life was harder, or that there were demons trying to dissuade me from my faith. 

What was really concerning for me was the entire lack of change in my life. I had heard testimonies from so many Christians about the miracles they experienced in their lives and the encounters/conversations with God himself, only to not experience any of it myself. I was forced to face one of two realities: I either hadn't been genuine enough when I gave my life to Christ, or these "testimonies" were made up.

I started paying attention to the testimonies of miracles and experiences with God and I found that every time someone made a claim that God spoke to them, or they experienced a miracle, it was something that was completely un-provable, or was attributed to God because that's what the person wanted to attribute it to, not because there was evidence for it.

One example is a recurring testimony I have heard from countless Christians that goes like this: Someone I am close to, or a relative of someone I know was in the hospital with a terminal illness or has had a deadly accident. The Doctors are completely unable to explain why they are no longer sick/have survived the incident. It's a miracle from God.

Another common one is this: I was going through a tough time in my life and when I was at my lowest point I turned to God and started praying about my problems. Soon after, I inexplicably found peace, and my problems were solved. God must have given me peace and provided for my needs.

In both of these examples I find that there is never any proof of these things happening. I realized how these ideas can spread when I was 16 and I almost passed out at track practice. The doctors found an abnormality in my heart rate, potentially Arrhythmia. Later they determined that their initial EKG was flawed and there was no issues. However inconsequential this event was in my life, I can see how any Christian may have heard the story and concluded that I was diagnosed with Arrhythmia only to later be miraculously cured by God. In fact, this exact scenario happened with a peer of mine who was on my basketball team in 7th grade. He passed out for a few seconds during a game. I have no idea what the doctors actually said, but his parent's claimed he was suffering from arrhythmia which caused his loss of consciousness. A week later, they said the doctors found no abnormality and they started claiming it was a miracle and praised God. I didn't realize in the 7th grade, but once I had my own experience with false EKG readings, I realized that sometimes a miracle is only as miraculous as the person describing it wants it to be. With the right wording, I experienced my own miracle. I was also touched by God.

This discovery led me to feel disdain for the church, I felt lied to. When claims of miracles were made I would often ask, "How is this possible", "Couldn't they just lie?", or "Wouldn't lying about this benefit them and give them credibility?". I was disappointed to realize that the answer to my questions was often, "Sure, but that's why we have faith." 

The moment I realized Faith was not based in Truth, but in the blind trust in whatever you are told, was the moment the walls of my Faith started crumbling. I was angry with Christians who looked down at me for asking questions yet would engage in "sinful" behavior such as premarital sex, cursing, heavy drinking or smoking of marijuana, violence, and a general inability to decry the "evil" that could be seen in movies and video games. 

To be clear I never had a problem with any of these "sinful" behaviors, aside from outright violence, which I am against, I think they are all acceptable to some degrees though perhaps not appropriate for all ages or situations. I just couldn't stand to see people who engaged in more of these behaviors than I did get praised for how "Godly" they were because they hid it better than I did. I realized that it was never about following the way of Jesus Christ, it was always just about pretending to do so enough to be accepted by a Christianity-centeric society.

At this point I began doing research on how the bible confronts controversial topics such as homosexuality, sexual desire, and others. I was unsure about Christianity as a whole at this point and I wanted to see if it was just the Christian people that I disagreed with or if it was the word of God himself. 

This search led me to realize that a lot of common christian beliefs and tenets are not even biblical. I found that many verses are taken out of context in order to serve a particular purpose; To push an agenda. I found that homosexuality is never even mentioned in the bible in the most widely accepted Greek and Hebrew translations the Textus Receptus and the Masoretic Text. I found that any reference to homosexuality at all was added in later by modern translations such as the ESV and NIV translations. 

This sent me down a deep rabbit hole uncovering the intricacies of how Bible translations are created and how the different translations serve completely different purposes. How can you trust a translation of a text that is not designed to directly translate the words that were originally written In the Greek and Hebrew Texts? With such a wide variety of translations with many deriving significantly different meanings from the texts, how can you possibly claim to know the true word of God? Even the Textus Receptus and the Masoretic Text are translations of even older texts in Ancient Aramaic and Sanskrit that have been lost to time. So the true words of God? We don't know what they were. We just trust that the translations in Hebrew and Greek that were preserved stayed true to the originals. 

It's easy to see how an ancient translator may have had just as much reason to slightly alter the original words to fit their own narrative. Perhaps it served the men in power in ancient Jerusalem to tell the illiterate women that it was God's command that they do everything and anything for their husbands? 

These questions and more began boiling away at my faith until there was almost nothing left. Why does God let crimes against humanity happen every single day? Why do God's most faithful followers get killed every single day in the most horrific ways? Torn apart by bullets, bombs, and shrapnel; Covered by debris? Why does God allow the most faithful Christians to be raped and murdered by those that do not follow or believe in God? 

The answer I was given: "We don't know all the answers, but we have to trust that God has a plan."

Considering God is the ruler of the Universe, all-powerful and all-knowing according to the Bible, God seems to be quite powerless against the people oppressing God's followers.

Christians quote the stories of Moses being directly led by God to take God's people out of slavery and into the "promised land" to show God's power and protection of those people, yet in that very land today the people there are both being murdered and committing horrific atrocities that are painful to even fathom.

If this is all part of God's plan. If this immense suffering is predetermined and considered necessary by God, I want no part in it. If God's idea of fairness is complete and utter chaos that allows for the vitriol that has lived in our world since homo sapiens first walked the earth, I'd rather burn in hell than to follow that God. 

After processing all of these thoughts and doing enough Biblical research to understand what I believed and what I did not believe I came the following conclusion:

The God of the Bible does not exist. God is real. God is not a man, nor a representation of man. God does not seek praise or worship. God is indifferent to the world, to mankind, to the universe, to everything. God does not need anything from humans, nor will God do anything for us. God is all powerful in the sense that God us unknowable and uncontrollable, like the constant forward crawl of time or the unavoidable truth of the demise of every human that ever was and ever will be. God is powerless in the sense that God doesn't communicate with humans, nor does God do anything for them. God is not understandable in the way that humans understand each other's behavior and thought. In fact, God may not think at all. If God represents anything to humanity it is the hair's raising on the back of our necks when we feel unease, the moments of pure joy when new life is brought into the world, the butterflies in our stomachs when we like a person, the wonder in the vastness of the universe around us, our ability to love, and so much more.

My God is meaningless in the face of life because God has proven to be powerless and, by Christian standards, entirely non-existent, and I'm okay with that. My God has only the meaning which I give to God because otherwise God is entirely invisible.

I find God in the light touches in moments of intimacy, in resurfacing memories of childhood, in my passions, in the love I receive and in the love I give. This is what I believe and I think it's beautiful. It doesn't try to explain the inexplicable nor control the weak of mind or weak of body like Christianity has shown me it has a tendency to do.

If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading!