Religion Part I: My Personal Religious Journey

Seriously? Who cares? Lol if that's what you're thinking then you're not wrong. The purpose of this post is simply to provide CONTEXT and clarity for the next few posts that I am working on, which are about the history of God and of Christianity. I've had plans to write about Christianity since the start of this blog, and now that I'm finally getting around to it I want to be responsible and thorough about it. Which means giving background information on how I became interested in the history of the Bible in the first place, and what my exact intentions in discussing it are. So here's a quick overview of my ties to religion:

Although a large portion of my childhood was spent in the church, I was not exactly born into Christianity. My parents were open-minded and did not have particularly strong ties to any specific place of worship. I was never baptized. I only ever attended public schools. I have always had at least one foot in the secular world -- both in terms of the ideas that I have absorbed and the company that I have kept. I did, however, put one foot into Christianity and become a member of a Lutheran Brethren church as a young girl. I attended weekly church services, Bible studies, youth group meetings, summer Bible camps, and even took two years worth of confirmation classes. Throughout those years of heavy religious activity, nothing that extreme was instilled in me -- (my church never taught me to hate, discriminate against, or push conversion therapy onto those who identify as gay, for example). But some subtly damaging messages were definitely infused into my worldview and sense-of-self during that time. Harmful messages surrounding sex and purity, for example, were given to me both in formal church settings, as well as less formally through a culture of gossip and morality policing. This is not to say that my church was the only pillar of influence throwing problematic messages at me at that time in my life -- I was bombarded by patriarchal values in the secular world too. Nor is this to say that my church or the people that surrounded me there intended to cause me any harm. I do not believe that my church had any malice toward me or any other young, impressionable members. (Actually, I believe the contrary: my church was for the most part very inviting, and full of many great people wanting to make a positive impact on the world). This is just to say that, regardless of intention, my church upheld some problematic values that became engrained in me without my full awareness. Values that never properly served me, and that I have been actively trying to unlearn for many years now.

This unlearning began after graduating high school and moving away from my hometown for the first time in my life. I somehow ended up at a liberal arts college (go figure), which I largely credit with the changing of my worldviews. The most influential classes that I took were: The History of God, Women in the Bible, and Gender Studies. The latter class was a typical intro to feminism course, which outlined the major problems of our patriarchy and ultimately gave me the language to start describing the accounts of sexism that I had both witnessed and personally experienced throughout my life. Some of these early incidents of sexism included the first time I was made aware of and shamed for the size of my undeveloped chest in middle school, and the summer my mother had to shut down a much older male camp counselor's attempts to stalk me (a young female camper he took an inappropriate amount of interest in at a sleep-away Bible camp). My gender studies class laid the foundation for me to start processing the sexism I encountered in my own world and that of other women's worlds, ultimately giving me strong feminist values.

The former two classes that I took were even more fascinating to me though, because they involved deconstructing the harmful status quo of patriarchy in Christianity. Studying the Bible academically by closely examining the historical context in which it was written was life-changing for me. I quickly came to realize that the Bible was not at all what I had been taught it was for most of my life. Growing up, I was made to believe that the Bible was the word of God. That it contained specific blueprints to live a wholesome and moral life. That it had all of the answers to our questions in it if studied and interpreted correctly. But after just a few short months at a liberal arts college, I came to realize that that is all crap.

Just hear me out though! I promise I am not here to personally attack anyone else's beliefs. I just want to explain my own. The Bible is a book of chaos. No one who has truly studied its contents can deny that. It is jam-packed with contradictions, murder, rape, betrayal, and way more questions than clear and straight-forward answers. This always bothered me growing up. If the Bible is the word of God, the one answer to everything, the blueprint to life... then why is it so contradicting and messy and hard to understand? Why do we gather weekly under the leadership of a priest or pastor to carefully dissect Scripture in an effort to make sense of it? Why isn't it easier, why don't all believers agree on every single issue, and why don't we have world peace?! The answer to these questions is not just that humans are imperfect. The answer is also that the Bible is imperfect. We are asking too much of it. We are not taking it for what it actually is. The Bible is not the one word of God. The Bible is the word of MAN. The Bible is a combination of the words of many humans who lived over many hundreds of years. It is a hodgepodge of many different ideas about God written down by many different imperfect human authors (humans just like you and me!) from many different places and times throughout history. The Bible was not given to us directly by God. It is not a "how-to" book straight from the big man upstairs himself. Rather, it is a combination of many different philosophical ideas about God all squished into one. It lacks consistency because those who wrote it lacked consistency -- in their ancient languages, cultures, beliefs, etc. The Bible cannot possibly lead us to one perfect religion and one perfect world because it is itself a combination of drastically different religions and different worlds. And that is what I intend to write about in greater detail in my following posts.

For those who have only ever studied the religious content within the Bible, but have never questioned the making of it or examined its full historical context, this idea of all of a sudden challenging its meaning and purpose may be uncomfortable. Or maybe it's more than uncomfortable. Maybe it's appalling. Or outright terrifying. Perhaps admitting that you may not have been completely right about the Bible all this time is too much to swallow. If you are still reading this and starting to feel upset, offended, or just plain uninterested in a new perspective on the Bible, then I'd actually encourage you to stop here and not move forward with reading my next few posts. If you are not willing to put your religion under a microscope and ask big and difficult questions of it, or if you only want to hear my perspective in order to fight me on it, then these posts are not for you. And I say that with nothing but love and respect. I want these posts to be read with an open and curious mind. I want to encourage acceptance and understanding of alternative views. I do not want these posts read with your guard up and eyes squinted at me in suspicion. I know that religion is deeply personal and often the very basis of people's identities, and I want to be sensitive to that. I am not here to cause friction or division. So if you have long-held and very rigid religious beliefs that you do not feel ready to question at this time, then do not read on.

But if you are interested in pushing your faith, if you are open to thinking about the Bible more critically, if you want to question some of the rules of your religion instead of continuing to accept them at face value, then by all means read on! If you want a safe place to try to deconstruct the Bible and find new meaning in it, then I welcome you excitedly! Accepting the Bible for what it is (and what it is not) has changed me for the better. Breaking free from the restraints of organized religion has served me greatly, and has brought me a lot of peace.

Did I lose my religion when I started asking difficult questions of it? Yup.

But did I lose my faith? No, I did not.

I found a spirituality that better suits me. A spirituality that allows for more love, compassion, understanding, and grace -- not only for myself and my neighbors, but even for my enemies. I have started to open my heart toward those I deeply disagree with. I have gained patience. A stronger sense of self and sense of purpose. I have met a higher power cooler than I ever imagined it to be. A creator that does not just intersect with the science I have spent so much of my life studying, but who designed such extraordinary science. I have found a spirituality that still poses so many more questions than it does answers, but I have become okay (and even comfortable) with this. I have found peace in not having all of the answers. And joy in seeking them out through the eyes of others. By letting go of the religion that was instilled in me as a child, I have made room for a stronger faith that is all my own - one that allows me to hold on to the things that I find beautiful in this world, and let go of the things that do not serve me. In deconstructing my religion, I have gained complete autonomy over my faith and life. And although it has been a long process, I'm so grateful for it!