Whenever I had struggles in life, my faith was something I could cling to. When things got tough, praying about them made it easier. If I needed guidance, I could look to the Bible. When I asked God to help me make an important decision, I’d feel like I was being told what I needed to do. My faith was a comfort in times of need, a hope amongst the hopelessness, a light at the end of a very dark tunnel. No matter how shit life got, God was with me.
Growing up, I slept with a teddy. His name was Stripey; he was a little teddy who wore a stripey t-shirt and I’d had him since I was a baby. Every night I would hold Stripey as I fell asleep. Some nights I would hold him to my chest, others he would be on the pillow next to my face. There’d be times I’d wake up in the middle of the night and he’d not be there, I’d rummage around under the covers to find him or find him hiding under the bed. If I ever had to spend a night without Stripey, like the time when I ripped his t-shirt and my mum had to sew a patch on his chest, I would feel lost, alone or scared. Stripey was my security blanket, protecting me from whatever evils may come in the night. As I grew up, although much later than I’d ever care to admit, I stopped needing Stripey there in order to sleep. I realised that he was just a toy, there were no magical powers attached to him. My fears were mostly irrational, and if they weren’t, it was my responsibility to protect myself from them.
In many ways, I think my faith had become much like a security blanket. If there was a situation outside of my control, then praying made me feel better about it. When I had a difficult decision to make, asking God for guidance meant that I didn’t have to take full responsibility for my decision myself. God filled a lack that I felt within me, sheltering me from the troubles of the world. I realise now that I had made God an idol. I was a Christian because somehow it made my life better, it gave me a reason to do good things because I had a reward at the end of the tunnel.
As I’ve deconstructed my faith, my beliefs, my understanding of God, I’ve felt more and more disconnected from the faith I was once part of. I can no longer call myself a Christian because that word feels loaded with a set of ideologies and understandings that I just can’t subscribe to anymore. I rarely pray anymore, I feel lost when I open the Bible, I don’t go to church because I just can not connect with what is going on. I’ve seen my security blanket for what it truly was. Just a blanket.
It has been incredibly painful. It’s not easy to walk away from the world that I was once so part of. It would be so much simpler and much less painful to carry on as normal, ignore my doubts and pretend nothing is wrong. But I can’t do that. I don’t want to live a lie; I don’t want to pretend everything is OK when it isn’t, I have to be able to tell myself I am living with integrity. Jesus said in the book of Revelation “‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.'” I guess if Jesus is describing me here, I am cold, and I’m much happier being there than being lukewarm. Pretending everything is OK, but living a lie.
I feel a strange kind of loneliness. I still have the same friends around me and much about both them and myself has not changed. It’s odd how you can go from being the heart and soul of a community to feeling like a total outsider. My entire frame of reference has shifted, I’m looking at the world through an entirely different set of ideologies, I feel like a stranger in the community I once called home.
Last week I was in Belfast at a festival called ‘Wake’. The event, hosted by Peter Rollins, gathered 50 people from around the globe to talk about radical theology. Here I found a community of individuals from different backgrounds and traditions, all going through some form of deconstruction. Amongst us were academics and pastors, atheists and theists. I felt part of a community here for the first time in months. I realised that I wasn’t alone and that there were others who are having similar doubts, frustrations and deconstruction in their faith.
The main thing that I got from Wake, aside from making some amazing friends, was that the death of God is not the end. Deconstruction does not mean demolition. While in many ways my faith has changed radically, I have a hope that something much more beautiful will begin to take its place. The death of God, for me, means the death of an idolatrous faith, and the birth of a faith that doesn’t look for a reward. It means I’m no longer living my life trying to impress a judgemental deity in the hope of a reward in the next life, and I’m choosing to live my life in the hope of making this world a better place for my generation and generations to come. I’m no longer able to see the injustices of the world and feel content that I’ve said a prayer about it, so I have to do something about it myself.
Related Reading
Please feel free to comment or share the post using the links below, and don’t forget to sign up to receive my posts via email here!
