Tag: deconstruction

Cat Links deconstruction

Finding God in the Waves

Posted on gord

I’ve been deconstructing my Christian faith for the best part of two years. The process has been, at times, lonely, isolating and painful. My once sure and certain faith has slowly chipped away as I’ve walked down the road of doubt and deconstruction. It started as I began questioning little things, such as the teaching I’d been handed about LGBTQ relationships and sex. As I pulled at those threads, I suddenly found more were coming loose, and soon I was spiralling down the path of deconstruction as the answers that once made sense suddenly weren’t cutting it anymore. For a long time, I kept this to myself, feeling as if I was on my own, the only one in the church who was struggling with doubt and unbelief. I thought that if I tried harder, prayed more and kept reading my Bible, things would get better. But they didn’t.

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Cat Links deconstruction

Believing Again – A Testimony of Unbelief

Posted on gord

When I was eighteen, I was preparing to get baptised, and part of the service included me sharing my testimony. The testimony of how I became a Christian, how God had changed my life, and why I was choosing to get baptised. The purpose of this was partly evangelistic, to share what had transformed my life in the hope it might lead to a similar transformation in somebody else. It was also really helpful for me as a self-reflection, to enable me to work out for myself exactly why I was making this decision, and to give me a written record to look back at in the future. I’ve blogged a lot recently about the ways my faith has changed and deconstructed. But I still get a lot of people asking me what happened. What caused my deconstruction, and the changes in my faith and beliefs? This post is an attempt to answer that question, a ‘Testimony of Unbelief’ if you like.

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Cat Links deconstruction

Exceeding Expectations

Posted on gord

I’ve always been impulsive. I’m the kind of person who lives in the moment and follows my gut. That’s just the way I’m wired. I hate the idea of making plans in advance because, inevitably, plans fall through, and after getting myself really excited I will be left feeling disappointed and let down. Lately, I’ve started to find myself planning into my future more and more. When I look on Facebook and see SO MANY of my friends getting engaged, their dream job, or jetting off halfway around the world, part of me feels like I’m missing out. I feel I need to be working towards something more, that by now I should have more to show for my life. So I start making checklists in my head of things that I need in order to be content with life. An ever growing list of expectations; a solid relationship, a house, a stable job, a car, a driver’s license, the list goes on and on. My eyes are set on the perfect life, and in my head this is only possible once my expectations are met, once I’ve got through the endless list of things I need to do.

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Cat Links atheism for lent, deconstruction

Standing in the Ruins

Posted on gord

I’ve never really felt like I fit into a box. Ever since I can remember, I’ve always been different. The odd one out. The person that didn’t quite fit in. This has been a huge insecurity of mine for years, as a coping mechanism I often purposely push myself out of the box in one aspect of my life. Something that I can control, in order to feel like it’s my choice rather than just who I am. In school I was really involved in music, and was quite outspoken about my Christian Faith, in college I had a multicoloured mohawk, and more recently I’ve grown an outrageous beard. The theory is that if I define myself by these external things, it distracts from the interior insecurity that I don’t fit in.

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Cat Links atheism for lent

Feeling Empty

Posted on gord

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post. I’d meant to blog regularly about my journey doing atheism for lent, but I’ve found it extremely difficult to put into words what’s been going on. The readings have been extremely interesting. Honestly I’ve found a lot of them to be extremely difficult to read and get my head around, but perhaps that’s just because I’m not used to reading philosophy. I’m really looking forward to having some more time to read them again once the course is finished and understand them even more.

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Giving Up God For Lent

Posted on gord

Over the years I’ve given up lots of different things during Lent. Whether it be chocolate, Facebook or cake, I’ve had varying degrees of success. I’ve also tried to use lent as an opportunity to take something up, from reading my Bible daily, to doing a random act of kindness every day. This year, however, I’m trying something different. I’m giving up God.

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Cat Links deconstruction

Picking Up The Pieces

Posted on gord

I walked out of church on Sunday. After the talk, the leader of the service got up and asked if anybody who wanted to have a fresh experience of God wanted to come forwards for prayer. I went forward, desperate for something. Desperate to feel the love that I had felt so many times before, the closeness and presence of God that had once been so familiar. But I felt nothing. I tried not to hype anything up, I tried to make myself as open as possible, but as my friend prayed that I would experience the joy of God I just felt empty. I got back to my seat, the worship team kicked in with a song, and I felt a sudden urge to run. I grabbed my jacket and scarf and ran for the door, past my friends and out onto the street. I headed down the road and found myself sitting against a wall in floods of tears. I was a mess.

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Cat Links deconstruction

Ends and Beginnings

Posted on gord

As I mentioned in my previous post, in the last couple of years I’ve been on a journey of deconstructing my faith. The ways I looked at the world, the ways I understood my faith, God, religion and what that meant for me have been totally ripped apart. Safe to say it has been, and still is, extremely painful. The glass box shattered, my foundations were gone, in many ways the faith I had grown up with was dead.

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Cat Links deconstruction

Losing Faith

Posted on gord

Through my youth I was what I call a super Christian. I went to every Christian event I could, from festivals to prayer nights to worship conferences. All the music I listened to was Christian, I was involved in as many church activities as I could fit in my calendar, played in the church band, sang in the choir, lead in the youth group, the list goes on. I was so passionate about Jesus, so on fire for my faith and so excited to tell everyone I could about the ‘good news’.

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Cat Links deconstruction

Mysterious God

Posted on gord

So often we look for certainty in this world, we want facts and answers and black and white. But in reality the world is full of colour. We look to science for understanding of the world around us, but any physicist will tell you that our understanding of the universe is extremely limited. There are so many things we don’t understand, so much that we still have left to learn. The world is full of mystery…

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