Born a Baptist, baptized a Methodist, and confirmed a Presbyterian, I’ve flittered through Christian denominations from the time I was born.  I grew up solidly in the church, brought by my grandparents every Sunday for Sunday school then church then lunch at church. Church was a place I felt loved and connected through community and song. I spent every Wednesday and Sunday night in the church with choir practice, hand bell practice, and then youth group. When I became old enough to attend summers at church camp, I felt like part of a family that accepted me throughout my life. My major life milestones as a child occurred when I was in church: first crush, getting my first period at a church lock-in, and even my non-religious affiliation singing group practiced on weeknights in my same church, under the giant organ that showcased the pulpit. I know many versions of the Lord’s Prayer, was asked to be a youth elder in my church, tithed, confirmed….so why am I a failed Christian as an adult?

It has never sat well with me that people who proclaim to be Christian and “good people” were so hypocritical in their daily actions. My grandfather was a pastor who ruled the house with an iron fist which somehow translated to a fierce devotion to raising the American flag every day at sunrise as well as a staunch belief that black people were inferior. My parents would go to church when my dad decided he was done with alcohol for a bit. His letters to me were full of guilt laced with God. 

I know I lack faith. That has probably been the most consistent ideology in my life: non-belief in a Christian god. My youth minister would stay up with me all night during church camp weeks and discuss belief in the Lord. And while I came out of those conversations with more frustration in myself for a lack of blind faith, I think he came out with more questions of his own. And when he would eventually leave the church a part of me wondered if my questions and clear fear that I was failing as a 15 year old influenced him. I distinctly remember this patient and kind man sighing in exasperation at hour four of our conversation and saying “faith just is, Savannah, you can’t prove it; all you can do is believe.”

Believe in what, exactly? How does the Christian phrase that God sees every sparrow fall translate to a child who was hit repeatedly in an abusive household that claimed their reason was “spare the rod and spoil the child?” It never made sense to me that there was a Christian god that didn’t seem to care that my father would die from drugs and my step father would hit me “because I love you.” And as I grew up and traveled the world and saw that poverty and war and famine and genocide was prevalent in every culture, my disgust with God increased. Of course, people might say that I’m speaking on the evils of humans and blaming them on God but these are the humans who used God/Allah to commit atrocities, some to my very face. Even on a smaller scale, I was asked to step aside as church elder when I tried to kill myself at 16. It turns out that a child in desperate need for support couldn’t be an usher or a voice for others in the church. 

The resurgence of religion in today’s society has me feeling conflicted in many ways. On one hand, I’m concerned about the women who will find themselves trapped in abusive marriages because the church doesn’t believe in divorce. The number of “believers” who actively harm others and think confession absolves them doesn’t sit right in my soul. And on the other hand, I’m extremely lonely in my lack of Abrahamic faith. I’ve watched acquaintances, friends, famous figures all start to flock to religion over the last few years. Whenever I find out that someone else I know has “discovered Jesus,” a part of me wonders what about me is so “broken” that I can’t believe in an Abrahamic religion like over half of the globe’s population. And trust me, I’ve tried to go back to the church. I’ve tried different churches with different pastors, I’ve tried different versions of Bibles, I’ve tried Easter sermons and Christmas mass and baptisms and christenings and you name it. There was the Left Behind series, all C.S. Lewis books, vacation bible school, religious studies in college…One time I even attended a church’s apologetics course as an adult (I was invited by a friend when I kept asking her questions) and was asked not to come back by the instructor because I kept derailing the class. I wasn’t trying to break up his arguments for Christianity but if he was incapable of defending what he called “basic principles of faith” to a single woman’s questions in an apologetics class, perhaps he should apologize for being a bad teacher. 

I feel like an outsider of society in this manner too. It feels lonely on the earthly plane. The three most important relationships of my life were with men who were never religious, who never understood the act of deconstruction and what that does to a person’s psyche. Furthermore, can I even consider myself to be deconstructing? Doesn’t that insinuate a time when I actually believed? I was five years old begging God to let me die before I was touched again. Then off to church we would go. And I would look around at the people swaying and raising their hands to the Lord and think “are these people dumb? There is no God.” 

I wish I could believe, even if it meant that I would be accepted into a community. Because I believe people flock to a church scene as one of the last remaining third spaces of community. It is nice to be accepted! But not at the sacrificing of my core belief that Abrahamic gods are just people’s manifestations of how they interpreted the world before science could explain “miracles.” And it’s okay for people to believe in their god. I do not fault them for that. I just don’t understand it after decades of trying. We can have community without needing to be believers. But somehow me not being a believer makes me a worse mother or partner or community member in the eyes of true believers. 

I do believe that there is something bigger than the stories written by men. And I don’t believe in needing a God to be a good person. What I have met and believe in is bigger than anything that a single Abrahamic follower has been able to compare to in their books and stories of self. The idea of a Christian, Muslim, or Jewish god is so small that I want to laugh at the vastness of the universe and energy and the exchange of the two. 

That sounds pompous. I don’t mean it to be. I am simply stating that I have tried to be the good Christian for 36 years and I think I’m ready to give in that I’ll never be successful. And I’m okay with that (until society turns on me or continues to try to convert me as they feel like it’s their duty). The conversations I’ve had with members of multiple religions have included condescending comments that I’m on a journey in which I’ll one day find and accept Jesus/God/Holy Spirit into my heart. I have sat in pews wondering if “today is the day” in which it all clicks for me. Not only does it not click further, I get a visceral reaction from people who speak serenely about the peace they have found in God and the pity in which they think I don’t have peace because I don’t believe. I have found that peace elsewhere. I just don’t have the community that supports it. I don’t think Christians understand how excluding they are to non-believers. There’s no hate quite like Christian love.  

I am always nervous to discuss religion with people I’m getting close to because I worry they will become excluding or condescending. Luckily I have people I love close to me who believe and who love me regardless of my damned soul. But there’s still a slight separation of acceptance that is barely perceptible. Do I want to be accepted in a community in which I don’t believe in the same faith? No, that’s disingenuous.

So I’ll make my own community. And I don’t need you to believe in anything. Just be kind and good. And bring snacks.