The Talks
One of the most uncomfortable and moments of great fear when you think about leaving your faith behind, undoubtedly, is having face to face interactions with the people you love and respect whom you have lived your life of faith alongside of. All the fears that kept you in the mindset of staying put and simply putting on a good face despite your doubts, now rear their heads. All the people you feel like you will disappointing and ultimately, in most cases, grow distant with are now reaching out to you and just wanna talk.
The problem with losing my religion was not losing God. I always felt that if God was real and especially if God knows me intimately as many say, He will know exactly what’s up with me. He will know that this is not what I wanted. This wasn’t in my plan. I had given up my whole life for God, for revival, for Heaven. This was the last thing I wanted to do. The real problem is that most of the people who are very religious, spiritual and who I know are good, loving people. They’re not all manipulators or leaders who are power and money hungry. The problem then becomes how to maintain the relationships you had with said people and what to do when you realize that some of them weren’t genuine or real.
People ghost other people who they have too many differences with. This is a reality. Many times its not evil or spiteful. It’s simply a matter of no longer bonding over the most common shared beliefs. Also, so many times, people in religious communities are silently pressured to create space between themselves and other believers when they stop believing. Its a shun, plain and simple. There is nothing more hurtful to someone leaving faith as silence.
As Christians, specifically charismatics, silence is deafening when you leave your old life. You spend so much of your inner life talking, praying, forgiving, correcting and modifying what happens within you that when these things slow down or halt, you’re just left with yourself and the silence. Worse yet, it may even get louder in there. God stops talking. Your prayers of passion grind to a halt as you learn how to solve problems and stop pleading for God to fix things. It can be especially frightening in the beginning.
All of these things build up to create such an awkward moment when the people you love want to chat. What you’re going through is hard to express because you actually are going through a death. There’s mourning and sadness. If you can imagine losing a relative you were very close with and now, as you are learning how to live and cope without their influence in your life, people ask you what happened to them. It’s fairly difficult to express and answer for yourself. About all you can do is talk about what is happening with you and not speak for others. For some this is just an apathetic loss of interest and for others, like myself, it is a death in the family and you’re not quite sure how to pretend everything is ok.
What I’ve learned is to be myself, love myself and others and be honest. You’re not an evangelist in these moments but a lover who has found him or herself in grief.
