Seeking Truth
While seeking answers to my questions, I spent every moment interrogating my thoughts and feelings. I threw myself wholly into deconstructing every part of my faith. It was exhausting emotional labour. Just as deconstructing every part of my own identity before this was.
The more I looked the more I realised it wasn’t about God or even beliefs anymore, but rather finding the whole TRUTH. Reasons and justifications included.
“I wanted actual answers”.
Having ‘Truth’ was something I vehemently felt I had growing up. I was groomed to believe that my specific, minor branch of Christianity held the purest form of truth, better than anyone else’s. It was the entire basis of my reality. I had been so sure, so firm in my idea of “The Truth” that anything to the contrary could be dismissed out of hand, ignored. As a young adult I learned this was called “cognitive dissonance”, and even noticed a section on my denomination in a psychology textbook. Of course, at the time that was dismissed too, but I never forgot that it was there. It gnawed at me.
I started to go through everything I felt, believed and accepted as real with a fine-tooth comb.
The more I assessed the church’s truths, the more the edges started to fray. I was desperate to find something, anything, that wasn’t nebulous, that had a solid foundation.
But the more I looked for answers, the more I was told to just have faith:
I was told to believe in the plan of salvation.
That faith was needed because without it, what would be the point of salvation.
That I can’t be saved unless I believed in things I can’t see, understand, or test.
That the point is not being able to know, to not have the actual facts— because that’s the measure of your love for God.
That God works in mysterious ways, and we shouldn’t question the plan, or we would be lost. “Lost” being a nicer way of saying “people who deconstruct will burn in hell.”
Just read the Bible and trust in God.
Read the Bible and obey God, or you will go to Hell (more forcefully).
Besides, you wouldn’t want to go to Hell for rejecting the “Biblical Truth”, because that’s the worst sin and there is no forgiveness for that.
But I was already going to Hell? And I was faithful to begin with? I was ostracised, made homeless, and disinherited. The least they could do was tell me why? Most gave up at that point.
None of the answers made sense to me anymore.
The cyclical nature of the arguments really upset me. I spent most of my life making the same arguments myself. I already knew all the things they were going to say. I knew the ways they wanted to dismiss my questions. Saw the confusion and frustration as I preempted their rehearsed answers over and over again. Phrasing my questions specifically so that they have to think and respond to them instead. I was passed on to the elders, then the clergy.
The pastors, priests, and even a rabbi in my city weren’t able to answer my questions satisfactorily. In the end I had to go looking for answers myself, again.
Having some Biblical Hebrew and Greek knowledge from my time at Christian college was quite handy, as were the links I had from going there. I contacted some of the secular lecturers, who still worked there and it turned out they were happy to give me access to library resources. I went back and asked my questions there instead. Some of the Biblical researchers who remembered me fondly from their language classes helped me answer my more academic questions about the historicity of the Bible itself.
And as time went on, I did learn the truth about the Bible.
A work put together by thousands of people, over thousands of years.
Stealing from countless religions and places.
That the books of the Bible were actually written in genres. Like “creation myth”, “historical record”, and “apocalyptic fiction”. That they were written to be consumed by audiences, a bit like Shakespeare plays, as allegories, not fact.
That the books that made it into the New Testament were chosen by a council of men, and that they weren’t even written by the apostles they were named for. That in some cases they couldn’t even pick a version so just jumbled it all in together.
That Hell and eternal damnation weren’t even there to begin with but added later.
I remember sitting there, as all this newfound knowledge, tested, verified by external sources, repeated, and widely published, chilled me to my core. Information that was there, all along, in the college library. The realisation that “Biblical Truth” never existed to begin with. The fact that I could verify for myself, with satisfaction, that what I learned there was actually true.
That the silence, the nothing I felt, was The Truth, all along.
There had never been anything to feel.
I realised there were never going to be any answers.
There was no sin or deity that made me the person I am.
No god listening to my desperate childhood prayers for relief.
That there was no force of justice in the world. It just was.
The horrible, isolating reality of an empty universe loomed over me, and I wept at the loss of everything. EVERYTHING I ever believed to be true, right, real. My whole world ended.
I tried to take my own life that night.
That is where my story could have ended. Where some people’s stories have.
I’m profoundly lucky to be here today; it isn’t because I’m special, better, or stronger than anyone else. I was just found in time. I give no thanks to any deity for my continued existence either.
I, instead, praise the diligent work of the people who actually took care of and cared about me.
The medical staff who worked tirelessly to keep me alive and helped me recover.
The therapists who helped me reconstruct my life and sense of reality.
The friends who are now my found family.
Myself, for putting the work in to find so many reasons to carry on.
Today I’m alive because I want to be. I work to help others because I want to. And, while knowing that “the truth” I was looking for never existed will always weigh heavily on my heart, I’m happy with the life I have now.
The truth is, I never needed a god’s permission or answers to be happy at all.
