I don’t believe in God because of how I was raised.
If I followed my upbringing without questioning it, I probably wouldn’t have any faith at all.
Ironically, the thought of hellfire sometimes feels more comforting than the idea of a heavenly reunion with some of the people I watched go before me.
I absolutely despise church people.
I grew up in church, yet I’ve had relatively limited interactions with church people in my adult life. These days, I would rather move around the people society calls heathens.
Say whatever you want about them, but at least some of them are honest about what they are.
People seem to think they have more leverage with a snake because they believe they can tame it. I’ve never met a snake I could tame. Outside, the only way to stay alive is to keep your ears to the street while staying out of the way.
And the only time I respond to an invitation to play is when somebody is playing with my life.
The Bible tells us we don’t always know what is in another person’s heart or mind. Yet I find it interesting that some of the people who claim to be closest to God are often the ones who know exactly how to set unstable people off.
Religion is supposed to be a safe place for people deemed “heathens.” It is marketed as the place where, if you accept the doctrine and apply it to your life, you can finally find the cure for whatever has been bleeding inside you.
Instead, people often find a social club that turns their pain into gossip and their vulnerability into somebody else’s ego boost.
They find a place that can make them so angry, so humiliated, and so desperate to prove they are not weak that they become capable of things they never imagined themselves doing.
Religion has become a space that, for some people, seems to offend far more than it heals.
And the mask is so old that when people finally speak about the wounds, their voices are silenced or their experiences are rewritten to protect the image of the institution.
Worst of all is the message that you are not “good” enough to be loved, supported, accepted, or saved.
But salvation never came with a specific image or human-made set of criteria.
Isaiah 1:18 speaks of our sins being washed clean. We come stained by our mistakes, yet there is still an invitation toward restoration.
So who gave us the authority to decide what another person’s relationship with God is supposed to look like?
I often wonder why people with limited knowledge and questionable authority feel so entitled to speak on another person’s journey toward liberation.
How do you judge someone’s direction without knowing where their road began?
How are you so pompous that you can look at someone else’s circumstances, socialization, trauma, resources, and limitations and decide that they are underperforming?
How do you look at somebody’s maximum ceiling when you were born with a roof over your head?
Maybe you were born into privilege. Maybe somebody gave you the helping hand that allowed you to escape the shame you now use to measure everyone else.
So why gatekeep the solution?
Why build your ego by patronizing suffering?
Why profit from somebody else’s trauma?
Instead of helping people out of the hole, you weaponize their lack and become one more institution keeping them stuck.
I’m not confused about why people walk away from religion.
Sometimes the toxicity screams louder and lasts longer than any perceived benefit.
What I witnessed in organized religion was enough for me to put myself into exile.
I needed to search for God without everyone else standing between us.
Matthew 18:20 speaks about Christ being present where believers gather together. I understand the beauty of community.
But sometimes, I want to be like Jesus.
I want to go into the wilderness.
I want to intercede for myself.
When I make decisions that stay between me and Jesus, I rarely find myself in chaos.
When I start listening to everybody else’s voice, somehow chaos always finds me.
I quickly realized that a lot of the “Jesus told me” I heard was really just people wanting to sound more spiritually intelligent than they were.
Some needed to guide other people because it made them feel better about the lack of progress in their own lives.
Some seemed to need their suffering to mean something, so when you questioned their stagnation, they were quick to remind you that they had suffered for your privilege.
Therefore, you were supposed to listen.
You were supposed to respect them.
You were supposed to accept their authority because they had supposedly paid a price you hadn’t.
What shocked them most was discovering that I could simply remove myself.
I could unburden them of my presence.
I could stop giving them access to my life and my struggles.
They could go find someone else to blame for their lack of growth and self-awareness.
Finding my faith has been difficult.
I believe in God, but I would be lying if I said I don’t still have doubts.
That is part of what makes answering any perceived calling so difficult for me.
I have watched spiritual leaders fail me throughout my journey.
I have watched people promise to stand beside me and then walk away because people like me are not easy souls to win.
I am not easily impressed.
I am not easily mentored.
Most of what I know, I learned by walking through the valley myself and figuring out how to put God first while I was there.
I have my own degrees.
At work, I lead my own teams.
I don’t envy your position.
And quite frankly, I don’t want your life.
I have seen too many people who are charismatic in public and dishonest in private.
I am not fooled by image.
When you remove the charisma, the self-righteousness, the entitlement, and the desperate need to be chosen for a mantle you may never have been called to carry, what is actually left?
What is there to follow?
I know there is no perfect church.
But there are still too many institutions that use “imperfection” as an excuse for outright dysfunction.
I never wanted the call of leadership.
I knew my life was messy.
I don’t lie about it.
I am not interested in selling people a polished story and then leading them somewhere I have never been.
I don’t take everything on the chin for the “greater good.”
Maybe that is exactly why I would rather build my faith alone.
I rarely ask another human being what I should believe about God.
I pray.
I read.
I research.
I question.
And then I go back to God.
The beautiful thing about living in this time is that information is everywhere.
So much of it is free.
We have access to history, theology, scholarship, testimony, criticism, translations, and perspectives from people across generations.
We just have to be willing to fact-check.
We have to learn how to separate truth from the trap.
And honestly, this has been a much more beneficial spiritual journey for me.
I am not encouraging anyone to leave their beloved congregation.
But if there is anything I have learned, it is this:
Be rooted in your own experience.
Develop your own understanding of who God is.
Know what you believe before somebody else tells you what you are supposed to believe.
Because if you ever decide to search for a church, a congregation, a spiritual community, or an institution, you will save yourself a lot of pain by choosing one that at least aligns with your core beliefs.
The goal is self-actualization.
And we live in a world overflowing with spiritual methods, practices, teachers, institutions, and philosophies promising to lead us toward alignment.
But those of us who have been hurt do not always have the clearest compass.
Broken nervous systems can make emotional connection feel like spiritual confirmation.
Desperation can make manipulation feel like mentorship.
Familiarity can feel like home even when home was never safe.
That is why it has become too easy to walk away from God because of what people did in His name.
Maybe the answer isn't abandoning faith.
Maybe the answer is learning the difference between God and the people who claim to represent Him.
Maybe we need to find our spiritual roots in solitude first.
Not because community is inherently bad.
Not because every church is corrupt.
Not because we have all the answers by ourselves.
But because when you know what you believe, the world has less power to redefine God for you.
Then, when you eventually step back into community, your faith doesn't have to depend on the behavior of broken people.
Your relationship with God can survive the church.
It can survive the disappointment.
It can survive the hypocrisy.
It can survive the people who misrepresented Him.
And maybe that is the point.
I don't want a faith that collapses every time a religious person fails me.
I want a faith rooted deeply enough in my own experience with God that no broken institution can take Him away from me.