How To Walk Away From Toxic Religion

This is by far my most terrifying post to date. These are the things I’ve wanted to say, but haven’t been ready to do so until now. I haven’t written in months because I just can’t find the words. Maybe it’s not the words so much but the courage. The courage to be vulnerable with an often cruel group of people.

have I lost my faith or found it?

What has happened to your faith, Angie? It’s a question I hear often. While others whisper and misunderstand where I am now and how I got here, I fully trust this process that I have undergone. I may have left Christianity behind, but my faith feels more sound than ever. Deconstructing and dismantling everything we so desperately cling to is part of magic of letting go of our need for control.

Will I ever go back to the community that once felt so safe and secure? I’m not sure. I am enjoying the newfound wide-open spaces, places, and people that I am finding and meeting out here in my desert wandering. We may wonder what can possibly grow in the desert, but the desert blooms with life that’s resilient and overflowing.

I had forgotten the world I’d been taught was lost and wicked was actually beautiful.

People deemed lost outside the church are just as forgiving, light-bearing, and caring. Sometimes even more so because they have fewer judgments.

I’m increasingly disheartened by the way the church treats those who disagree with their theology, as though what we believe is far more important than how well we love.

I don’t want to be told who gets to be a Christian and who doesn’t as though we have all the answers and hold the keys to heaven.

lonely spaces are often met with divine graces

This has been an incredibly hard and lonely journey only because those who don’t understand have stood in great opposition to my newfound freedom. It hasn’t been easy carving my own path through the world, letting Spirit guide me into unknown teritory. Long-held relationships have become strained and awkward. Even my husband struggles to understand at times. If I’m being honest, maybe I don’t understand it all myself. The beauty and growth come in the stretching though.

I want faith and a life that’s robust, honest, and inclusive.

I want to hand my girls a faith that’s full of freedom and choices more than rules and other’s voices.

I want them to see beauty in every individual that has been made in the likeness of life’s great Creator, without conditions.

who i am

My struggle, at times, has been vilifying those who still act as the gatekeepers to a faith that is wide open and welcoming. I’ve felt abandoned and misunderstood by those who loved me when I believed what I was taught to believe. What I believe should have very little to do with why I am loved. At times that unhealed wound has festered and spilled out onto the pages of my social media and even close loved ones.

There have been days that I just want to burn it all to the ground, match in hand, douse it with gasoline.

So the question becomes, how do I allow love and compassion to lead me even in difficult places? It helps to remember that I too was once a gatekeeper, holding tightly to my theological beliefs, at the expense of curiosity and understanding. Learning to let go of all judgments isn’t always easy.

I don’t want to be loved because I believe in the right things. I want to be loved for my heart, for my compassion and empathy. I’ve had to forgo one in pursuit of the other.

I also no longer desire to base my love on other’s beliefs, ideologies, or differences. I want my love to be without an agenda, allowing people the same freedom that I am experiencing. The freedom to be imperfectly human.

the courage to be different

Each of us has a special and unique path to walk. I want to honor them all! I want to live without fear of the “other”. There’s beauty, magic, and wonder in surrendering the need to know it all. I’m following my heart into the great unknown, fully assured that the divine is with me wherever I go.

If you find yourself traversing the same zig zag path as I am, with more questions than actual answers, you’re not alone in your journey. Welcome to the wide open spaces of unknowing.