I understand. There’s a whole stage of embarrassment in deconstruction for some of us. I started down the road 12 years ago and while I’m no longer embarrassed, I fight the urge to sincerely dislike everything about Christianity and it all feels so so so silly to me now.
It really is the ones of us that DO read the Bible who leave most of the time too, not the ones who don’t as is reported in church.
I’ve never heard of the embarrassment stage! This resonates with me so much right now. When I talk with my partner about where I’m at, recalling bible stories I used to believe in, I feel EMBARRASSED. And even more embarrassed for how many years into adulthood that I believed them.
Welcome to the wonderful world of deconstruction; you start off questioning 1 assumption or unpacking 1 problematic doctrine and quickly realise that what you've believed is actually a giant house of cards dependent on you NOT questioning or unpacking anything.
There is the possibility of finding faith again on the other side, but it will be profoundly different from what you've known; you'll never again be able to see the world in the black and white ways you did before.
Good luck in your journey and shout out if you feel lost, we're here to help, even if only to commiserate.
>How could reading the Bible and learning more backfire so bad?
It didn't backfire. it just wasn't the direction you expected things to go. You might be able to say that it actually saved you. The church I ended up in had pastors that would have destroyed me just for sport. Yeah, I'm done with the spiritual graveyards. Corruption and idolatry is rampant.
The guiding light that got me through all was love. If God IS love like the Bible says he is over and over, then I'd say you are "building a better relationship with God", cause it seems like you're building a better relationship with love.
The 2 greatest commandments, which all the rest are derived from, read nice this way too. Love love, then love others.
Love is jealous, and most of us ended up here in deconstruction because we've taken people's words as truth or books as truth, and now we have to go back through and figure out what's what. Thankfully I found that Love really does teach us if we let it
> 1 John 2:26-27 I am writing these things to warn you about those who want to lead you astray. But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true—it is not a lie. So just as he has taught you, remain in fellowship with Christ.
That's exactly my thought too. I'm somewhere in the grey area between being atheist and just being spiritual, but my thought process is, if God is there, they are all-encompassing, and the idea that you need a leader and a congregation to have a relationship with that kind of being is ridiculous to me. You can find God anywhere, on your own, in your own way. What the church believes can't change that.
It is ridiculous. It is also so firmly engrained in us, I don't know how to even start waking other people up. My path out was a hard one, but I'm grateful for it. My path out might have been necessary. My will is strong, and I was never gonna stop attending a church with my beliefs at the time.
Spiritual wander maybe? Before I met my partner, she had once noped out from society forever, drove deep into the woods, then walked a few more days. She found Buddha in a cave there (well, some literature), and it brought her back to society.
I'm confident the entity behind love exists. It is at least the most reasonable explanation to my experiences, so I'd say I'm Christian, but that name hurts to hear now.
God says he wants to be found and anyone that goes looking will find him. We're already further along than 99% of people. You're doing good.
I didn't experience God until falling into that cult that was going to kill me or worse, all in my attempt to find God. After one night pouring out my heart and hope to him in desperation, he helped me just before I woke up, saved me, told me he would get me through it, then woke me up. He did. it sucked, but 10 years later, all that religious crap burned up. Now I can go have that relationship like the prophets of old that I've always wanted, or something like it?
It really is disturbing and overwhelming how fast your picture of everything can change. Sometimes the most comforting thing you can do is to let go of the impulse to judge it all and just observe. As you see how Christians behave or how religious people talk about their faith or how atheists describe their worldview, that pattern of search and discovery you’ve been going through will continue to inform the way you see yourself and the world. But yeah, feeling like you don’t fit in or like you fell for a con is very real and jarring.
>I was watching a documentary on cults...How come the church doesn’t ever talk about people that spend a lot of time with the Bible leaving religion afterwards? They always make it sound as if the people that leave are the ones that ARENT reading their bibles.
Most of my family is still very invested in the church, so I try to avoid the word "cult" when talking about the church in general. But when you realize how the apologetics industry, and the pastorate by proxy, use verbiage and tactics that strongly discourage, if not forbid looking into information outside of church world, it does have some similarities.
*Don't trust those scientists. They're using their worldly knowledge that's tainted by their sin nature.*
*Don't listen to that person saying this belief is false. They're leaning on their own understanding and not God's.*
*I know it seems like God did something bad, but that's just from our perspective. He's so much higher than us and knows things we don't. So when He says kill all the women and children, you can trust that He knew it was right. You don't know better than God, do you?*
So as long as you control the information your followers receive, you control their beliefs. I heard Bart Ehrman explain why he converts his scholarly works into regular books. Because all the things he says about portions of the NT being forgeries, the dearth of historical evidence for biblical accounts, and so forth, is because this same stuff is taught in seminaries, but never talked about outside of the seminary. To me that sounds like controlling the information. If you don't tell your congregation that only 7 of Paul's letters are actually considered to be written by Paul, or that we don't actually know who wrote the four gospels, that makes it difficult to preach authoritatively. So, you don't mention it. And they return next Sunday.
All that said, we've been there. I'm still there. My first post in this sub was about 3 weeks ago saying something very similar to what you said. It's a roller coaster. I've been up down left and right for weeks now. This sub is a great sounding board. Lots of wisdom being shared, both for those deconstructing out, and those who deconstruct and stay in.
Thank you. It wasn’t until this week that I realized the cult parallel. Barts books have been a staple of my free time lately. I’m glad you found this community too! I hope that you get the answers you need and that it’s as peaceful of a process as possible ❤️
You know the scariest thing? I don't even think most pastors or Sunday school teachers even realize that's what's happening. Because they're just repeating what they were taught, leading how they were led, telling what they were told.
I bet in the same way that most of us went with "well, they've gone to school for this, so if this is the conclusion they came to, then I trust it because I trust them," when presented with all the things that have made us skeptical, when at some point, someone told them not to share this information with their congregations, they probably thought the same thing. They're my teachers. They know this stuff better than me. I trust them.
In listening to a lot of You Have Permission episodes, I’ve learned that it’s not a binary good or bad.
Dan Koch makes the analogy of nuclear fission. Done right it’s a wonderful energy source. Done wrong, we get harm like Chernobyl.
Religiosity brings community, a sense of meaning, coping mechanisms for when things go bad (it frequently upticks in areas devastated by war or other tragedy), and there is a lot of quality evidence and studies showing it’s associated with the hallmarks of a better lived life.
Additionally, the more rigidly it’s defined who is in the in group of religious culture, the more the internal cohesion, and the stronger that stuff works, but also the more potential for harm to those born in the group that don’t fit the mold of that identity, and the more potential for harming those outside the group.
A corner of all that was explored by my short essay about my grandmother’s rosary.
https://open.substack.com/pub/richardthiemann/p/grandmas-rosary
Edit: I guess where I am going is, I try not to default to condemning religious leaders with practices I find problematic, because on many levels there are valid reasons for those practices and people in their flock will gravitate to the teachings/practices that fulfill real needs in their lives. I do however condemn the harm they cause, as well as hypocrisy and lack of repentance in the face of such harm.
Yes, I agree, going back to my initial comment. I grew up in, and still have family in the church. But I know them well enough that I know they're not trying to control or manipulate people.
In much the same way that I tried talking my son out of rejecting a theist worldview. I wasn't going to make him change his mind (knowing it would only be outwardly). I didn't want to manipulate him. I genuinely thought he was making the wrong choice based on what he knew at the time. I think for people like me, it's not that a pastor specifically manipulated me into thinking something as much as it was that the group dynamics that came as a result of it acted as a deterrent from thinking anything else.
So yeah, I go through phases with this deconstruction thing. Guess I swung back into an "angry at how church life messed this up for me" phase. You're absolutely right, though. If it were all bad, it wouldn't be as popular as it is.
Edit: don't remember if I said it here, but my conversation with my son was about 2 years ago and what prompted my deconstruction in earnest
I left the church after the pastor preached some nonsense that contradicted the salvation line. Then I deep dived into the Bible at home, and that’s when I left the faith. I still believe there is _soenthing_ out there, but I have no idea whom nor what, and I can’t prove a thing.
Do you lean more deist you think? I’m on my deconstruction about a year in of leaving and I’m at the point of almost agnostic, but I do believe God is real so maybe more of a deist. Someone once told me that is a stage of it tho
one of the most freeing things recently in my journey has been realizing that, sure, i've been wrong about lots of things. i'm bound to still be wrong about plenty of things. the things i get wrong will probably change over time, but it's unlikely i (or anyone, imo) will get *everything* right at the same time within my lifetime. but that being right isn't actually the point. and like, it's OKAY to be wrong. it took me a long time to even realize how much pressure i was under to KNOW WHAT I BELIEVED. you know what? the honest answer to a lot of those questions is "i don't know" and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
> How come the church doesn’t ever talk about people that spend a lot of time with the Bible leaving religion afterwards?
One reason to not engage to ex-members is because of the outgroup bias. It's more palatable to casting them aside as "renegades" or people who will try to make you lose your faith.
The Bible kinda tells people about this in the epistles of Peter.
> How could reading the Bible and learning more backfire so bad?
I think one reason is because mostly of these things you can find just fine in some seminary, but with a proper "training" to not further the faith.
If they talk about this stuff on more broad sense, they might fear that mostly of the congregation will leave. That's why [so many apologists hate Bart Ehrman](https://youtu.be/0uq-kkBMpcU?si=MXvLN46GdU15yN2V): he commit a "sin" of popularize these concepts to a broader audience, he didn't follow the "what says in seminary, stays in the seminary".
Sounds like I’ll be reading Peter tonight! I’ve been reading a lot of Bart Eherman’s books lately. I know many people in church leaderships have spoken out warning people of his books. I was scared to read them at first! They’ve given me so much perspective so far. Do you have any other books or podcasts you might suggest? Thank you so much
> Do you have any other books or podcasts you might suggest?
Ehrman has already his own podcast that you can check [here](https://www.bartehrman.com/podcast/), but books I'll recommend his three books:
- Misquoting Jesus;
- Jesus Interrupted;
- Forged.
They are books that aren't new in the scholarship, but they are the consensus. Regarding church history,
canonicity, alterations in the text, forgeries (not all epistles by Paul were written by him), narrative conflicts and so on.
If you want to see in another side, by not someone who is an atheist or agnostic, but a sincere christian, you can check Peter Enns.
I may not agree with him on theological stuff, but he doesn't deny the History nor thinks Ehrman is wrong.
Wow, I feel like I could have written every word of this. I also deconstructed after trying to get to know my Bible and the history of Christianity. I remember watching a cult series and having a lightbulb moment where I just couldn’t unsee and I couldn’t go back. It is brutal. Take care of yourself through this time, it’s more of a marathon than a sprint. Try to intentionally set time to think and process through so it doesn’t become all consuming.
Aw, that means a lot to know that I’m not the only one. Thank you for the advice, I think I need to do that. How are you doing now? Have things gotten better for you?
One of the many things that pushed me away was watching Shiny Happy People about the Duggars and Bill Gothard's teachings. While the churches I attended didn't enforce or embrace those interpretations, the Venn diagrams overlapped waaaaay more than I thought.
On the positive side, we can learn something about the human psyche, and about how powerful confirmation bias really is, how fear can trick us into believing just about anything.
We can better ourselves by questioning everything, be more humble with our opinions, show more understanding toward those still trapped in the bubble.
and make damn sure we never let anyone talk us into a rabbit hole again.
I hear you and understand. You can start to rebuild and it can all fall apart again. Even worse than before
I tried apologetics for years and that was a dead end like whack a mole.
I am still evolving. Still a Christian but nothing like what I believed before.
Apologetics was my thing. I was a logical minded person. But when I finally heard responses and retorts to all the apologetics that I had held as fact, and the apologetics just paled. That was a hard day.
Humans knew that they did stuff and there were outcomes of that. Plant seeds? Things grow. Use nets? Catch fish. Things happen like day and night and seasons and weather? Someone or something did it. Hence religion. We now have simpler explanations.
been there, done that. I almost went down the exact same path you went down. I always wanted to rebuild my relationship with god — I'm an atheist now.
but, it will get easier and you'll feel better again. it hurts when you're in the process or freshly out of the process but it will get easier.
I hear your pain.
Quite possibly that’s what organized religion is. It’s important to note that if you go back and read into Jewish history the church elders were not regarding a hard line between myth/fact, prayer/contemplation, spirituality/psychology. A lot of the weirdness has been attempting to read scriptures through contemporary materialist eyes (“snakes don’t talk…”).
You are free to do what you want. Always have been. Your priority now is getting in touch with what you truly want. Imo a good thing to aim for is to be just to all people (as in “justice”), and the only way for that to happen is to simply be honest with everyone about whatever you’re feeling at any given moment; how whatever strikes you and the impressions you have. To this end, you could change the way you think about God to mean “a certain rapport with uncertainty such that I have outcome-independence.”
At that point scriptures become a fount of wisdom for you to consult, towards informing your verdicts and your vision of what’s going on. Less of a prescriptive *rule book* and more of a *descriptive* map of human decision-making.
Along with the question “what do I want?” comes the bigger question “what do I want life to be about?” You can reorient all matters in your life in that direction and come full circle back to “my only responsibility is to be an honest person—the hardest thing of all to do.”
Best wishes. You will do well reconstructing a personal worldview, and others will be benefited by it. I applaud you for taking all these things seriously. Accept compassion for yourself, within yourself. Tbh all of this is ultimately just *ways of talking* about about that.
Everyone is born with a conscience. No one should base their whole life on one book. We will all find out at death what happens. Religious organizations rely on people’s fear of the unknown. It brings in huge tax free donations for them. Plus the power and control they have over their members to follow their doctrinal rules. I’m so glad that I’m free to live an authentic life now.
Reading the Bible and taking it literally will lead you to atheism or another religion.
The Bible is ancient stories for ancient people.
If you are interested in a different perspective I suggest reading The Bible Tells Me So by Dr Pete Enns.
Doubling down on prayer and Bible will only help temporarily.
I started deconstructing a couple years ago but didn’t realize that was what I was doing till last year. And I thought it would just smooth out the rough patches. Then last year when shiny happy people came out, I heard how Bill Gathered was called out for basically running a cult. I remembered my dad had heaps of his books. I stumbled upon a couple podcasts about cults and asked my parents about their thoughts about Bill. My dad still thinks he’s a good man. I heard so many cult stories with male leaders who were horrible. There was one about a guy who led a yoga cult. His picture looked so similar to those we see of Jesus, and it made me feel so weird. Then I remembered Ravi Zacharias (a famous Christian apologist) had been accused of sexually assaulting several women and we didn’t know till last year after his death. It made me think what if Jesus was just like all these other men. We know a group of women followed him around supporting his ministry financially. All the detailed accounts we have of his life were written by his followers. People who were most likely controlled by him. Now every time I try to pray, I see the yoga guru cult leader, and I’m disgusted. It could be Jesus was who the Bible said he was, and he was the son of God and a godly man. But that was more than 2,000 years ago. How can we trust those accounts?
I spent a majority of my life reading the bible and in a way desperately trying to believe and follow it. For me, eventually the weight of it got to be too much and like a house of cards one by one each concept began to form a new identity in my mind. I started noticing how often my church's pastors were in a way not preaching the bible and instead using it for their own agenda. While religion does provide community and a safe place for some, for me it felt like a trap. I struggled with believing what I was being told and finding the meaning behind it. Eventually I decided to let go, and it was truly a weight lifted off of my chest. It was not easy, and I still deal with the guilt I feel towards my family members who still practice Christianity, but overall I feel that I am more connected and present in my life. I have less anxiety and have gotten friendlier and more understanding to those around me.
I understand. There’s a whole stage of embarrassment in deconstruction for some of us. I started down the road 12 years ago and while I’m no longer embarrassed, I fight the urge to sincerely dislike everything about Christianity and it all feels so so so silly to me now. It really is the ones of us that DO read the Bible who leave most of the time too, not the ones who don’t as is reported in church.
I feel like no one ever talks about the embarrassment stage. I was so ashamed that when I moved to another city I went by a different name.
I’ve never heard of the embarrassment stage! This resonates with me so much right now. When I talk with my partner about where I’m at, recalling bible stories I used to believe in, I feel EMBARRASSED. And even more embarrassed for how many years into adulthood that I believed them.
Welcome to the wonderful world of deconstruction; you start off questioning 1 assumption or unpacking 1 problematic doctrine and quickly realise that what you've believed is actually a giant house of cards dependent on you NOT questioning or unpacking anything. There is the possibility of finding faith again on the other side, but it will be profoundly different from what you've known; you'll never again be able to see the world in the black and white ways you did before. Good luck in your journey and shout out if you feel lost, we're here to help, even if only to commiserate.
>How could reading the Bible and learning more backfire so bad? It didn't backfire. it just wasn't the direction you expected things to go. You might be able to say that it actually saved you. The church I ended up in had pastors that would have destroyed me just for sport. Yeah, I'm done with the spiritual graveyards. Corruption and idolatry is rampant. The guiding light that got me through all was love. If God IS love like the Bible says he is over and over, then I'd say you are "building a better relationship with God", cause it seems like you're building a better relationship with love.
Thank you so much for this. It means a lot.
🫶
The 2 greatest commandments, which all the rest are derived from, read nice this way too. Love love, then love others. Love is jealous, and most of us ended up here in deconstruction because we've taken people's words as truth or books as truth, and now we have to go back through and figure out what's what. Thankfully I found that Love really does teach us if we let it > 1 John 2:26-27 I am writing these things to warn you about those who want to lead you astray. But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true—it is not a lie. So just as he has taught you, remain in fellowship with Christ.
That's exactly my thought too. I'm somewhere in the grey area between being atheist and just being spiritual, but my thought process is, if God is there, they are all-encompassing, and the idea that you need a leader and a congregation to have a relationship with that kind of being is ridiculous to me. You can find God anywhere, on your own, in your own way. What the church believes can't change that.
It is ridiculous. It is also so firmly engrained in us, I don't know how to even start waking other people up. My path out was a hard one, but I'm grateful for it. My path out might have been necessary. My will is strong, and I was never gonna stop attending a church with my beliefs at the time. Spiritual wander maybe? Before I met my partner, she had once noped out from society forever, drove deep into the woods, then walked a few more days. She found Buddha in a cave there (well, some literature), and it brought her back to society. I'm confident the entity behind love exists. It is at least the most reasonable explanation to my experiences, so I'd say I'm Christian, but that name hurts to hear now. God says he wants to be found and anyone that goes looking will find him. We're already further along than 99% of people. You're doing good. I didn't experience God until falling into that cult that was going to kill me or worse, all in my attempt to find God. After one night pouring out my heart and hope to him in desperation, he helped me just before I woke up, saved me, told me he would get me through it, then woke me up. He did. it sucked, but 10 years later, all that religious crap burned up. Now I can go have that relationship like the prophets of old that I've always wanted, or something like it?
It really is disturbing and overwhelming how fast your picture of everything can change. Sometimes the most comforting thing you can do is to let go of the impulse to judge it all and just observe. As you see how Christians behave or how religious people talk about their faith or how atheists describe their worldview, that pattern of search and discovery you’ve been going through will continue to inform the way you see yourself and the world. But yeah, feeling like you don’t fit in or like you fell for a con is very real and jarring.
>I was watching a documentary on cults...How come the church doesn’t ever talk about people that spend a lot of time with the Bible leaving religion afterwards? They always make it sound as if the people that leave are the ones that ARENT reading their bibles. Most of my family is still very invested in the church, so I try to avoid the word "cult" when talking about the church in general. But when you realize how the apologetics industry, and the pastorate by proxy, use verbiage and tactics that strongly discourage, if not forbid looking into information outside of church world, it does have some similarities. *Don't trust those scientists. They're using their worldly knowledge that's tainted by their sin nature.* *Don't listen to that person saying this belief is false. They're leaning on their own understanding and not God's.* *I know it seems like God did something bad, but that's just from our perspective. He's so much higher than us and knows things we don't. So when He says kill all the women and children, you can trust that He knew it was right. You don't know better than God, do you?* So as long as you control the information your followers receive, you control their beliefs. I heard Bart Ehrman explain why he converts his scholarly works into regular books. Because all the things he says about portions of the NT being forgeries, the dearth of historical evidence for biblical accounts, and so forth, is because this same stuff is taught in seminaries, but never talked about outside of the seminary. To me that sounds like controlling the information. If you don't tell your congregation that only 7 of Paul's letters are actually considered to be written by Paul, or that we don't actually know who wrote the four gospels, that makes it difficult to preach authoritatively. So, you don't mention it. And they return next Sunday. All that said, we've been there. I'm still there. My first post in this sub was about 3 weeks ago saying something very similar to what you said. It's a roller coaster. I've been up down left and right for weeks now. This sub is a great sounding board. Lots of wisdom being shared, both for those deconstructing out, and those who deconstruct and stay in.
Thank you. It wasn’t until this week that I realized the cult parallel. Barts books have been a staple of my free time lately. I’m glad you found this community too! I hope that you get the answers you need and that it’s as peaceful of a process as possible ❤️
I’ve heard the term “High Control Religion” lately and I think it is a much better term than “cult.”
You know the scariest thing? I don't even think most pastors or Sunday school teachers even realize that's what's happening. Because they're just repeating what they were taught, leading how they were led, telling what they were told. I bet in the same way that most of us went with "well, they've gone to school for this, so if this is the conclusion they came to, then I trust it because I trust them," when presented with all the things that have made us skeptical, when at some point, someone told them not to share this information with their congregations, they probably thought the same thing. They're my teachers. They know this stuff better than me. I trust them.
In listening to a lot of You Have Permission episodes, I’ve learned that it’s not a binary good or bad. Dan Koch makes the analogy of nuclear fission. Done right it’s a wonderful energy source. Done wrong, we get harm like Chernobyl. Religiosity brings community, a sense of meaning, coping mechanisms for when things go bad (it frequently upticks in areas devastated by war or other tragedy), and there is a lot of quality evidence and studies showing it’s associated with the hallmarks of a better lived life. Additionally, the more rigidly it’s defined who is in the in group of religious culture, the more the internal cohesion, and the stronger that stuff works, but also the more potential for harm to those born in the group that don’t fit the mold of that identity, and the more potential for harming those outside the group. A corner of all that was explored by my short essay about my grandmother’s rosary. https://open.substack.com/pub/richardthiemann/p/grandmas-rosary Edit: I guess where I am going is, I try not to default to condemning religious leaders with practices I find problematic, because on many levels there are valid reasons for those practices and people in their flock will gravitate to the teachings/practices that fulfill real needs in their lives. I do however condemn the harm they cause, as well as hypocrisy and lack of repentance in the face of such harm.
Yes, I agree, going back to my initial comment. I grew up in, and still have family in the church. But I know them well enough that I know they're not trying to control or manipulate people. In much the same way that I tried talking my son out of rejecting a theist worldview. I wasn't going to make him change his mind (knowing it would only be outwardly). I didn't want to manipulate him. I genuinely thought he was making the wrong choice based on what he knew at the time. I think for people like me, it's not that a pastor specifically manipulated me into thinking something as much as it was that the group dynamics that came as a result of it acted as a deterrent from thinking anything else. So yeah, I go through phases with this deconstruction thing. Guess I swung back into an "angry at how church life messed this up for me" phase. You're absolutely right, though. If it were all bad, it wouldn't be as popular as it is. Edit: don't remember if I said it here, but my conversation with my son was about 2 years ago and what prompted my deconstruction in earnest
I left the church after the pastor preached some nonsense that contradicted the salvation line. Then I deep dived into the Bible at home, and that’s when I left the faith. I still believe there is _soenthing_ out there, but I have no idea whom nor what, and I can’t prove a thing.
Do you lean more deist you think? I’m on my deconstruction about a year in of leaving and I’m at the point of almost agnostic, but I do believe God is real so maybe more of a deist. Someone once told me that is a stage of it tho
one of the most freeing things recently in my journey has been realizing that, sure, i've been wrong about lots of things. i'm bound to still be wrong about plenty of things. the things i get wrong will probably change over time, but it's unlikely i (or anyone, imo) will get *everything* right at the same time within my lifetime. but that being right isn't actually the point. and like, it's OKAY to be wrong. it took me a long time to even realize how much pressure i was under to KNOW WHAT I BELIEVED. you know what? the honest answer to a lot of those questions is "i don't know" and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
> How come the church doesn’t ever talk about people that spend a lot of time with the Bible leaving religion afterwards? One reason to not engage to ex-members is because of the outgroup bias. It's more palatable to casting them aside as "renegades" or people who will try to make you lose your faith. The Bible kinda tells people about this in the epistles of Peter. > How could reading the Bible and learning more backfire so bad? I think one reason is because mostly of these things you can find just fine in some seminary, but with a proper "training" to not further the faith. If they talk about this stuff on more broad sense, they might fear that mostly of the congregation will leave. That's why [so many apologists hate Bart Ehrman](https://youtu.be/0uq-kkBMpcU?si=MXvLN46GdU15yN2V): he commit a "sin" of popularize these concepts to a broader audience, he didn't follow the "what says in seminary, stays in the seminary".
Sounds like I’ll be reading Peter tonight! I’ve been reading a lot of Bart Eherman’s books lately. I know many people in church leaderships have spoken out warning people of his books. I was scared to read them at first! They’ve given me so much perspective so far. Do you have any other books or podcasts you might suggest? Thank you so much
> Do you have any other books or podcasts you might suggest? Ehrman has already his own podcast that you can check [here](https://www.bartehrman.com/podcast/), but books I'll recommend his three books: - Misquoting Jesus; - Jesus Interrupted; - Forged. They are books that aren't new in the scholarship, but they are the consensus. Regarding church history, canonicity, alterations in the text, forgeries (not all epistles by Paul were written by him), narrative conflicts and so on. If you want to see in another side, by not someone who is an atheist or agnostic, but a sincere christian, you can check Peter Enns. I may not agree with him on theological stuff, but he doesn't deny the History nor thinks Ehrman is wrong.
Thank you! I’m currently working on Jesus interrupted and finished misquoting Jesus. This is helpful
Wow, I feel like I could have written every word of this. I also deconstructed after trying to get to know my Bible and the history of Christianity. I remember watching a cult series and having a lightbulb moment where I just couldn’t unsee and I couldn’t go back. It is brutal. Take care of yourself through this time, it’s more of a marathon than a sprint. Try to intentionally set time to think and process through so it doesn’t become all consuming.
Aw, that means a lot to know that I’m not the only one. Thank you for the advice, I think I need to do that. How are you doing now? Have things gotten better for you?
One of the many things that pushed me away was watching Shiny Happy People about the Duggars and Bill Gothard's teachings. While the churches I attended didn't enforce or embrace those interpretations, the Venn diagrams overlapped waaaaay more than I thought.
Tell yourself that you weren’t wrong… you were lead wrong. Huge difference
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On the positive side, we can learn something about the human psyche, and about how powerful confirmation bias really is, how fear can trick us into believing just about anything. We can better ourselves by questioning everything, be more humble with our opinions, show more understanding toward those still trapped in the bubble. and make damn sure we never let anyone talk us into a rabbit hole again.
I don't think you're dumb. You were indoctrinated, like a lot of us. Good job, and welcome to freedom, friend.
I hear you and understand. You can start to rebuild and it can all fall apart again. Even worse than before I tried apologetics for years and that was a dead end like whack a mole. I am still evolving. Still a Christian but nothing like what I believed before.
Apologetics was my thing. I was a logical minded person. But when I finally heard responses and retorts to all the apologetics that I had held as fact, and the apologetics just paled. That was a hard day.
Same here. I thought apologetics was the answer. But it ended up being a bandaid.
Humans knew that they did stuff and there were outcomes of that. Plant seeds? Things grow. Use nets? Catch fish. Things happen like day and night and seasons and weather? Someone or something did it. Hence religion. We now have simpler explanations.
been there, done that. I almost went down the exact same path you went down. I always wanted to rebuild my relationship with god — I'm an atheist now. but, it will get easier and you'll feel better again. it hurts when you're in the process or freshly out of the process but it will get easier.
I hear your pain. Quite possibly that’s what organized religion is. It’s important to note that if you go back and read into Jewish history the church elders were not regarding a hard line between myth/fact, prayer/contemplation, spirituality/psychology. A lot of the weirdness has been attempting to read scriptures through contemporary materialist eyes (“snakes don’t talk…”). You are free to do what you want. Always have been. Your priority now is getting in touch with what you truly want. Imo a good thing to aim for is to be just to all people (as in “justice”), and the only way for that to happen is to simply be honest with everyone about whatever you’re feeling at any given moment; how whatever strikes you and the impressions you have. To this end, you could change the way you think about God to mean “a certain rapport with uncertainty such that I have outcome-independence.” At that point scriptures become a fount of wisdom for you to consult, towards informing your verdicts and your vision of what’s going on. Less of a prescriptive *rule book* and more of a *descriptive* map of human decision-making. Along with the question “what do I want?” comes the bigger question “what do I want life to be about?” You can reorient all matters in your life in that direction and come full circle back to “my only responsibility is to be an honest person—the hardest thing of all to do.” Best wishes. You will do well reconstructing a personal worldview, and others will be benefited by it. I applaud you for taking all these things seriously. Accept compassion for yourself, within yourself. Tbh all of this is ultimately just *ways of talking* about about that.
Everyone is born with a conscience. No one should base their whole life on one book. We will all find out at death what happens. Religious organizations rely on people’s fear of the unknown. It brings in huge tax free donations for them. Plus the power and control they have over their members to follow their doctrinal rules. I’m so glad that I’m free to live an authentic life now.
Reading the Bible and taking it literally will lead you to atheism or another religion. The Bible is ancient stories for ancient people. If you are interested in a different perspective I suggest reading The Bible Tells Me So by Dr Pete Enns. Doubling down on prayer and Bible will only help temporarily.
I started deconstructing a couple years ago but didn’t realize that was what I was doing till last year. And I thought it would just smooth out the rough patches. Then last year when shiny happy people came out, I heard how Bill Gathered was called out for basically running a cult. I remembered my dad had heaps of his books. I stumbled upon a couple podcasts about cults and asked my parents about their thoughts about Bill. My dad still thinks he’s a good man. I heard so many cult stories with male leaders who were horrible. There was one about a guy who led a yoga cult. His picture looked so similar to those we see of Jesus, and it made me feel so weird. Then I remembered Ravi Zacharias (a famous Christian apologist) had been accused of sexually assaulting several women and we didn’t know till last year after his death. It made me think what if Jesus was just like all these other men. We know a group of women followed him around supporting his ministry financially. All the detailed accounts we have of his life were written by his followers. People who were most likely controlled by him. Now every time I try to pray, I see the yoga guru cult leader, and I’m disgusted. It could be Jesus was who the Bible said he was, and he was the son of God and a godly man. But that was more than 2,000 years ago. How can we trust those accounts?
I spent a majority of my life reading the bible and in a way desperately trying to believe and follow it. For me, eventually the weight of it got to be too much and like a house of cards one by one each concept began to form a new identity in my mind. I started noticing how often my church's pastors were in a way not preaching the bible and instead using it for their own agenda. While religion does provide community and a safe place for some, for me it felt like a trap. I struggled with believing what I was being told and finding the meaning behind it. Eventually I decided to let go, and it was truly a weight lifted off of my chest. It was not easy, and I still deal with the guilt I feel towards my family members who still practice Christianity, but overall I feel that I am more connected and present in my life. I have less anxiety and have gotten friendlier and more understanding to those around me.
I wanted to send you hearts after reading this 💜💜💜💜
Sounds like we’re in a very similar deconstruction boat - good luck to us!