a few months ago, I hit a really difficult bump in my faith that just made day to day life unbearable -- until I just stopped caring. I've dealt with body image and confidence issues for as long as I can remember, and as soon as I stopped caring about God, I started to be as confident as I've ever been. I look at myself in the mirror and love what I see. I love everything about myself. If my happiness is supposed to come from Christ, why did I suddenly become happy as soon as I stopped caring?
That is an excellent and insightful question. Exactly the kind of question that I like. Not to mention that this could so easily be a question from my younger self. You don’t happen to have a time machine by any chance?
While I cannot hope to perfectly answer, I can perhaps offer a follow-up question. As you have shared a little from your life, would it be okay if I shared something from mine too?
There is a question here but I am going to start with a story. If you don’t fancy reading the story, skip down to “the question” - no one will know.
Another thing it took me ages to learn
One of the many things that it took me a long time to figure out was this - many of my issues about God were actually issues with His people.
The church is excellent at adding so much extra heaviness to the light burden of Christ that it is a wonder we can still even recognise it. I shall illustrate that with the story I promised you.
I suffer from varying degrees of anxiety and depression. I have done all my life. I am (I have recently discovered) dyslexic, dyspraxic, depressive, and probably a lot more besides. Like you, I looked at myself and hated what I saw.
I was a (mostly) open-minded (mostly) cis (totally) white male with long hair that liked alternative music - not a good fit for the churches I was going to. I’m still like that today but a lot more chill and I like myself.
My early years were spent in a church that actually taught that depression was caused by not having enough faith that Jesus loved you. I knew that was false but I could not explain why.
I started to have questions. Questions, cause trouble. It was not the questions that made me leave but seeing the true face of the “in-group” and the way I was seen as utterly unworthy and would, at best, be merely tolerated.
After I left, I found myself in a similar church where (just like the first) being a Christian seemed to get harder and harder. The truth is, I had failed to learn anything and was going to repeat my mistakes a while longer - with the same results.
It was while I was in this second very similar church, that I started to notice that there were two groups of people. One group had mastered the invisible extra rules. The “good” group got to speak at the front, lead things, and were offered all sorts of church support. They were the minority that seemed to have it all together and were the example the rest of us failed to live up to.
The others were still struggling to “be spiritual” and were told to be more committed. I was well and truly in the “failure” group.
Questions lead to anger, apparently
Eventually, I questioned the leadership too much and got my head bitten off. I was shouted at by two men who should have know better and not even for a deeply probing or controversial question. Just expressing doubts in the people themselves based on my past experience. It was humiliating and silly.
Not for the first time, the mask was off. I had again seen the true face of the elite. It was not pretty. The example of the “spiritual group” was not as flawless as they claimed. They were just as broken as the failures but with the added twist that no one could see it.
I refused to go back and - if I am honest - they probably did not want me to.
If you have read my Tumblr before you could probably see this plot twist coming. I still ask a lot of questions.
For the first time ever I was churchless. Like you, I was less stressed and more productive. Out from under those extra rules, life was easier.
That was when I started to investigate the Bible for myself. I still had questions and the only way to get answers now was to go looking for them. The “ah-ha” moment was when I first started to discover whole passages of scripture that are the exact opposite of what I had been taught in two mainstream denominations.
I started to see that the reason being a Christian was hard was that I was trying to be something other than Christ-like - I was trying to be a middle-class white cis neurotypical extrovert team-member while I was actually far too punk, anxious, introverted, needy, and nerdy to do half of that.
That was when I start to notice how alternative (and nice) Jesus was.
Jesus taught - care about people and let Me take care of the rest.
The Church taught - turn up on time, dress the right way, pray the right way, put your hands in the air the requisite amount during worship, dance from time to time if the music is suitable (charismatic church culture is weird), attend the extracurricular activities, volunteer for things… If you performed to a minimal level then you could advance in the club. Demonstrate you are spiritual and you can get promoted.
None of that nonsense was in the Bible. Jesus picked a set of neurotic, working class, failures who between them had exactly no qualities for leadership or spiritual behaviour.
The disciples repeatedly failed to understand, questioned the wrong things, doubted what they saw, forgot lessons, got uptight about stuff that did not matter, panicked, stressed, stole, lied, cheated, and bickered among themselves about who was the favourite.
Jesus choice of follower was the “failure” group. I was in the “failure” group.
For You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; You take no pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.
Psalm 51:16-17 [Berean Study Bible]
The church had it backwards
Slowly, I came to understand that the church had things backwards. There were two groups in Jesus time too. The “failure” group which He loved to spend time with and the group that were sure they had it all together with which He argued and offended and generally made look pretty silly by knowing the scriptures better.
Somehow the churches I was in had “accidentally” put the people Jesus would not have liked so much in charge of teaching His message and sidelined the people He would have chosen to do the job.
Being a Chrisitan was not hard - pretending to be one of the “religious elite” was! Ah, now it all made sense.
Like you, anon, I went from a dedicated follower to having no more time for God. I did not stop there, however, and once I had seen it was His “wife” I could not get on with, I realised that God was actually quite nice. (Not “wife” technically, the group that thinks of itself as His bride. I’m being a bit facetious here.)
I joined a group of rebels who met without permission on a Monday. Like me, they had grown tired of the church too. Together, we formed a new church like group with a single rule that everyone should be able to contribute (and then take questions).
Today, following God is easy. I just do my best to accept and care for everyone and let Him take care of the rest. I see that we are all probably wrong about some part of doctrine and so ask questions of myself frequently. I will probably always be wrong about something and not that is okay. The whole point of Grace is that it is fine to be wrong so long as I am kind. I’m still learning to be kind but that’s another story.
We finally get to the question I promised you. Is it possible that once all the pressure to conform to church norms was gone, the source of your anxiety was gone too? If so, could it be that Christ is okay, but many of his fan club are demanding jerks?
The reason I ask is that this was what I found to be the case. It took me a few repeated bumps in the road to figure that out because I can be a slow learner.
The Jesus I read about - especially with some historical and cultural context to back it up - was all about gender, racial, and socio-economic equality. He did not care if you were a traitor (tax collector), prostitute, working-class ignoramus, or outcast - he had time for everyone. Well, except stuck up religious leaders - those He gave a hard time too.
Nothing crushes your spirit quite like trying to be someone you are not. I had to learn that the hard way. It took me until my 30s to even get a clue about that one. I suspect that the reason you are enjoying being you, for a change, is that you also stopped trying to be what you were told is a “good Christian”.
If I can teach you anything from my failures, I hope it is this - the “good Christian” that many churches teach us to be is a lie - no one can be that. The ones that seem to be “making it” are a mix of outright fakes and exhausted people trying too hard. Take it from another person with body shame issues - that stuff is bad for you.
I pretty certain that God will not mind if you take as long as you need to do some self-care. I’m convinced that He loves you and wants you to be mentally healthy. I might offend some church leadership types by saying this but take as long as you need to love yourself like He does.
There may be no need to go back and join the fake-it-till-you-make-it club. Honesty is good for you. On that front, I have found that church groups for and by the marginalised often have much more authenticity due mostly to having to fend off the mainstream nonsense that condemns them. There’s no hurry though. For me, staying away from Christians for a while was actually helpful.
Above all else, is this advice which Shakspere said best.
This above all: to thine own self be true,And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man.
I’m not sure I have answered your question but I do hope that I have raised some questions that can help you find your own answers. Please do check back in with me to let me know how you are getting on. I’d like to know.
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