Unfaithful or Abandoned?

Hi again! Thanks for joining me once more as I search for greater clarity in understanding this new path I am walking...

So last time I spoke about my background with Christianity and how I eventually came to question the beliefs that I had always had. This time I would like to discuss a very difficult aspect of the whole 'leaving the faith' issue. Am I unfaithful? or Was I abandoned?

I am sure that everyone (even those not involved in the religious world) would have heard the phrase 'fallen from grace.' This phrase has now become a well-known idiom used in everyday speech that simply means 'to fall from a position of high esteem.' It's origin, however, is a biblical one. Galatians 5:4 reads:

You who want to be justified by the law have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from Grace. (NRSV translation)

This verse is reaffirming the Christian belief that our salvation rests solely upon our faith in Christ and not upon any good deeds or works that we can accomplish through the upholding of the Jewish law. The Grace of God was given freely and our redemption rests upon that free gift and not upon anything we can achieve for ourselves. To even attempt this is to fall from Grace. Based upon this Christian understanding of the phrase, it is now very obvious that it would be quite applicable to me as I am no longer relying on Christ as my Saviour. The reason that this is such a difficult issue for me is due to several reasons which I will now detail more fully.

I still have many Christian friends and acquaintances (not to mention my own family), many of which I have not yet informed of my current religious stand. This is mostly because I cannot bear to see the disappointment that I know will register in their expressions nor can I bear to see the pity and distress I will see in their eyes. Why would this bother me, you may ask? Let me explain.

I am not ashamed of the fact that I no longer believe in God nor that I see myself as my own Saviour rather than relying on an external religious structure to move me along in life. However, having been entirely immersed within the Christian perspective for most of my life, I understand exactly how my departure from the faith will be viewed. I will be seen as some one who was not worthy of the gift of grace that was bestowed upon me. I will be seen as some one who is more to be pitied than one who had never heard the call of God. For since I heard the call of God and then walked away, my rejection of God will be seen as even more reprehensible. I will be seen as someone who was not faithful, someone who was not true to the one who loved me more than anything. Because, I can understand this perspective so clearly (having felt it myself for others who had walked away from the faith) it hurts to know that my friends would be feeling this about me. Obviously I still want my Christian friends in my life, but will the fact that they think this about me damage that friendship? Can I still be open and honest with them when I know they believe I am going to hell?

Only my very close friends know that I am not religious. I have not yet acquired the courage to tell my parents. As I have already said, I am not ashamed of what I now believe. I just can't bear the thought of hurting those closest to me. My parents will be devastated. They will not understand why and how can I explain it to them? I know that one question that will be asked by more than one person is 'What about all the things that God has done in your life. What of all the blessings and all the answers to prayer that you have experienced? Are you forgetting them? Are you ignoring them? Are you pretending that they never happened? My answer to all of these questions is no. I have not forgotten. I will never pretend that these experiences did not happen. How I now interpret those experiences is simply different now. The lens through which I see the world has changed and nothing is viewed the same way it once was.

But this brings me to the second reason why it will hurt so much to be viewed as unfaithful. I actually feel that rather than being unfaithful to God, I was abandoned by him. I must explain here as a means of preventing confusion, that I am not speaking literally as I do not actually believe in God's existence. I am speaking in metaphor based on the deep emotions that have resulted from this parting of the ways.

You see, Jesus and I were best friends. From my earliest memories, he was there. I can still see him in my mind now just as my three-year old imagination saw him. A long white robe, long hair, the most joyful smile you could possibly imagine, and eyes that gazed on me with so much love that I felt warm and safe and protected. I have always known Jesus to be like this. He was my protector, my safe refuge. He was the one that I poured my heart out to through all the lonely days of my childhood when I was teased and bullied at school, through all the lunch hours reading by myself, through all the moments of silent tears when I was too afraid to let others see what I was feeling. Jesus was the one who stood by me through everything and words can not describe how much I loved him. Passionate, fervent, unwavering...even these are inadequate. I truly believed him to be my Saviour. I truly believed that I was a sinner destined to an Eternity of hell and that Jesus saved me from that. I truly believed that Jesus experienced an agonising death for me...just for me so that I could spend eternity with him. When I was about six or seven, I saw a scene from the 'Jesus' movie where Jesus was tormented by soldiers shortly before his death. I remember going into my room and thanking Jesus from the depths of my heart for everything he had gone through for me and how much I loved him for it. He was so real to me. So when I say that I left my religion it needs to be understood that I really left a relationship...and I feel like I've lost my best friend, imaginary though he may be.

Over the years, there have been many times of doubt and unrest. I have experienced many episodes of what Catholics call 'the dark night of the soul.' These are the moments when we feel, hear and see nothing from God and simply need to walk in faith despite this. Through all of these moments, I held on to my belief in Jesus, in the knowledge that he had a plan for me and that there was a reason for the darkness until of course logic overcame the deep-seated indoctrination and I was able to walk away entirely from this mindset. But though I walked away, that does not indicate ease or comfort. Another part of the reason I haven't spoken to many people about this is because I couldn't face being made to feel unfaithful when I literally felt abandoned. I have felt like my heart has been ripped out, like the one person who was supposed to be with me no matter what had just walked out of my life. There have been so many moments where I wish I could go back to believing just like I used to. I miss that comfort, that sense of peace that believing in something outside of yourself can bring. But I know that going back is simply not possible nor do I really wish it.

I mentioned last time that I still keep my picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus because of all that it represents for me and now hopefully you will understand this a little more. It is like keeping a photo of a lover who is no longer in your life but who left an indelible mark upon it that can never be removed. I originally thought that I would need to get rid of all remnants of my past religious life but when I tried to give away the picture the tears began to well up in my eyes. My beautiful and wonderful friend Jae whom I was giving it to, very wisely suggested that I needed to keep it for a while longer and she was right. I  will need to keep it for the rest of my life, I think.

Ultimately when I let go of my faith, it actually resembled more of a desperate plunge off a cliff than a calm decision at a crossroads to go a different way. I held on to the edge of that rock for so long, desperately trying to pull myself back over the ledge but in the end I simply couldn't hold on any longer and I fell...I fell from grace.

So please dear friends, when I share my heart with you, be kind. For me it is and has never been a debate about theology and to reduce it to that would not only be hurtful to me but also a denial of what Christianity itself claims to be, a relationship with God. Understand that my heart is still recovering from the betrayal of a once beloved friend. He claimed that he would always be there for me but he wasn't. He claimed that he would protect me from the harshness of this life but he didn't. He claimed that he was everything but he turned out to be nothing.

Thanks again for sharing this journey with me. Until next time.

Peace and Happiness
Amber

Where to begin?...

So where to even begin? Besides having an orange and vodka that is...

So I thought maybe I should write about my background as relates to religion. I am nearly 33 years old and for 31 of those years I have been immersed in the Christian faith. I was brought up in a protestant denomination called 'Churches of Christ' which is not to be confused with 'The Sydney Church of Christ.' The denomination I was involved in is very similar to the Baptist denomination. The particular church that I grew up in, however, was rather more fundamental than most.

I grew up believing the obvious Christian doctrines:

-We are all sinners and in need of God's grace, forgiveness and redemption.
-Jesus procured this for us by his death and resurrection on the Cross
-Those of us who believed in the name of Jesus had been specifically chosen to be his children and were destined to spend an Eternity of bliss with him.
-Those who did not believe in the name of Jesus were destined to eternal suffering in Hell.
-We should endeavour to live our lives according to the word of God which was the manual to good living.

Up until very recently, I believed all of this to be true. This is not to say that I never questioned my faith or that I never disagreed with things that I was taught. Being a rather outspoken person as well as one who needs to understand why I believe the things that I do, I was never comfortable with simply accepting things to be so because I was told to. In retrospect though, I can see that there was a myriad of beliefs that I didn't even realise I had accepted without question due to the fact that they were so deeply ingrained into my thinking.

When I was 23 I committed the 'unthinkable' according to my family! I became Catholic. After suffering great depression and anxiety, I found the Catholic expression of faith to be extremely beautiful and comforting. It was a very meditative religion and happy to rely on the knowledge that God was 'mystery'. Coming from the very black and white, fundamental, Protestant approach, I found this to be a welcome relief. The physical expressions of faith, such as the icons and statues, I found to be very appealing to my imaginative spirit. I still have extremely fond memories of my time in the Catholic church and I am very grateful for the comfort and peace that the Catholic faith gave me during some very difficult times in my life. Yet it was inevitable that eventually even this faith would be brought into question.

As the years passed by, I began to question more and more church teachings with the ultimate result being that I had to reject them entirely. Some of these teachings were:

-The prohibition of contraception
-The belief that homosexuality was a sexual perversion
-The acceptance that the God of the Old Testament was the same God of the New Testament and therefore was justified in condoning all the atrocities recorded there.

And this is only to mention a few!
I began to feel uncomfortable with being associated with the Church in general as I must confess to being rather embarrassed by it. I used to frequently say that while I was 'unashamedly Christian' out of all people that annoy me Christians annoyed me the most! I often felt rather guilty for feeling like this as I felt that since I was a Christian I should be supporting them. The fact that I wasn't made me feel a little uneasy. The truth of the matter was that I had already left my faith behind me...I just hadn't realised it yet.

The moment of clarity came when I began my Master of History. I had previously completed a Bachelor of Nursing and a Bachelor of Music. After working as a nurse for close to ten years, I finally realised that, due to my anxiety, it was not a good environment for me to work in and I let my registration lapse. My music had always been mostly a hobby and didn't look likely to develop into anything more than that. But when I began my history studies, I felt everything within me come to life. I had always loved history but never thought it was something serious I should pursue. But every word I read made my mind feel that rain was falling after an incredibly long drought. And knowledge...my mind soaked up knowledge like it had been waiting for it all my life. I was studying Ancient History and my very first subject was 'Pagan religions of ancient Greece and Roman.' That subject literally changed my life.

 As I began to study past religions I realised that my religion was nothing new. I had always been led to believe that Jesus brought something new, something novel to the world that it had never heard before. Well I realised now that this simply wasn't true. The themes of Christianity were most likely as old as humanity itself but they had been encountered through many different faiths and under the names of many different deities. There truly was 'nothing new under the sun' to quote the writer of Ecclesiastes. I realised that had I been born 3000 years ago, I would have believed that Zeus, Hercules and Aphrodite (to mention only a few) were real deities and (according to Christian teaching) for no fault other than ignorance, I would have been condemned to an eternity of Hell for not knowing Jesus Christ. Although not all Christians take this stance, just the existence of similar religious structures before mine had even been heard of was all I needed to take a step back for a second and look in on my belief system like an outside observer. And that was when I realised that my belief system was no longer what I thought it was! And that was that! Almost overnight, I realised that I had been walking along a different path without even knowing it.

About a year has now passed. Needless to say, that though the moment of realisation may have been filled with clarity and simplicity, nothing else on the journey since then has been. Life has been a constant mishmash of confusion, re-evaluation and redefinition. I am slowly starting to rebuild my belief system but it is so hard sometimes to know where I begin and my beliefs leave off as so much of who I am has been formed on a religious framework. I have come to realise that this will always be the case. Religion is a part of who I am and in order to embrace the future, I do not need to discard the past. If history has taught me anything, it is that it can lead us into new and amazing realms of experience and understanding if we only acknowledge and pay attention to it. For me to discard every element of religion from my life would be to discard 31 years of my life and indeed to also rip out pieces of my soul and throw them away. So I have kept my picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus because of all that it represents for me. A sacred heart, purity, unconditional love. These are things of beauty that I wish all the world to see. Though I no longer believe that Jesus is a deity, what his story represents remains real and beautiful for me.

So I take the next step into a future full of swirling unknowns. But my past is secure behind me and my present is bathed in the light of hope and precious dreams. Thankyou for walking this journey with me!

Until next time.
Peace and Happiness
Amber

So much pain in my heart
Slowly dying within
As I fall from the comfort
Of all I have been.
No idea where to go now
No clue what to do
No framework of knowledge
Or thoughts of what's true.

My soul is adrift
In an ocean so wide
Yet in all of this space
There is no where to hide
From the fear I encounter
The despair that I feel
As I'm desperately searching
For something that's real.

Is there anyone out there?
A place I can rest?
Lay down my head
And feel peace in my breast?
Won't someone please hear me
Hear the words of my song?
For all that I'm wanting
Is a place to belong.

Copyright August 2014 Amber May Bremner