The Naked Journal
Thoughts, musings, and meanings behind NakedPastor Art.
The Naked Journal
Yes, It’s Okay to Google “Leaving my Religion”
You may have stumbled on this blog simply by searching the phrase “leaving my religion” or “leaving the church”. Just asking that question in your head took a lot of courage. I know, because I have been there (and I was a Pastor with my entire life built around the church). (Click on image or HERE for a digital download.) When it comes to asking questions about leaving your religion , it’s a snowball effect. Questions multiply pretty quickly. Once you start a 100% honest internal dialogue, the conversation rolls and the questions get bigger and more interesting. It’s not easy but, in the end, it’s worth digging for answers. (Click HERE or on image for a digital download.) To help you along your journey, here are five questions I asked myself when I was considering leaving my religion. They might help you feel less alone and help you make sense of what you are feeling. What is the real reason I keep going to church? I always feel that the intention behind an act is as important as the act itself. It’s a simple but good question to ask yourself. Why do I go to church? Is it because of others’ expectations? Is it because of fear, guilt, duty, or shame? Once we understand our motivation, it’s a bit easier to recognise if that motivation is healthy or not. When we let the negative emotions go, we can build a new and healthy way of relating to ourselves first, then others, then, if we want, a church. Rather than being motivated by guilt, fear, shame or duty, we can be motivated by love and free will. Is questioning my religion really so wrong? (Click HERE or on image for a digital download.) Unfortunately, for many people, questioning their faith isn’t even allowed and therefore never contemplated. To question a deeply embedded idea is seen to be rebellious, heretical, and therefore punishable. People do not ask questions because they are afraid of being judged or punished - by God or by the Christians who claim to represent Him. What other possible truths could there be? When leaving your religion (or just questioning it) it helps to contemplate other possible truths. For example, what could be an alternative to the particular belief or “fact” that I am struggling with? This doesn’t mean that you have to replace, say, resurrection with reincarnation. Rather, you could replace resurrection with questions such as, “What could this have meant?” “Why was this important?” “Does this point to a deeper truth?” “Why would someone or something want me to believe this?” “What would it mean to me if I let this belief go?” Am I afraid to leave my religion or the friends who come with it? (Click HERE or on image for a digital download.) Before I made the decision to move on from the church, I knew it was a possibility that I would lose all my religious friends, and the thought scared me. It may have been why I hung on so long in a religion that did not sit well with my soul. Could it be possible that you are doing the same? The reality is that many people are very uncomfortable hanging out with people who are not similar to them, especially in beliefs. They just don't know how to be, how to talk, how to relax and how to relate to someone very different from them. On the extreme, some Christian people refuse to fellowship with people who do not share their faith. They are taught by the church that it will cause them to sin if they mix with non-believers. (Click HERE or on image for a digital download.) Leaving your religion might be hard and you might lose friends, but who wants to be friends with people who do not support your personal growth? Real friends want you to grow. Take comfort in the fact that you will make new friends and meet people who love and accept you for who you are, regardless of what you believe. You will not be alone. Will I ever find peace again? Waiting for truth to come with its attending peace is sometimes a serious test of patience. But if you wait long enough and trust in love to reveal itself, a deep and abiding truth will slip in and overthrow your fears. This truth is not just another informational fact. Rather, it’s love and peace that transcends intellectual formulations. It’s the mind finally at rest. It does come! Sure, I’ll admit, occasionally there's still some emotional residue of fear that I’m wrong and will pay for it eternally. This takes a while to depart. It’s like the echo that resounds long after the originating sound is gone. But when I remember that perfect love casts out fear, that residue eventually loses its power over me, no longer crippling me in my own growth.
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The Z-Theory: Mystery, Discovery, and History
In 2009 I had a dream that relieved my theological anxiety and brought peace: "There is a huge waterfall. Oceans of water pour over the rim of the cliff. The water tumbles down and explodes at the bottom. The deluge spreads over the land covering and consuming everything."This blog unpacks my dream and how it comes together to form the theory known as the Z-theory. Mystery: "There is a huge waterfall. Oceans of water pour over the rim of the cliff." We can't see above the rim, but we can guess that it is an infinite source. There is no proof. Only evidence. We can't even say it exists. We just know it must be. It is. This is That-Which-We-Call-God, the Absolute, the Source, Wholly Other, Nirvana, Allah, Yahweh, the Unknowable, the Frontier, the closeted, the Undiscovered. History: "The water tumbles down and explodes at the bottom." This is the evidence we have of what is above the rim. The infinite and invisible are now finite and visible. This is the revelation of the Wholly Other, the exposure, the incarnation of the mystery, the transmission of truth, the manifestation of the unknown, and the discoveries of science. It is the encounter and reception of the unknown now known, the mysterious now perceived. This is what we call the Christ, the Torah, the Buddha, scientific discovery, revelation, the condescension, the incarnation, the transmission, the embodiment, the coming down, and the coming out. Religion: "The deluge spreads out over the land covering and consuming everything." This is the realm of time, history, and culture. This is where spirit and nature meet. It is the manifestation of the good in the muck of the human story. It is forgiveness, reconciliation, and love that find expression in community. Where truth, justice, and love abide, this is the working of spirit in the turmoil of history. This is what we call the spirit, the application of the revelation, the discovery, and the made known. This is the historical impact of the mess and beauty of this world. This is community, unity, peace, and justice amid suffering. Here scriptures are written that try to point to what's been revealed and seen. It spreads throughout the earth filling and fulfilling all living things, binding all together as one. Shared Realities This trinitarian structure describes the reality that everyone shares. No one has exclusive rights. Though our language articulates our own vantage points, they all describe the same thing from a superficial to a complex level.
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Thinking about leaving your religion? Questions are the answer.
When I was considering leaving the ministry and the church, I felt incredibly guilty. You probably feel guilty just reading this, am I right? Put down the hot cup of guilt for a minute and hear me out. I’ve been there, done that, got the T-shirt (literally). Questions are natural. They will arise in the mind. Sure, there is one part of the mind, the fearful part, that wants to conform, fall in line, obey, and not stand out. However, there is another part of us, the wise part, that hungers for truth. Most of us are afraid to question our religion. Because our belief system is often something we grew up with rather than something we chose, we feel as though we cannot or shouldn’t disagree with it. It feels like we’re being traitors to our church, our family, our community, who we are. The thought of questioning your religion is not one that comes suddenly, or at least it wasn’t for me. It started with a few nagging questions or uneasy feelings that I pushed down and put a lid on. The fuller the “question jar” got, the harder it became to close the lid on my doubts. Then, one day, the jar became so jammed with questions that it burst open. They exploded, bred, and demanded answers. The thing is, these questions... such as the existence of Hell or even God... were life and death questions. They literally kept me awake at night. Finally, after a long journey and countless questions, peace of mind came and it's never left. I'm so grateful. It was such a relief to finally be honest with myself about what I really believe to be true versus what I’d been told to believe. I felt so light and free. Contrary to what a lot of religious leaders tell you, questioning your faith is natural and healthy. Whether you are thinking of leaving your religion or just delving deeper, questions help you grow. Questions lead to wisdom and fresh perspectives. Questioning what we believe allows us to step back and look at the bigger picture. If we choose to stick with what we believe in, then at least we know our belief is genuine and not from a place of fear. If we change our mind, at least we are being authentic and truthful with ourselves. There can be no personal peace without personal truth. (Click on image or here for a digital download.) I've come to believe that the only way to get to the truth is through questions. Knowledge can be gained by increments. Like stairs. Wisdom is gained by a series of deaths and resurrections. Like seeds bursting open to bear fruit. Dare to question. Even the hard ones. This is wisdom. Got more questions? One of my books, Questions Are The Answer, is a brutally honest confession of my life, and my struggle with theology and the church. If you've been questioning your beliefs, thinking of leaving your religion, or even struggling with the church or ministry, then this book might help you. I truly hope it does.
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Navigating Love and Changing Religious Beliefs
This couple has a story. They were young believers.They fell in love.They got married. Then they started… oh no… deconstructing! That is… their beliefs started changing. They were still in love, but things had become challenging. Their relationship wasn’t as easy as before. There were questions, awkward moments and silences, arguments, confusion, disappointment, and fear. Sometimes they wondered if they were going to make it. They realize they were in a kind of mixed marriage because they didn’t believe the same. They had to renegotiate their relationship.They had to reassess what their love for each other meant. They came to realize a few things: They are not their beliefs. Beliefs are simply thoughts we especially cling to and adore. They are like ripples on the surface of the water. They’re not the body of water itself. The surface always changes. Thoughts always change. They fell in love with the person… not just their thoughts and beliefs. They remembered when they first met and how love happened, even before they really knew each other’s minds. They committed to change. Remember the marriage vows? For better or for worse, richer or poorer, In sickness and in health, etc? That means they committed to each other as they and things change. Which they will! Including how we look, feel, and think. They discovered love embraces the other in all their authentic uniqueness. In fact, love encourages the other to find and discover and manifest their authentic uniqueness in a safe and secure environment. Here’s one secret ingredient to a passionate marriage: polarity. Like a battery with a positive and negative pole that creates the energy, so does difference and diversity in a relationship. When Lisa and I first met, I was a naïve Canadian boy and she was a fiesty Alabama girl. We were so different from one another in so many ways. But the passion in our relationship was on fire and still is. Yes, in many ways we merged, integrated, became entangled and enmeshed, but over time we had to learn how to individuate. This happened later in our marriage. But oh my the sparks flew and reignited our romance. Always remember… you fell in love with them, not their beliefs.
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Nurturing Spiritual Health For Lasting Inner Peace
How healthy are you? I'm not talking about apple-eating-healthy, I'm talking about taking-care-of-your-soul healthy. "The same pattern applies to all sports: When you restore position, you restore function. When you improve position, you improve function” This is from Dr. Kelly Starrett's Becoming a Supple Leopard: The Ultimate Guide to Resolving Pain, Preventing Injury, and Optimizing Athletic Performance. The above quote about physical health also applies to all other areas where health is important, including spirituality.If we are honest with ourselves, most of religion is about tweaking this or that thought or behaviour. Usually to conform to what is expected or required by the group.It’s like rearranging the furniture on a sinking ship.Another analogy used in social activism is that it’s important to pull drowning people out of the river. But at some point, someone needs to go upstream and stop whoever’s throwing them in.Or, like the philosopher Judith Butler suggests… how ultimately helpful is it to help the vulnerable? Shouldn’t we be asking what people, systems, and conditions made these people vulnerable in the first place?The same goes for spirituality. When we lack peace of mind. When we have no joy. When we have no patience. When we hate everybody. When we are not kind or generous or compassionate. Is it ultimately helpful, say, to just work on our peace of mind by listening to this or that guru? Reading this or that book? Doing these or those exercises? (This watercolor print is called "The Need to Leave". Sometimes it's just time to leave and find our own path. You can click on the image or HERE to take you to where I'm selling prints of this piece.)Shouldn’t we, at some point, ask ourselves, “Wait a minute! The religion I’m practising promises all these things and I have none of them even though I’ve been following it for years!” It’s time to go deeper. All the way to the root.Here’s the thing: I can’t tell you what the root is for you. But I can say that just admitting to yourself, “This isn’t working!” is enough to get the ball rolling.Just start with that, and see what happens.
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Why Can Deconstruction Make You Feel Lonely?
Why Can Deconstruction Make You Feel Lonely? If you are a part of a church community, and you start to question your beliefs, you will probably start to feel more and more isolated from everyone else. You used to feel like a part of the group, that you belonged to the community. But now, because your mind is changing, you are starting to feel at odds with the herd mentality. This is normal! We all know what it's like to feel lonely while in a crowd of people. Sometimes the only healthy action we can take is to separate ourselves from the group, find some solitude, and figure out how we want to move forward... With the herd or independently. “The time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life’s cruelest irony.” This is because you now realize that up to now you've had a codependent relationship with the group. In order to belong, you sacrificed your personal autonomy and agency. So you need to separate and maybe even divorce the group. You need to embrace a new kind of loneliness. This always starts in your head and heart, then eventually leads to you actually doing it in real life. But I want to promise you that on the other side of this separation and divorce, you will learn how to become a strong and independent person who chooses interdependent relationships and avoids codependent ones. You will still feel loneliness. But you will see that your solitude has become a necessary ingredient in your ability to find, create, and be in healthy relationships. Because spiritual independence is a new and dynamic way of being... in solitude and with others.
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How to Deal with the Loneliness of Deconstruction
Deconstruction and Loneliness Deconstruction, like most other experiences of changes, can make people feel lonely because it questions meanings, rejects fixed ideas, and focuses on personal views, creating a sense of isolation as individuals deal with uncertainty and complexity. When I started my deconstruction journey I had no idea how lonely I would feel. Because this is what often happens when you begin questioning the status quo. When you stop following the herd and start thinking for yourself, relationships inevitably shift. Some deepen. Others fade. And that transition can feel like loss before it feels like freedom. ( This image is available for download and licensing) Understand that Loneliness Is A Normal Part of The Journey Although deconstruction can be lonely I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. In fact, there are moments when it may actually be healthy. There are lots of reasons why I believe this. One of the biggest is that sometimes the community we leave behind isn't good for us anymore. It may have worked for a season, but over time it becomes a place where authenticity is limited or even discouraged. It might have required conformity to belong. It might have warned against questioning. It might have made you feel like you had to hide parts of yourself in order to stay accepted. When that’s the case, loneliness isn’t just the absence of community. It’s the space that opens up when you stop performing a version of yourself that no longer fits. Deconstruction Means Spiritual Independence Deconstruction often leads to spiritual independence It means no longer being dependent on others to show you the way.It means no longer being codependent with others in toxic relationships. It does mean learning how to claim your own agency and your autonomy to be self-determining. To be the captain of your own ship and the master of your life and the one driving who you are and how you are in the world. Scary at first but after a while you get used to it. And... you find others who get you because they too are spiritually independent and respect that in others. Why Experiencing Loneliness During Your Deconstruction Isn't Necessarily Bad There is a reason I often tell people that this loneliness, as uncomfortable as it is, may not be something to rush away from. It can be a sign that you are no longer willing to sacrifice authenticity for belonging. And that changes everything. What once felt like “home” may no longer fit who you are becoming. And what feels like emptiness may actually be the beginning of something more honest. Build New Connections My number one piece of advice for people experiencing this loneliness is simple, but not always easy: Make new friendships. Restore old ones. Start rebuilding connection slowly and intentionally, without trying to force it back into what it used to be. When I left the church in 2010, the loneliness was real. But Lisa and I intentionally tried to start making new friends, restoring older friendships, and taking advantage of meeting new people, including online, who love and appreciate us as our authentic selve Today, I appreciate the people in my life who allow me to be myself. I don’t take that lightly. They allow me to be me, and I allow them to be themselves. And in that kind of space, something surprising happens: love doesn’t depend on conformity anymore. It depends on honesty. And you can find that too.
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The Journey Of Healing Trauma and Embracing Wholeness
Let me try to explain these cartoons because I think it’s important. Concepts like this are crucial for your spiritual health and growth! Victor Frankl said, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” I’ve also been reading Mattieu Ricard, considered the happiest man on earth. Through reading about him I discovered that he, through meditation, etc., trained himself to collapse this space between stimulus and response so that even auto-responses, like squinting the eyes at a loud noise, are controlled. It’s not that there isn’t a response, it’s that the space between stimulus and response collapses to almost imperceptibility. I think this is where love is, true love. I’m reminded of an ancient Tibetan monk who had many disciples. His son died, and he went into a cave to mourn. He didn’t come out for many weeks. His disciples were perplexed and challenged their master: “You taught us that all suffering is an illusion, yet you mourned for so long! Why?” He responded, “Because this illusion was very convincing.” I love is vulnerability, authenticity, and honesty! Sometimes collapsing that space, as well as integrating what we think or feel happened, takes what we perceive as time. (Click on the cartoon for a digital download of it!) This also relates to theories about time… that it is not real, but a human construct to help us cope with our experience of reality. One idea is that time is simply a series of nows. A series of nows, linked, we perceive as linear time. But the fullness of time is now. Now. Now. Forever, the space between nows, perceptibly collapsed, is all now. There is no past because it doesn’t exist now. There is no future because it doesn’t exist now either. Infinity is fully present now. So, the narrative may go like this: we feel we are not broken. But then we experience trauma, even trauma caused by spiritual abuse. Then we heal. Then we are back to the feeling of not broken. Our ability to collapse this space between feeling not broken to feeling not broken is an important process to learn, otherwise we get stuck in this in-betweenness of not feeling whole. I use the word “feeling” on purpose because I truly believe we are not broken, but we can certainly feel it when we are traumatized. I think this traumatization is a fluctuation in our mental state that can be temporary. Like Sinéad O’Connor’s therapist told her; the reason you go to therapy is to find out there’s nothing wrong with you. Sure, there's a ton of work that occurs in this space. Research. Writing. Theorizing. Therapy. Self-awareness. And so on. All to build or believe a narrative that makes sense to us of how we got from point A… not broken, to point B… not broken… but with an impressive in-between experience that seems to challenge this not-brokenness. What about all those feelings of loss, suffering, pain, struggle, alienation, grief, all of that, and feeling broken? So we build or believe a narrative that helps us make sense of it all. We choose a narrative that works. This is why I think collapsing that space is crucial to a speedy feeling of recovery, of not-brokenness. (Click on image or here for a digital download.) This reminds me of another story. In the film The Last Samurai, there is a Samurai lord who has spent his whole life searching for the perfect cherry blossom. Without success. (Spoiler alert!) On his last day, dying on the battlefield, a wind picks up and blows thousands of cherry blossoms across the field. Some land in his hand, and he says, “Perfect! They are all perfect!” I knew this to be true. But how did he get from point A… a beautiful cherry blossom is just a beautiful cherry blossom, to searching for the perfect one… to point B… all cherry blossoms are beautiful cherry blossoms? Because he finally knew that they are all perfect. Stay with me. I’m going somewhere with this that relates to the cartoon communicating that you’re not broken. This is how I view all salvation narratives. Yes, all of them! They are all attempts to explain what we think happens in the in-between of perfection and perfection that we call our life experience and all of history. Let’s take the Christian one, which is the one I grew up with. The narrative goes something like this: We start in the Garden whole. Then we fall. Then we are rescued, repaired, and reconciled. Then we are whole again! From not broken to not broken. This is the Christian salvation narrative. The collapsed version. What about all that happened and happens in between… all those feelings of temptations, sin, rejected by God, alienated from God, fear of punishment, enmity between people? All the Christian narratives attempt to do just this, all in their own unique ways. But the collapsed version of this is very simple… not broken to not broken. The space in between these two realties that are really one reality, is where the narrative tries to make sense of it. The seemingly long salvation narrative, collapsed into imperceptibly, collapsed into one now, is that we are not broken. I listened to Gabor Maté on a video where he says, “So healing is actually recognizing our wholeness… and when we do, and realize that nothing was ever broken, and that if nothing was ever broken, therefore there was nothing ever bad that ever happened to us… If our wholeness was never destroyed then there was no damage. And if there was no damage, then there’s no sinners, there’s no perpetrators.” (@raisethevibration on Tiktok). So my claim is that our salvation narratives as well as our therapy narratives are our ways of coming to this understanding of our wholeness, our unbrokenness. You are not broken. This is good self-love. Two disclaimers: This isn’t to devalue the narratives we construct to explain our pain, or the narratives we construct to explain our spiritual struggle. We value them. But we can learn to collapse them into imperceptibility. This also isn’t to assume that what I just wrote isn’t just another narrative I built and believe to attempt to explain something I think is true. Related Blog Posts The Healing Power of Acknowledging Spiritual HurtWhy We Need Companionship During Difficult Times
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Understanding The Loneliness Associated with Being Authentic
No one warned me how lonely freedom and authenticity that came with my deconstruction process could be. In Moorjani’s book “Dying to be Me” she shares a near death experience that changed her. Maybe you experienced a near death experience in your spiritual life that changed you. I call it deconstruction… when we see the light and come back different. A big change in Moorjani’s life is that she’s lonelier than before her experience: “… although I have made some new friends… I seem to have difficulty reconnecting with many of my old ones. I’m not as social as I was in the past, and I don’t enjoy the same things. I had a lot of friends before, but now I only let a very, very few people into my private life, many of whom I met through an NDE group over the last few years… “I’m also still devoted to my immediate family members– my husband, mother, and brother. They were with me right through my crisis and my hours of need, and I feel very attached to them. It’s become difficult for me to feel that close to others. “It’s not that I try to be a loner…” Because she’s fearlessly herself, there are few who understand her. Can you relate to this? I can. Have you lost that connection with some friends and family because they do not understand you anymore? Your loneliness is often the consequence of being authentic and true to yourself. There are only a few who get you, who are welcomed into your inner life because they don’t constantly judge you. You can relax with them. Your previous self died and you came back different and now you can make new friends who’ve had a similar experience. Like me! Much love my friends!
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