My Deconversion Story: To be continued

“i found god in myself

and i loved her

i loved her fiercely”

― Ntozake Shange

Why I let go of god.

I never thought this day would come. This is honestly the last thing I would’ve imagined to change on this journey of self-discovery and healing, but it happened.

I don’t believe in God anymore.

So, how did I get here? We have to start at the beginning.

Some of my first memories in life are of church pews, gospel music, and bible stories. I went to a Christian pre-school and my foundational schooling was at a private Christian academy in Compton, California. When I first learned to read, it was from a Bible with vibrant pictures inside. I won a speech competition in 1st grade after reciting from memory all of Psalm 37. On top of all of this, I was in church 2 times, sometimes 3 times a week for Bible study, choir rehearsal, and Sunday service because my pastor (who was also my Dad) said so. I didn’t have much of a choice but to believe. It was all around me.

I have really vivid memories of being around 7 years old and feeling like a bad person for every mistake I ever made. I would get on my knees in the bathroom, alone, and cry to God to save me. I would do it over and over because I didn’t feel saved enough. My dad would do an “invitation” every Sunday, but even then I knew that I couldn’t possibly walk down the aisle and get saved like everyone else. What would the church people say? The pastor’s kids sin?? They need help?? They should be super saved! The pressure was real. I always felt like I needed to please God AND my father. For several reasons, I never felt good enough for either.

Like any good Christian girl growing up, I believed in staying pure and living right. I wore a purity ring into my teenage years. I don’t know how I had any friends in middle school. I would carry a bible in my backpack and argue with the other religious Black boy in my class, he was a Jehovah’s witness. I argued with anyone that would listen. In private, I asked for forgiveness after I discovered the magic of masturbation at 12 but continued and felt guilty. Every new year’s resolution was to stop and say no to my flesh, with no avail. I wanted so badly to be accepted by the girls at church. I didn’t feel cool enough for the girls that had sidekicks and boyfriends. I pushed away the girls that were actually compatible with me because they reminded me that I was different (I still regret this). In all of this, God felt like an extra parent that I needed to make happy. My self esteem at this time sunk lower and lower with every attempt to be good enough, Christian enough.

In high school, I joined the Christian club and would go to meetings at lunch and after school. I found joy in singing in several groups. It’s where I found my people. One of my closest friends from choir came out to me after a rehearsal one day. I feel sick and terrible about this still to this day. My response was not one of love for my friend, the person that laughed with me and sang with me everyday. I told him that I still thought it was a sin. I remember him asking me, “Would you come to my wedding?” and I couldn’t say yes. It was a shameful moment that I did without hesitation because of what I was taught.

In college, I was sure I would find my people either through music or Christian groups. I found them in both, the campus’ only gospel choir. It just made sense. I had a place to get Bible study as well as a musical outlet for my singing, plus this is what I knew. I’ve been singing and studying the Bible since I could read and speak. However, this is where the conflicts started to increase inside of me. One thing I had always been passionate about was my identity as a Black person and calling out racism and injustice. Trayvon was murdered when I was a freshman which jump started my activism on campus. My analysis on race expanded to gender as I reflected more on my experiences as a Black woman.

I didn’t know at the time, but all those conversations freshman year about colorism, desirability, dating, slut shaming, etc was helping me develop my understanding of feminism. I had to question where I even learned these ideas about women, and it kept pointing back to church and my experiences there. Why was I always made to cover up my legs? Why were abstinence lessons always focused on my ability to say no and not on the boys not to pressure me? Why were women not allowed in the pulpit at my church? Why did I not know anything of substance about women in the Bible other than Eve, Ruth needing a Boaz, and the Marys? It wasn’t making sense to me nor could I reconcile it with my feminism so I rejected it.

 At the same time, I was experiencing so many new things in college away from the control of my father. I drank for the first time, went to parties, hooked up with guys. The problem was even though these were normal signs of growing up, I was convinced they were all so sinful. I was torn up inside and as I was taught, I attributed every perceived negative thing in my life to the fact that I was sinning. I’m single because I’m sinning. I’m feeling depressed because I’m sinning. I can’t handle my liquor because my body is telling me that I’m sinning (lol). So I rejected white Christianity to reconcile my beliefs about blackness, and I rejected the misogyny of the church and parts of the Bible to reconcile my feminism.

Then I needed to reject the homophobia and parts of the Bible that condemned homosexuality, rejected the sex and sexuality negativity, rejected the favoritism, rejected the blaming of sin for negative experiences in my life. I was rejecting so much internally that I didn’t know which parts I was keeping. I wanted to keep God, Jesus, and the music, and the way I felt when things were good. I wanted to keep the feeling that my life was planned out for my good.  

Things really got complicated after I had sex with my boyfriend at the time. This was after I turned 22. I had been a late bloomer for most things, including dating and sex. I was so happy to finally be experiencing these milestones. However, I felt like trash after that night. I felt alone. Part of the reason was because my boyfriend was an unfeeling narcissist with no sensitivity at all, the other reason was I still felt like I had committed the ultimate sin. 20+ years of purity culture will do that to you, even if intellectually I knew virginity was a construct and that nothing about me had fundamentally changed. I cried in the shower that night and ran to Planned Parenthood where I had my first real sex education after years of “just don’t it.” I couldn’t talk to my choir friends, I knew what they would say. I couldn’t talk to my parents. Thank goodness I had my sister who has never, ever judged me for anything. Again, I still felt so alone.

The aftermath of my breakup and not being able to hold on to my virginity as I sign that I was still a good Christian messed with my head. At the same time, I was in law school and dealing with the trauma of that challenging environment. Law school was also the first time my friend group wasn’t composed of mostly Christians. I remember eating lunch one day with a classmate and friend who happened to be an atheist. Smart, funny, well-adjusted and woke, we got along so well. I remember him recounting the story of Job from the Bible. I knew this story in and out. But it was different hearing this story from a place of skepticism. To hear the story with the simple question, “Why?” For so long, the answer to that question was always “Our human understanding is too limited for God/God’s ways are higher than ours/It’s about [insert x life lesson].” But none of that felt satisfying enough to explain why an all-loving, all-powerful God would destroy someone’s life, to prove a point? Then, demand praise and worship.

Why would God need any of that? It sounded so human. It sounded like my dad. Why would God have any of these narcissistic, human traits? The more I looked at these stories from a perspective of Why, the more my faith unraveled. Why would God create the serpent in the Garden in the first place? Why was the serpent portrayed as evil, he was telling the truth! Once the infallibility of the Bible was in question, it became harder and harder for me to accept the God described in it.

By this time, I was already done with church. Not only was I traumatized from 20+ years of infighting, politics, and petty-ness behind the scenes, but I also was done sitting under pastors whose messages either sounded like their own prejudices wrapped up in scripture or generic motivational speeches with God sprinkled in. It all felt so made up.

And maybe that’s what got to me the most, I could have continued and been a so-called “progressive” Christian and took what I could agree with and throw out the rest but that didn’t feel authentic to me. I remember my most recent ex-boyfriend asking me how I could possibly say I served God if I didn’t believe in his word. At the time, I felt really defensive and angry that he would even ask me that but now I know that was a question I needed to ask myself. Could I really serve this God if I no longer believed most of the things in the Old testament even happened and if they did, I was disgusted by that angry, petty description of God. I didn’t think I could.

Self reflection and healing also helped me acknowledge and face just how much emotional and psychological abuse I had endured from my parents and the church in the guise of ‘Christian Love.’ They really believed they were helping me. It has done wonders for my self esteem to let go of the idea that I’m a wretched human being just for being born. I was able to give myself permission to love everything about me once I was no longer afraid that my self expression and identity would send me to Hell. Once I was able to see the simple cause and effect of my life (imperfect parents = trauma growing up, hard work and luck = opportunity and success), it was more and more clear to me that nothing in my life truly pointed to the existence of a god. When I expanded that logic to the trauma and suffering in the world (slavery, genocide, wars), it was even more clear that there was likely no grand design to this, just the nature of imperfect humans figuring this out over millions of years. Where was the divine intervention while people suffered needlessly? God just stopped caring after the Old Testament? Or God was never there. The latter still makes the most sense to me.

This has not been an easy transition and I’m still processing all of my feelings because Christianity was very much wrapped up in my identity. However, I am celebrating being free from one of the sources of trauma in my life. If anything, life seems even more precious to me since by marvelous accident, I am here and alive for a short time on this earth. I get to spend the rest of my time here free from oppressive dogmas, and free to be more authentically myself.

Affirmation: I am more than my trauma. I can let go of what no longer serves me. There is nothing wrong with me or my process.

This and more stories and affirmations will be included in “There’s Nothing Wrong With You” in the Acknowledge We’ve Been Lied To section.