noah / violet / kris

i know i said i'd make this post tomorrow, but i can't stop thinking about it even after attempting to distract myself, so i'm posting it tonight. fair warning that this post will include a lot of discussion on christianity, atheism, religious guilt, and homophobia and transphobia.

to be completely honest, one of the biggest things that contributed to me leaving behind my christian beliefs is constantly hearing things like "being transgender is an abomination" and "you can't be homosexual and a christian." as someone who identifies as nonbinary and gay, it's not very surprising these comments pushed me away from the faith. someone told me once that you can choose to be religious but you can't choose to be queer. if something i can't change about myself (and not for lack of trying) bars me from a relationship with god, why did i spend so long even trying? if god is real and truly hates queer people, why didn't he listen when i was twelve and begged him to make me cis and straight? i'm too scared to mention this to my mom. i'm too afraid of what she would say. she doesn't even know i'm not cis, and when she found out i was queer she asked me if it was because the youtubers i was watching made me "think it was okay." i was thirteen. and i'm scared that her opinion hasn't changed in all these years. if it hasn't, i don't want to know.

i've been deconstructing my beliefs for some time now. it started with not being sure if i believed in christianity, to not knowing if i believed in any religion, to now i'm not sure i even believe in a god at all. it's hard to admit that, harder than anything else. growing up, "atheist" was basically treated like a swear word. people who held atheistic beliefs were all but equivalized to demons. i'm hesitant to describe myself as an atheist, despite knowing i fit the description in a technical sense. it feels like a dirty word, something you shouldn't want to be labeled as. almost like transgender and gay were when i was twelve. history is doomed to repeat itself, i guess.

as mentioned, admitting to myself that i'm no longer a christian really helped relieve a lot of the religious guilt and anxiety i felt. it was like a weight lifted off my shoulders; i stopped spending nights laying awake wondering if i would go to hell. i stopped worrying that god hated me for who i was. i stopped constantly fearing that i wasn't really saved like i thought i was. i begged god to take me to heaven for so many years, begged him to keep me from going to hell. but i don't think i ever truly felt like he was there and listening. i never felt the relief and security everyone describes salvation as. i tried, i really did.

there are a lot of things i don't understand about christianity and i don't know that i ever have. if god is all powerful, why did he even create hell? he could've killed satan, snapped him out of existence, but instead he decided to keep him around for when adam inevitably sinned? and on that note, why put the temptation of the tree in the garden in the first place? you can eat anything in the garden except this tree that i literally put there and the guy i decided not to snap out of existence is going to tempt you to eat it so you can bring about the destruction of man? it all feels almost a bit silly when you think about it long enough.

one of the biggest things i don't understand is if jesus died for everyone on earth, why do you have to be christian to go to heaven? jesus died for everyone, but you still go to hell if you don't "accept" that he died for you by following a religion. it makes absolutely zero sense. everyone says god doesn't send people to hell, but he's not exactly not sending them to hell either. he's god, he literally makes the rules; if god didn't want people to go to hell, they wouldn't, whether they were christian or not. it's hard to believe in a loving god who just allows people to die and go to somewhere as terrible as hell.

another huge thing that contributed to me letting go of my faith was learning about what was happening in palestine. i would open social media and see photos of dismembered children, parents carrying their child's remains, people begging for help and aide that they were denied. and then i would go to church, and hear things like "pray for israel." a guest preacher talked about visiting israel; he said he went around the whole country and didn't see any damage, but they weren't allowed to step foot into gaza. how do you not understand what that means? how can you see that with your own eyes and still support that horrid state? if being christian means i have to support the genocide of the palestinian people, i want nothing to do with it.

honestly, i'm surprised it's taken me so long to realize i don't believe in christianity anymore. i've identified as a therian since i was fifteen. my belief in therianthropy includes past lives and shared souls; far from the beliefs of a christian. i genuinely believe that i was an animal, multiple animals actually, in a past life. i believe i share a soul with these animals, that my soul is fragmented and split into human, cat, wolf, and ocelot; never in my life have i felt fully human. christians don't tend to believe in reincarnation or split souls... i'd say it's fair to assume none of them do. except teenaged me, apparently.

i feel like this post is getting too long. i've been writing for over an hour. my final thought is that i can only hope i won't have to explain all of this to my mother, that she'll accept that we don't share the same beliefs and won't try and force her religion onto me anymore than she has since i was a child going to sunday school. i would never try and convert her to atheism; i would like to think she would extend me the same grace. i hope she doesn't truly believe it's the internet or social media that has changed my mind, and that she trusts that i'm smart enough to come to my own conclusions on the world and decide what i believe without blindly following my family's. most of what has contributed to my loss of faith has been things i've heard and been taught while sitting in a church pew, not what i've read online.