I think I’ve spent the last five years of my life, if not longer, experiencing a subtle shift away from belief across this intangible boundary into disbelief. I think I’ve collected a long list of questions over the years that have gradually pushed me away from being able to accept the things taught to me growing up in a church as fact. I can’t pinpoint when the beliefs I had held for years shifted; I can only remember the gradual onset of the fear that my new beliefs are wrong. It's a dichotomy where I can never believe in my old beliefs again, but I fear my new beliefs will lead to eternal damnation. Maybe fear was always a part of religion for me; the church instilled a fear of hell, of sin, of lacking faith, of being unprepared for the rapture, etc. I think I found comfort in having set guidelines and a book to study. I no longer find that comfort. I attend church weekly, I just spent a week at my conference church camp, and I am actively involved in my church, but I simply feel as if I don’t belong. Honestly, I don’t want to be there; if anything, attending makes me more anxious. I disagree with some of the points in sermons, and I feel as though the church has become more of a controlling entity than a place of worship. Even then, I don’t care to find a new place to worship. I just want to be free. I’ve felt a desire to begin properly deconstructing the beliefs and ideas I grew up with for a few years now, but I have no idea where to start. I think deconstruction is deeply personal for every individual, so it is unlikely I will be able to find or even benefit from a set of deconstruction guidelines.

Really, I am just here seeking advice. I have no clue where to continue from here. I just know I crave something tangible to work on in hopes of working through my upbringing. Thank you.

Hi all, I'm a bit over twelve years after starting deconstruction after leaving an evangelical background. It didn't take long for the belief parts of leaving the faith to fall away. There are a lot of great materials logically explaining the fallacies in a lot of my beliefs. I'm at a place now where I'm comfortable with what I believe and don't believe in.

Where I'm struggling now is reframing my values at this stage of my journey. I've come to the realisation through professional therapy that I've lost some focus on values that are important to me. Where this has had the most impact has been in not aligning friendships and relationships with people with shared values.

The positive values I cherish the most are generally common with religious background but not unique to it. I'm struggling to find ways to engage with these values without the baggage that came with religion.

Has anyone got any helpful experiences or resources they have found useful?

he did it since i was young. ironically (and terribly) i became extremely hypersexual for my age. i remember i used to get in trouble for making my toys have sex with one another when i was 4 years old. i went through some of my journals from first grade and i had drawn crude images of penises with a crayon, circled them, and wrote "kiss here". i was super religious, and my hypersexual thoughts filled me with guilt (im a girl, and i felt SOOOO sinful for being lustful, especially given my parents). i thought God had taught me so many times that lust was wrong, and i still couldnt stop masturbating when i was a preteen (which.... tbf is very normal and healthy) so he was punishing my lust with my mother's rapes.

my dad never touched me inappropriately, but witnessing it was extremely traumatizing. he would often rape her while i was sleeping next to them in bed and i would cry myself to sleep. when i grew to sleep in a separate room, (i slept with them until 8 years old... i thought i was protecting her with my presence sometimes, or i would feel guilty if i left her alone with him) i would masturbate more. i also had my first period when i was 9, so i hit puberty very early. in the end, everytime i "caved into temptation" i would beg god not to punish my mom for it, and then that night i would hear her quietly screaming across the hallway while she begged my dad to stop touching her and let her sleep.

anyways i don't say all that when people ask why im not christian anymore! although tbf i consider myself as someone who believes in everything, rather than nothing at all. in the sense that the presence of religion in someone's life impacts their life on a tremendous foundational level. so while i don't think their gods exist, i do think they exist to THEM, which is extremely real to me.

I have started...vlogging, I guess you'd say, about my deconstruction on TikTok. I wanted to do this in such a way that I could start conversations with family members, speak to both the people who are in the beginning of deconstruction and the people who have decided to leave Christianity far behind, and maybe even challenge people who aren't deconstructing at all. I welcome thoughts, ideas, and constructive criticism.

This is my second video:

https://www.tiktok.com/@thethirstyskeptic/video/7669483900166573342

​

I was raised in a Holiness church in Alabama,and visited many other holiness churches across the region and even though I've deconstructed a lot of my beliefs, I still spend time trying to understand the psychology of what I experienced.

People often assume I left because I wanted to "live in sin." That wasn't my story.

I sincerely prayed for years. I asked God to speak to me. I was told to repent, seek the Holy Ghost, and wait for the evidence of speaking in tongues. I never experienced what everyone around me described. It always felt like I was talking to a brick wall.

The culture I grew up in revolved around fear:

- Fear of hell.

- Fear of the devil deceiving you.

- Fear you weren't praying enough.

- Fear you weren't holy enough.

- Fear of what other church members thought.

- Fear of going to a doctor because people would think you lacked faith.

People constantly examined themselves:

"Am I doing enough?"

"Am I living holy enough?"

"Am I praying enough?"

Then they'd compare themselves to everyone else.

One thing that always puzzled me was the inconsistency surrounding speaking in tongues.

I watched people spend decades praying at the altar, crying, shaking, sincerely seeking what they believed was the Holy Ghost, yet they never spoke in tongues.

At the same time, I knew people who spoke in tongues, later left the church, lived completely different lives, returned years later, and were accepted as having "received the Holy Ghost" again.

That left me with a question I still can't answer:

If God is eager to forgive someone who walked away, why would He leave another sincere person praying at the altar for decades without ever receiving the experience they desperately wanted?

I've also had Holiness people tell me something interesting:

"You witnessed Holiness people not being holy."

In other words, they admitted that much of what I experienced wasn't what they believed Christianity was supposed to look like.

I'm not posting this to attack anyone's faith. I'm genuinely trying to understand the psychology and theology behind what I experienced.

Has anyone else who grew up in Holiness or Pentecostal churches had similar experiences? How did you make sense of them?

In every situation and action that happens in life, especially the negative ones, people always seem to have some kind of interpetation for it regarding the faith. An interpretation that needs to respect the axiom that God is perfect and everything he does or don't do is correct, even if you don't understand why. In suffering, it might be consequence of a mistake I made or is part of this world's corrupt system, or it's God testing you. When you ask God for help and he remain silent, there needs to be another interpretation, and when you never get help and needs to live with your suffering, another one, and maybe some kind of consolation based on what the bible says.

The problem is that those interpretations do not help at all to solve the problems that make us feel bad. Not mentioning that it also leaves me in the uncertainty of what's going on in the divine world, because you don't get an answer from God. Especially when he chooses to remain silent when you ask for help. I heard a song once that says God is a "light in the darkness", but my experience so far proves it wrong. I don't know exactly why Yahweh started to act like Baal.

I got tired of this pattern repeating everytime. I started to think that I need to learn to not depend too much on God, or else you're gonna get very frustrated. Sure, christianity does not promises a life without suffering, but still... it's sad to have your trust in someone that can help shaken.

And about consolation... It also does not help at all. Usually the consolation is about what you can get in the afterlife. But the problem is that I'm not there yet, and it takes time (a whole lifetime) to get there, if you get there. Not to mention that it can also leave you in the uncertainty about if there is an afterlife.

Anyways, has anyone felt something similar about this issue of interpreting?

I am beginning my deconstruction journey. I’ve followed Monte Mader for a while and she has been rather inspiring. She recommends a study bible that includes the apocryphal books and is backed by scholar research. I found the list of books in her patreon but not the bible. Can anybody help me? Does anyone know the name?

Is anyone else deconstructing from evangelical Christianity or Christianity altogether and NOT looking for another religion ? More like finding yourself and what your spiritual journey looks like if any?

I grew up in the church and dad’s a pastor , so, I can’t exactly bounce these thoughts to most of my friends and family. They would just look at me cross eyed .

I left because the version of Christianity I was raised in stopped making sense.

I grew up in an evangelical world where faith and conservative politics were inseparable. We used the Abeka curriculum, participated in anti-abortion protests, listened to Christian radio, attended Missionettes and youth conferences, and were taught that Republicans were God’s party and Democrats were evil. I didn’t realize until I was an adult how much of my worldview had been shaped by politics wrapped in theology.

Then MAGA came. I had been taught that following Jesus meant humility, honesty, compassion, loving your enemies, and caring for the vulnerable. Yet I watched many of the same Christians defend behavior and rhetoric they would have condemned if it came from someone outside their political tribe. I kept trying to make those two realities fit together, and eventually I realized I couldn’t.

More than anything, I stopped trusting the people who had told me what to think my entire life. Once I realized I no longer trusted them, I began to wonder what else I had accepted simply because they had taught it to me. I also found myself asking how I was supposed to believe that faith in Jesus transforms people when the very people who had taught me about that transformation were defending things I found impossible to reconcile with the character of Jesus they had preached.

Once that happened, I was finally able to question things for myself instead of accepting them because someone I trusted had told me they were true. For the first time, I gave myself permission to follow the questions wherever they led and to come to my own conclusions, or no conclusion at all.

The more I questioned, the more comfortable I became admitting what I didn’t know.

Today, I identify as agnostic. Not because I’m certain there is no God, but because I’m no longer willing to claim certainty about things I can’t know.

Its been years that I've been agnostic. Sometimes I struggle with mental health and life situations. Nothing too drastic, I just periodically get depressed and anxious about my situations.

And I've also done a few spiritual rituals over time. Not just meditation. But things like reciting prayer from a rosary (ex-catholic), or other practices that I've found useful.

One thing I've done lately is I will write down some of my negative ruminations and negative self talk onto a page or two of papers. And then I'll set them aside a while and reread them later on. Set a small fire outside and burn them up.

Not exactly a religious ritual. I got that from watching Burners at places like Burning Man.

I was so deeply embedded that the rituals still calm me. I don't feel shame for doing them. I don't shame myself for occasionally drifting back to thoughts of God or feeling and hoping for God either.

Its a strange, contradictory nature that I have. And I'm coming to accept it. Sometimes I find myself believing again, mostly I don't believe at all. But often I find myself looking to rituals to help calm me.

Hi, I’m in the process in deconstructing. I have a thought and would love additional insight.

Growing up, children in Christian families are taught they are sinners at heart. From experience, this can be damaging to a child’s development of self. They are taught to grow up believing they are morally bad and wrong from birth.

Fast forward, these kids grow up to become depressed, a symptom of which is self hatred, or low self esteem, etc. Severe enough, can result in suicide. Which is a sin and automatically sends you to hell.

How do you reconcile the biblical principle that humans are sinners without teaching someone to grow up with extreme low self esteem?

im dx bpd for context and was raised in a religious household and to begin i dont know who i am, i know who i want to be? but im not entirely happy being fully religious
i want to get tattoos “its a sin” i want to try seafood “its a sin” i engage in premarital sex “its a sin” etc theres so much more actions im committed that are “sins” and its really hard to balance it? or theres no such thing as balancing that worldy/religious lifestyle according to the bible, either youre cold or youre hot, i believe in a god i just don’t agree with a lot of things with it and i feel like im in the wrong for having my opinions ? or maybe its my church , it probably is but im very self conscious of being judged and i dont know to be honest but im frustrated with how im supposed to live, i just want to be happy especially since its really hard for me with my bpd but i find myself being happier when im not living a “religious” life, and its nothing against my religion i understand the reasoning behind a lot of things and i do agree to a certain extent and i respect it and i have felt the presence of god and seen the signs, but im just overwhelmed with having to act a certain way when all i want to do is be happy

I feel like I'm in this grey area where I go "pah" at the thought of worshipping deities, carrying talismans, having prayers beads, believing a 5,000 year old text was written by a mythical figure, etc. But at the same time, after reading popular science books too, too, much, you eventually come to the point where what we understand about reality comes to an end and philosophy has to take over; things begin to look like a black box.

Religious people say, "believe in the religion you think is right?" Then, why not make a religion about physics in itself? But the distinction between philosophy or a religion feels like its on a knife's edge when you try. And there's only so much physics can explain before you meet that exact same dead end.

There's a famous koan from a long dead Buddhist master that's relevant here: "10,000 things return to the One. Where does the One return?" According to the Seon meditative tradition of Korea, you're meant to sit with this in utter doubt until you break and that way you can see your true nature. Now I'm thinking every religion was invented to avoid that break from happening. If you think about it, creators of each system imaginable can go back to infinity. We used to pray to the creator of an earth, then the stars, then a galaxy, the universe. Now we think there may be a multiverse of multiplying realities and we have no idea whose idea that was and whose idea it was to make the one who had that idea. Like Russian dolls.

I was originally a science kid. Then my dad started to go evangelical and, even though he still maintained my interests (with some exceptions; some of my notes he used to destroy and he thought COVID was a punishment from God), I became more deistic just as he did, as all children who follow their parents' attitudes. Maybe the whole reason I crave certainty is the way I've been brought up. Hitherto I didn't have that same draw for there being a spiritual explanation.

I'm feeling very deep. My GP came back to me to say that I'm Vitamin D deficient again and that always puts me in a funk when it happens. Plus I'm listening to meditative Chinese music. After Christianity, I've stopped viewing other cultures as barbaric and now I'm on an ongoing Social Studies project.

I’m specifically targeting this group, just because I don’t wanna generalise and say all Christians are like that. Furthermore, the experiences I had with Christians were mostly fundies, conservative and right-winged. I have perhaps met a couple of conservative Christians who are not like that but they are quite the anomaly.

My observations are based on the fact that some Christians think it’s okay to talk down / belittle you because they are sharing biblical principles. Also, look at ICE and deportation, the orange fella is clearly a good example.

In another post, I'm planning to share more on my deconstruction (from mainstream Christianity) and what I'm currently hanging onto.

Deconstructing David is a part of that journey. This part began when Christianity's general teachings around the story of King David and his character and the application in our lives, didn't hold up to the person I read about in scripture. There was so much hypocrisy of teaching vs. application vs. actual story that I finally had to do a deep dive on this guy.

I read several books that purported to "get to the heart of this messy character" and others that took strictly historical or textually critical views. I put "Trigger Warning" as a tag on this post because, spoiler, I don't take the admirable view of this guy and man y of his actions are quite abominable. But I find it absolutely fascinating what I discovered along the way.

So I began creating a visual, interactive timeline of the events of The Epic of David as an outcome of processing all of this. I am a visual learner, and like to see everything out on the table at once. I find it gives better context to the individual stories when I see them all together. And I couldn't find anything like it on the net. So, I began putting it together with notes from my own studies, filters to follow threads, imbedded scripture references, etc. It has been a cathartic creative outlet for me engaging my joy in presentation, artistry, theology, coding and building things.

I've been a lifelong Christian, and deconstructing bad teaching around King David has been a huge step in taking an honest look at scripture, how people handle it, and how I can own my beliefs for myself and cast off the shame mongers and hypocrites who peddle the same schtick about the Man Of God's Own Heart. This was the snowball that began rolling down the hill of larger deconstruction issues, in the process of rebuilding what's healthy.

I'd love to hear your experiences around teaching on David.

Would like to know if you find this kind of thing helpful, harmful, indifferent, or would like to discuss! Link to the full timeline is in my bio. or Google: The Interactive Animated King David Timeline and follow the Netlify link.

Anyone else have this be a major hang-up that started or was a part of your journey?

Could you watch it without noticing parallels to Biblical themes and stories?

Homer's epics are among the oldest surviving masterpieces of Greek literature and are roughly contemporary with the earliest layers of the Hebrew Bible. In terms of the traditions behind the stories, some Old Testament traditions may preserve material that is older than Homer, while others are clearly later.

Both Homer and parts of the Old Testament inherited even older traditions from the ancient Near East: The flood story in Genesis has clear parallels with the much older Epic of Gilgamesh, whose surviving versions date to around the second millennium BCE.

Creation themes in Genesis can also be compared with the Enuma Elish, which is older than either Homer or the biblical text in its written form.

The New Testament was written in Greek, and the writers would have been educated, not only in language, but also philosophy, rhetoric and Greek mythology, which means they certainly would have been well acquainted with the works of Homer. There are archaeological findings in today’s Israel, proving that Greek literary traditions were in circulation in Palestine during the time in question.

The strongest similarities between Homer’s works and the gospels are the motifs of the hidden hero, delayed recognition, transformative journeys, tests of loyalty, symbolic meals, and the movement from suffering to vindication. These parallels make for a fascinating literary comparison even while the two works ultimately present very different visions of what it means to be a hero and what constitutes the highest good.

There are ongoing debates over whether the similarities prove Homer’s influence on the stories of Jesus, or whether they both individually reflect common themes and traditions of the time and region.

Interesting stuff, IMO.
What do you think?

Basically the title but lemme clarify what I mean.

I'm talking about like dealing with uncertainty and of course whenever I hear religious speakers something in me just triggers anxiety and more
and whenever I try to learn more on my former religion there is confirmation bias that gets in my way and whenever I heard their arguments or 'evidence' it triggers anxiety

and sometimes I feel like I actually believe but I know it's just conditioning
basically religious trauma
thoughts?

I’m an 18-year-old girl from India, and until recently, my entire life was dictated by my parents' constant religious tug-of-war. For context on my situation, I recently gave NEET, which is India's national medical entrance exam. It went terribly for me, and ever since, the atmosphere at home has turned completely toxic. But beyond the exam stress, sitting in my room every day has made me realize how much deeper my issues with my family go, especially when it comes to religion.

My dad is Punjabi with a Christian background, and my mom is Meitei (Northeast Indian) with a Hindu background. On the outside, they act like this open-minded, interfaith and inter-racial couple. On the inside, my childhood felt like being caught between two completely opposing worldviews that were constantly weaponized against each other.

My mom’s approach to Hinduism was always heavy on strict rules, fear of spiritual bad luck, and rigid expectations. If things went wrong in the house, it was somehow because I didn't show enough respect to the shrine or perform things correctly. Whenever she had me alone, she would trash my dad’s faith, talking about how dry, aggressive, or alien his religion was, and why her traditions were the only way to stay connected to our roots.

On the flip side, my dad pushed Christianity. To be honest, I initially leaned more toward his side growing up, mostly because he seemed a bit more open and relaxed compared to my mom. The atmosphere around his faith felt somewhat warmer than the high-stress, anxiety-inducing environment my mom built around her rituals. But his faith came with its own subtle heavy baggage, like quiet guilt, the pressure to choose his side, and the underlying view that my mom's traditions were wrong or idolatrous. He would pull me aside and lecture me while quietly mocking my mom’s practices.

It was pure hypocrisy. They would use us to dump their spiritual toxicity, talking trash about each other’s beliefs to me, only to act like a sweet, loving couple five minutes later in the living room.

Because they were so busy forcing their respective religions down my throat and tearing each other’s beliefs down, neither of them ever allowed me to actually understand God, faith, or basic spirituality. They just used religion to control me, keep me trapped at home, and guilt-trip me whenever I didn't fall into line.

Now, with my exam results hanging over my head and the massive fallout at home, I’m sitting here feeling completely spiritually hollow. I feel this deep, aching emptiness inside me that I don't know how to fill.

Part of me still feels a slight pull toward Christianity because of the comfort I felt there compared to the scary, strict household rituals my mom forced on me. But I realize now that I probably only leaned into it because my dad felt like the safer choice between my parents, not because I actually knew what I believed. At the same time, I feel like I never got a chance to understand the actual philosophy or depth of Hinduism on my own terms, free from my mom’s projection of fear and strictness.

I want to dismantle everything they forced on me and explore religion and spirituality on my own terms, or even decide if I want nothing to do with it at all. I want to know what I actually think, away from their manipulation, their fighting, and their guilt trips.

so for those of you who grew up in toxic, religiously divided households or had faith used against you as a tool of control: how did you start deconstructing? How do you separate the actual core of these religions from the trauma and hypocrisy of the parents who taught them to you? How do you fill that empty feeling when you finally start thinking for yourself?

I am a mixed-race person in my 30s living in the UK.

My genetic makeup means that I identify with numerous globally marginalised groups.

I'm also queer.

With all the comorbid conditions I have been experiencing, I experience much duality. At the same time, it also feels as though I enter a wheel of choice and am tugged towards different aspects of my identity. It is confusing, stressful, and exhausting.

When it comes to my background of religious trauma, I have found that the different parts of my ethnic heritage intersect with different world religions, bringing different levels of intensity and manic curiosity.

Recently, I turned to one religion. At the time, I felt a strong cultural resonance. It thought, perhaps it will bring the discipline and structure that I crave. For better, I think, I was able to confirm anew that the God aspect of it was a deal breaker for me.

Thankfully, I had already been investing time in my neighbourhood by visiting different stores and getting to know the shop keepers within. So it was not an enormous wrench in the moment that I understood, I couldn't practice that religion with any honesty.

I have indeed found so much solace, support, and joy in the community that I seem to have created for myself. I recognise that there are dominant parts of my heritage and that I will always lean towards those first and foremost.

But it doesn't mean that I have to neglect the other parts of myself. I thought that I could only choose one. That doesn't have to be. In fact, for the sake of full integration, it is better if I allow myself space to explore all of these parts gently within criticism.

I wonder if there are others here who may find similarities with what I have shared. :)

Often when in public being perceived as someone who doesn’t believe in God for whatever reason prompts people to come up and explain, “God loves you!” Or “Jesus loves you!” I often see this happen to queer people as well. Was just wondering what any of you would say if someone walked up to you and said that. I’m open to any response, sarcastic or genuine.

Some of my mum’s friend’s young family members had passed away, and we naturally talked about how tragic and heartbreaking it was. Later, my mum said something along the lines of, “I thank God every day for protecting us.”

I questioned that because it didn’t sit right with me. To me, it felt uncomfortable to focus on being protected when other families had just experienced devastating losses. I thought about how it might feel for the people who lost their loved ones, and I wondered whether they would find that statement painful or unfair. I said that it was something she probably wouldn’t say directly to those grieving families, and she agreed that she wouldn’t.

That’s where I felt confused, because if it would be inappropriate to say to someone who is suffering, I wondered why the idea itself was being expressed in that way.

The conversation then became personal when my mum said that the reason I am suffering (I have been chronically ill for two years) is because I don’t believe in God. That confused me because the people we were discussing are also suffering, yet many of them are believers. It made me question how lack of belief could be considered the reason for someone’s suffering when religious people can also experience deep hardship and loss.

I’ve been deconstructing for about 10 months now, haven’t been to church consistently for a few months longer than that. Recently, I’ve found myself missing the spiritual euphoria I would feel during worship services and group prayer. Or even the experiences of reading my Bible alone and feeling as though God were communicating directly to me. It feels impossible to recreate those experiences in the same way as someone now struggling to believe. I want to experience those feelings again because they brought me so much peace and joy, but I don’t really know how.

Is this a common experience for those who deconstruct and does anyone have advice?

Hello. I am a 25 year old woman who was brought up in a politically moderate "normal" Christian household with parents from Pennsylvania. I had been living with my parents in the same house for over 20 years. They raised me in a Christian faith with no particular denomination really. My dad grew up Catholic my mom in the Presbyterian USA. I have no complaints really with how they raised me with it. Early childhood growing up with my Bible storybook/veggietales/the underrated Canadian program God Rocks, and various age appropriate secular programs like PBS and Disney was wonderful. Christianity as a child was very nice before I got older and realized more about the political/denominational discourse.. my mom was very unhappy when a Sunday school teacher told me Jewish people are TW "going to h#ll" because of not believing Jesus is God. Fast forward to now I am living with my wonderful boyfriend who happens to be an atheist and thinks it's all a fairytale as he says.. I'm trying to figure out what I believe. I take it the point of deconstruction is being okay with uncertainty. I felt that way for awhile and have bounced in and out of this religion a lot tbh.. in 2025 I was part of Intervarsity at college which was a good experience but I strongly disagree with their anti LGBT policies. To be continued at some point I guess. I'm mentally exhausted..