Losing My Religion: an Open Letter in Defense of Freedom
Because the REAL Jesus never wanted anyone to live in Christian-colored bubbles.
Note: This will be a chapter of the memoir I’m writing. It’s a unique style in that each chapter is a letter to my younger self, who dove headfirst into evangelical Christianity at age 13.
Religion is for people who are afraid of hell. Spirituality is for people who’ve been there.
You won’t find God in a church because He doesn’t live there. God isn’t just a "He" either. There’s zero logic in a father without a mother or a husband without a wife.
Christianity perpetuates the patriarchal system, which they believe is supported/justified by the story of Adam and Eve, which is a poem, not a literal story, where Eve was created from Adam… so that must mean Eve is subordinate and spiritually “less than,” right?
Uh, no… woman was created because man needed help — and not the unpaid servant kind.
Nobody seems to question how all 7+ billion humans on this planet could possibly come from two people living naked in a garden. It’s not even logical to believe it.
Don’t get me started on Noah’s Ark. Are you telling me they had to repopulate the earth with just one family… again? If that were true, we’d all be a bunch of inbreds, like the Habsburg royals you learned about in high school history. Something much bigger is at play here, and reducing the whole thing down to something so absurdly simple is an insult to the magnificent intelligence of our Designer.
Now let’s talk about church.
Church is a place for people who want to feel safe. It encourages groupthink and discourages critical thinking. Many people go there to conform, stagnate, and hide.
You chose it because it made you feel safe too. Going to church and getting baptized meant you’d definitely have not just God’s approval but Dad’s approval. When you “came to Christ,” it made Dad feel like he’d accomplished something good in his life since he believed in the heaven/hell/Jesus saves story so strongly. Before you decided you wanted to go to church, the only time he’d talk about Jesus was in the pool after a handful of beers on yard work day. That glassy-eyed look always made you squirm a bit. Little did he know that when you walked to the front of the sanctuary during the altar call at First Baptist Church of Oviedo’s spring revival to “get saved,” you’d mostly done it because you knew it would make him (and Aunt Sue) happy.
Doesn’t the whole “get saved” thing feel a bit icky? Like… if I don’t believe in Jesus — whatever that means at age 13 — then I’ll burn in hell? What?! But everybody seemed so chill about it during the revival, solemn even, despite the fire-blazing intensity with which the pastor warned of the fire and brimstone that awaited those who didn’t pray the prayer and get “saved.”
I’ve always thought that if Christians truly believed their best friend, Uncle Moe, daughters, sons, husbands, brothers, parents, sisters, or whoever were really in danger of being cast into a burning fire pit for all eternity, they’d be freaking out trying to save them from such a fate.
Except nobody’s freaking out. They’re just loving on people and letting them know how welcome they are… la-dee-da. And if that’s where the show stopped, I genuinely think Jesus would approve. But eventually (in evangelical churches, anyway), you always get to the “God loves you BUT you have to believe that he sent Jesus to die for your sins and accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior so he’ll forgive you and you can go to heaven because if you don’t… you’ll go to hell. Do you know where you’re going when you die?”
American evangelical Christianity is a massive, commercialized entity. It is an institution. Christianity and God are not synonymous. In so many ways, the church has become exactly what disgusted Jesus.
And Jesus wasn’t even his real name, so it’s fine if you cringe at the sound of it. The reason you always felt weird trying to “worship” him is because he never wanted anyone to worship him. The reason the whole “give your life to Christ because he died for you” thing always felt wrong is because it is wrong.
Church people love to say things like, “It’s all about Jesus” or “you just need Jesus,” but that’s not at all what Jesus taught. You’ll read the Bible around age 30, and it’ll hit you hard that what you learned in church about what it means to “follow Christ” had nothing to do with actually living your life like Jesus did.
You’ll learn that God didn’t sacrifice Jesus (himself) to himself to make us right with himself; he was murdered for telling the truth about our true nature and the nature of our reality. For exposing the matrix. For causing civil unrest and upsetting the order and hierarchy established by the religious and governmental authorities.
He was anti-establishment. Everybody knew that. And he was killed because of it.
Their power structure was under serious threat — and they couldn’t have that. When Jesus said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” it was because he knew that if those people knew who they really were and how they’d been manipulated by the people in power, they would see things differently and wouldn’t have executed him. If they weren’t “in sin” — i.e., ignorant of the truth that we are all ONE, and to kill someone is to kill oneself — they would have realized they, too, had the ability to rise in consciousness, to become Christlike in nature, just like Jesus.
All those times you felt guilty for not spending quiet time with the Lord or going on mission trips to crusade for Christ — you’ll eventually feel grateful you followed your heart instead because that’s what Jesus wanted you to do. Not to go to church or on mission trips to faraway places but to go within, to find the all-powerful source there, and tap into it.
Why do you think Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21) when the Pharisees believed it would be coming to fruition outside of them somehow?
Ironically, the church still expects the kingdom of God to come to fruition outside of themselves. Many Christians anxiously anticipate Jesus to come back in the clouds to usher in his kingdom on Earth. But it’s been here the whole time. The Kingdom of God is within all of us, and zero wars are required to be a part of it. This power within is the Christ, not some fabled messiah called Jesus (his real name was Yeshua), who came here to save us from eternal damnation as part of some insane plan by God to save his own children from hell.
Do you see how circular and ridiculous this dogmatic nonsense is? God became man so he could sacrifice himself to himself so we would be “saved” in his own eyes and we could spend eternity with him… and it was all planned that way.
I literally could not even force myself to believe it. I lived in secret shame for fifteen years because deep down, I did not jive with this belief system. It felt wrong to me. And now I know why.
We all have the Christ within us. It can be our last name too. That’s the Gospel. That we aren’t the scum of the Earth. That we’re not wretches or lowly worms deserving of hell. That’s the truth that, once we realize and accept it, sets us free. That’s how the Christ “saves” us. But the early institution of the church has subverted the truth to hide it from us, to prevent us from finding out the truth that will set us free from their power and control. It’s worked wonders.
And now… about the Bible.
The Bible isn’t the Word of God; it’s a collection of stories, poems, letters, and legal documents from a specific historical period that paint the picture of humanity’s concept of God during that time. Many Christians worship the Bible as if it were God himself. Like if it’s not confirmed verbatim somehow in the Bible, then it’s not true. Anything “spiritual” that doesn’t mention “but Jesus is what it’s all about” is dismissed as “new age deception” and not worth reading or listening to at all because it couldn’t possibly be true since “Jesus is all that matters,” according to them. All about John 3:16, right?
But that’s not at all what Jesus taught. Christians who boil the mission and message of Jesus down to John 3:16 or even John 14:6 (the woefully misinterpreted “I am the Way… no one comes to the Father except through me” verse) are wrapped up in dogma and doctrine.
They’re missing out on a full and true understanding of Jesus’ teachings (especially the ones in the Nag Hammadi scriptures, first unearthed in 1949 and entirely ignored by most Christians).
Meanwhile, many Christians use the Bible to justify war, violence, hatred, and discrimination. Some Christians shun divorcees like you (yep, you get divorced at age 31) because “God hates divorce” … not realizing he hates it because it hurts us, not because it’s morally wrong somehow. God can use divorce. Divorce can make people happier. Divorce made you happier and so much more free… you’ll see what I mean when you get here.
If the words in the Bible are divine, then so can your words be divine. Jesus was divine, and you are divine. God spoke through Jesus, and God will speak through you, too. You come from “God,” the source from which everything emanates. Everything flows from this One Source. The One Source that is God is “All that is.” You are part of All that Is.
That means you are quite literally part of God.
It is impossible to be separate from All That Is. You can believe you’re separate, though, and a strong enough belief that you’re isolated from All That Is can make life feel like hell.
To be “saved,” you don’t need to believe that Jesus died for your sins so you won’t be separated from God; you need to remember that you’ve never been separated from God to begin with.
What Christianity has done, however, is make people believe they are separate, that we’re all born into “sin,” and that keeps us apart from God, that we’re “sinful” by nature, separate from that One Source — outcast, in danger of being cut off unless they “give their lives” to this character Jesus who had one goal and one goal only: to remind us who we are.
We’re divine beings imbued with the essence and power of Source. That’s what Christ really is. Christ is not a specific person; it’s an energy, a consciousness of pure love and compassion. Jesus embodied the Christ energy. It’s something we can also embody.
That’s what “becoming more Christlike” means — it doesn’t mean we have to impoverish ourselves and walk around in a robe and sandals with dozens of people, preaching from town to town. It means living from a place of love instead of fear. From a place of power instead of defeat. Having faith that we are being divinely guided and protected at all times, even when we cannot see more than an inch in front of our faces.
Jesus intended to wake us up to the matrix and alert us to the many vipers competing to control our energy within religion, corporations, and government. Although big corporations didn’t exist back then, you can tell how he feels about them when he flips the tables in the temple.
But we’re born into sin, the Christians will say. And maybe that’s true — if you know that “sin” is actually just ignorance.
If you understand that sin is ignorance, then Jesus’ was definitely trying to save us from that — but he didn’t need to die for that to happen. Violence is never the answer, and the whole idea of God requiring blood sacrifice to make us “right” with him is based on ancient religious myths — not reality.
People don’t do immoral things because they are bad people; they do immoral things because they believe on some level that it will serve them… and that’s ignorance.
They’re slaves to what they know; they’re unaware that doing better is an option. Sin is not breaking some rule, like having sex outside the confines of marriage, using tarot cards, or not believing in Jesus the right way before you “die.”
Sinning is living separate from — in ignorance of — who we really are. That’s what it means to be separated from God.
We aren’t punished for our sin; we’re punished by our sin. We don’t know what we don’t know until it bites us in the ass one day. Then we learn.
If you don’t know that you’re a divine being, royalty in the eyes of the creator, you likely won’t act like it. If you believe you’re a lowly worm, a wretch “but for Jesus,” — the way the church teaches — you’ll think less of yourself as a result. You’ll be plagued by guilt, shame, and fear… uncertain of whether you’ll be accepted when you stand before God at the pearly gates someday. “It’s up to God to decide on Judgment Day,” they say… but the truth is that God has already decided. It’s where you came from, and you’re here for a purpose — that purpose is not to pass some cosmic test that, if you fail because you don’t believe the right things in the right way, could result in your eternal damnation, separation, and torment forever and ever. Those are lies.
There’s a film that comes out on YouTube in 2007 called Zeitgeist. Watch that film. It’ll rattle your tiny Christian bubble at first. It’s scary when you first realize you’ve been duped. But it gets better. The popular story of Jesus (being born of a virgin, that he was God in the flesh intended to be a sacrifice to save us from our sins and make us pure as snow and acceptable to the very God who created us) was made up — modeled entirely after other myths — to create a new fear-based system for power and control with the “Savior” at the center. Anything to convince people they weren’t powerful and capable, anything to keep them from noticing the puppet masters.
The corruption and absurdity throughout the entirety of church history prove the whole thing is a lie, that all of it was inverted and purposely warped to keep all of us under control.
It’s so much easier to get money or labor out of people if they are afraid they’ll go to hell if they don’t do whatever the fancy-looking men in robes say. That’s why for centuries, nobody but the clergy was even allowed to read — because we’d figure it out.
The whole thing’s been like one gigantic “telephone game” for thousands of years, with each generation asserting their version of the truth is more pure and safe and correct than all others. It’s like we’ve all been asleep or under some kind of spell cast a long time ago to divert us off the path to real freedom and enlightenment, the one Jesus was trying to tell us about.
But the spell is finally broken… and people are finally waking up.
You’ll wake up, too.
I really love what you write here. I have been in churches, and temples, where the feeling of aliveness and the sacred is really there, and it's so beautiful to experience. I've also been in churches that are more like tourist attractions. And yes, the message of Yeshua was one of love. That's why he turned over the furniture in the temple and said we should beware of theologians. He was challenging to all the power structures not because he wanted to overtake them, but because the purity of his presence exposed what they didn't want to notice in themselves and 'just how things are.' His message was one of love, and he never asked anyone to die for him, or to die at all, but to simply notice what interfered with their inability to love. It is our own resistance to the call of spirit that elicits patterns of disease, and our ignorance that causes us not to notice. If the churches had been working on the message of Yeshua we would not have prison systems like ours, or wars like ours, or tax systems like ours, or any of those distortions. We would recognize the words of holy beings throughout time who have spoken to what is sacred, responded to what is sacred, moved towards what is sacred. Everything else is distortion asking to be healed. Thank you for writing such wonderful words so clearly.