What I Wish I Would Have Known

It’s my favorite writing prompt: “I know I sound like a broken record, but. . . .”

I like the prompt because I believe everyone needs at least one broken-record message, a go-to theme they can reproduce in infinite different ways. The really important lessons in life need to be repeated. We often take our core principles for granted. We know them so well on an intellectual level that we can easily become unaware we’ve forgotten them on a practical level.

Forgetting your core principles on a practical level takes you away from who you truly want to be. And becoming someone you don’t want to be is . . . one of life’s great fears and tragedies.

This is one of my broken-record messages. My gospel: you have to be able to talk about your doubts as freely as you talk about your faith.

Nothing is scarier than being surrounded by people you can’t talk to.

When I was a Christian, my entire community, nearly my entire existence consisted of a framework built on the core principles of evangelical Christianity. My family: Christian. My job: a Christian organization. My Sundays: at my Christian church. My friends: Christians. My purpose in life: to establish the Kingdom of Christ. My personal interests: all over the place.

I was aware that non-Christians existed. I interacted with them often. I also knew there were plenty of people who, while devoted to Christianity, didn’t devote their entire metaphysical orientation to the evangelical Christian narrative. I knew it wasn’t typical for someone to eat, breathe, sleep, live, love, laugh their relationship with God and their role in His redemptive work for all creation. I didn’t exactly do that either, but I thought I was supposed to.

I thought we were all supposed to. It seemed to me that if the purpose of life was to redeem a fallen Creation back to a harmonious relationship with its Creator, that mission and that state of being redeemed should be everyone’s central preoccupation.

At this point in the story, it might seem like I thought I was doing a better job of being a Christian than most Christians, but quite the opposite was true. I wasn’t sure I was even a Christian. I didn’t know if I believed well enough. I constantly, incessantly questioned my faith.

I didn’t question the faith, at least not primarily. More than anything, I questioned mine. If an individual was saved by faith and not by works, if the difference between being in a saving relationship with God and being out of favor with Him and in danger of spending eternity outside of His kingdom hinged entirely upon the true nature of the way a person believed in Jesus Christ . . . I wasn’t sure I was doing it right.

Did I have my doubts about Christianity itself? Sure. But it seemed a very real possibility that those doubts could prevent me from ever experiencing eternal happiness. The doubts I had about the existence of God didn’t amount to a hill of beans compared to the mountain of doubt I had about myself. So I gave a lot more attention to self-doubt.

Fortunately, I felt completely unable to talk about any of this to anyone.

I might be going to Hell because it’s quite possible I’m a total fraud. Yeah, I didn’t know how to work that into a conversation.

Hold on . . . what if none of this is true? The consequence of even asking this question wouldn’t have been merely spiritual but social and severely so. Even saying, “I’m having doubts,” was like grabbing a giant red flag and waving it over my head. It would have been the equivalent of sneezing in the spring of 2020—everyone around me would have wanted me quarantined immediately for fear I’d infect them with APOSTASY-19.

That was my perception, anyway.

Broken record: if you’re having doubts, you need to talk to someone. You deserve to be able to talk to someone.

I always doubted the authenticity of my faith. From the time I was six on. It was something I questioned every day, multiple times of day. The notion that I wasn’t enough, I wasn’t good enough, I didn’t believe enough . . . it plagued me. It never went away. The fear that God would reject me and that I would deserve it was an ever-present factor in my life for almost 40 years, and I never said a word about it to anyone.

And the thing is, I don’t think my experience was that unusual. But the one thing I had in common with everyone else going through the same thing (and perhaps a lot of people going through it right now) was the fear of being found out. So there we all were (are) not talking about the fears we had (have) in common. The word tragedy comes to mind.

No port in a storm

The idea of talking to anyone about any of this felt impossible for a number of reasons:

1. My safety. Speaking to another Christian about my doubts would expose the truth about me to real Christians and it would crystallize the fears I had about my faith not being genuine and possibly being eternally separated from God and immediately separated from my entire family and community.

2. Another Christian’s safety. What if the Christian I spoke to had doubts of their own that I made worse by telling them mine? We’d both be in trouble. Setting someone else back in their spiritual journey was a mortal sin.

3. An nonbeliever’s safety. If I spoke to someone who was already separated from God about my own doubts, I could become an obstacle in their path to God. That had to be a mortal sin too.

4. Christian bias. Revealing my doubts about Christianity to another Christian would undoubtedly lead to them trying to cure me of those doubts.

5. Nonbeliever bias. Speaking to an atheist about my doubts would result in them telling me I was obviously being stupid to have believed any of it.

Talking to someone didn’t seem like an option. It wasn’t even something I considered. So consciously, I conducted both sides of every conversation. Subconsciously, I was setting the table for a disastrous feast. See, when you rely on your inner monologue to resolve all of your troubles, the strength of your entire operating system becomes the integrity of your own logic.

Two words: Disaster

The moment I realized I was wrong? It was like termites had eaten away every stud in the entire house. My whole psyche collapsed. A house of cards would have been an architectural upgrade.

One of the worst aftershocks was suddenly becoming addicted to talking to people about my faith or the lack thereof. I felt compelled to go on a tour of heart-to-heart confession sessions. But they ultimately served no purpose. I wasn’t asking anyone for help. I wasn’t helping anyone. It was like a PR campaign, and that is not my thing at all.

I needed help, and it was a long, long time before I ever really opened up to the idea of allowing someone else to play a role in how I thought about spirituality.

That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing. That’s why Under Deconstruction exists. If the Deconstruction Movement was even a movement, it’s one I’ve seen coming. I know there are a lot of people going through what I have gone through at various points of my four-decade journey. And it’s clear that the safety and structure provided by evangelical Christianity has lost its veneer of grace and love. Some people have been willing to be a little bit more public about their questions, at least about the faith.

My main concern, though, is any questions you may have about yourself. I don’t care what you believe about Christianity or the nature of the world, if you have doubts about yourself, you need to be able to talk about them. You need to be able to think about them with input from other people.

That is what I want to provide with Under Deconstruction. I want you to have a place where you feel safe thinking about your spirituality. I want you to have a place you feel safe talking about it. I want you to have someone you can trust not to push you in any one direction, someone who will listen. Someone who will allow you to think for yourself without feeling like you’re all alone in it.

I want to help you think about spirituality and about life and about all the things we can’t quite know, and I want you to feel good about where you’re headed. You deserve to enjoy every step.

I wish you well.