For a long time, I tried to be a better believer instead of a truthful one. I prayed harder when questions appeared. I read scripture selectively. I learned which doubts were acceptable and which ones should stay silent. Faith, I was told, was trusting without seeing—but what it often meant in practice was not looking too closely.
The cracks didn’t arrive dramatically. They accumulated quietly. Prayers that went unanswered in predictable ways. Moral explanations that only worked from a distance. A God described as loving, yet defended through fear.
Eventually, honesty demanded a cost.
Leaving faith felt like losing a language I had spoken since childhood. Community disappeared overnight. Certainty collapsed. There was grief—not just for God, but for the version of myself who felt held by something larger.
But emptiness never came.
What came instead was responsibility. If meaning wasn’t handed down, it had to be built. If goodness wasn’t commanded, it had to be chosen. Morality became less about obedience and more about empathy.
I didn’t replace faith with arrogance. I replaced it with questions I was finally allowed to ask.
Losing Christianity didn’t make life meaningless.
It made it mine.
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