I used to church.
I used to church.
Learned prayers before letters.
This was home.
Until it wasn’t.
I no longer felt safe there, and I questioned if I ever really did.
Within a faith I’m told minds like mine are distortions caused by sin.
Through no fault of my own, I’m…faulty.
But it’s okay, we all are, right?
We are all born in sin.
That’s what they said.
This beautiful, albeit, chaotic mind of mine was considered a distortion of human functioning, as was bodily sickness…on the same level as more obvious distortions such as murder, adultery, blasphemy.
None of this made sense to me.
“There’s no room here for a mind like mine.” I thought.
God made this mind but allows others to view me like this? I cannot control what happens up there.
I was informed I couldn’t reconcile my belief in science with Scripture.
What I believed God to be and what I was taught who God was…didn’t match up.
I left the church because I needed to discover not only who I was apart from those teachings but because I felt the God I believed in wants us to use all that He has given us to explore our nature and who we are as people.
Perhaps I didn’t have an ability to believe in God, at least not in the way He was meant to be followed?
I went through this very short-lived Atheist period, then an Agnostic phase.
Through some intense, deep introspection I learned that I didn’t possess an inability to believe in God. I wanted to believe in Him. I felt like I did, but I wasn’t allowed to…not in the way that I felt was appropriate.
So I decided to give up on church.
Church often yields these restrictive belief systems that are to be adhered to by their following.
It’s important that I use this God-given mind of mine to think for myself and allow Him to work through me to develop my own moral compass.
I found religion again, just not in church.
Someone asked me if I believed in God because they saw the crosses on our living room wall. They mentioned they read somewhere that it was difficult for Autistic individuals to form relationships with God because of how Autism presented itself. I have heard similar. But for me, I didn’t believe in Him for a time because I felt I wasn’t allowed to believe in the version I felt He was. I didn’t understand why my mind had to be a distortion. It’s wasn't that I was incapable of believing, it’s that I didn’t agree.
Newer conflicts arise in my relationship with God. Ones that have been with me for some time but haven’t taken the time to dive deeper into those thoughts. One being, how can I truly reconcile my belief with a Christian God when the very fact that I know Christianity to begin with is because my ancestors were enslaved and taught to abandon the beliefs they knew to be true in favor of the beliefs their “Masters” whipped into them?
Essay for another day, I suppose.
I sympathize a lot with this. I grew up in a Calvinist Presbyterian church that taught predestination—the idea that God decided before we were born who were going to be the good people and who the bad, and nothing I did could change my destiny. Of course, wanting to go to church and obey church leadership in all things was a sign that you were in, and not wanting to a sign that you were out. I spent way too long trying to want things my heart knew were bad for me, and then a while as an atheist trying *not* to want the bits I missed (music, potlucks, community service projects, the sense of being part of something bigger than myself).
A little over a year ago, a trans friend of mine was ordained as a priest in the Ecumenical Catholic Communion. I got curious about what kind of church would take trans priests, and found out this one takes literally everybody. They teach that no one is unchosen, that God made us all different on purpose and expects us to embrace and stand up for anyone society tries to marginalize or exclude, and that there are as many paths to God’s truth as there are people—including science and even atheism—so there’s nothing wrong with following multiple paths at once.
For me, that kind of openness and focus on seeking truth made the ECC a place I could land. I’m sure it’s different for different people with different needs, and I’m not here trying to proselytize anybody. Just saying that I know what it’s like to feel rejected by a church that says you are too much or not enough, and I have faith that your spiritual journey will bring you peace, joy, comfort, and wisdom no matter what path or paths you choose to follow.