Christianity from the Perspective of a Self-Harmer

I grew up in a radical church that my dad and my pastor liked to proudly describe as "independent, fundamental, Bible-believing Baptist." I spent my entire youth desperately trying to please a jealous, holy god. I was submissive and meek, the way my dad told me a godly woman should be, praying for hours a day, reading Psalms and Proverbs again and again, memorizing entire books of the New Testament, throwing myself into my schoolwork, housework, anything, sleeping very little, pushing away any feelings of ambition to become something (like a doctor or a Senator, which god flatly vetoed), to learn something about the world. These feelings only revealed me as sinful, wordly, indicating my own lack of faith. At one point I even solemnly promised the Lord that I would never marry so that He could always have my full attention. I wrung my soul out daily trying to show that I WANTED to be a good Christian, hoping all the time that I would find the joy that the preacher always shouted about on Sundays, that made the women cry happily in the choir. But it never happened. No joy, not a drop, came from my faith. Ever. I felt terrified every day that I wasn’t trying hard enough to be diligent, pure, honest, prayerful, that I would wake up one day and find that Jesus had returned (which I believed, literally, could happen at any moment) and he’d not taken me with him. I had counseling sessions again and again with my pastor, my teachers, my parents, trying to work out why I didn’t feel the joy, the security, that Christianity should bring me, why I simply couldn’t be “saved” and have the same simple, uncomplicated peace that God promised me.

I gave my faith up when I was seventeen. I don’t say “lost” my faith, because I realized that it had become like an addiction—like a cathartic form of self-harm that was ruining my life. It was frightful, hurtful, torturous. And intellectually untenable, I increasingly discovered. And suddenly, I found peace. "The liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free" came for me when I gave Jesus the boot. There was no more fear, pain, guilt, tears. I was free to determine the course of my own life, and live out the morality that I felt propelling me from within.

I cannot now and don’t believe I ever will again view the Christianity that so many people sing and evangelize about as anything other than immoral, oppressive, a cancer on the growth of human moral progress. I call myself an atheist now, although when people ask me why I think there is no god, I always realize that I don’t really care if there is or isn’t. Even if God exists, if he is anything like what his book describes him to be, I want nothing to do with him. If that sends me to hell, then so be. I’ll consider myself a martyr.

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