r/Deconstruction

I saw a video a few years ago in an interview setting where the main speaker went through his deconstruction. I don’t remember what he looked like because it came in while i was cleaning and i listened to the whole thing and didn’t interact with the video much. He said he was a pastor and was accepted into a liberal school for seminary i believe. Everyone was worried about him going to a liberal school but he was faithful he would emerge stronger. When he started someone acknowledged that he was still a Christian and that it would be hard to see the upcoming curriculum and keep faith. He eventually conceded. It wasn’t Rhett M or Britt Hartley. Sorry of this is vague, it was a meaningful video and I’d love to find it again!

Hey! I'm new here. (21 F.) Is there anyone else who is still a Christian (who loves God, the Bible and follows Jesus) but is de/reconstructing harmful theology? Just out of curiosity. It feels lonely sometimes and it can be hard to find community. Even if you're not a Christian anymore, I would love to get connected! I also love theology so if there are any theology nerds out there, introduce yourself!

This is totally random, but I like how I’m in both Christian and Muslim women’s groups on Facebook. They truly resemble each other in many ways, just with different wording and beliefs around certain things. The women in these groups go through a lot of the same shame and struggles when it comes to purity, dating, and relationships. Some women are more strict and traditional, while others are more progressive.

What I’ve noticed, though, is how harshly women are judged when they make mistakes, while men often seem almost immune to the same criticism or consequences. It’s like when men sin, it’s brushed off or normalized, but when women do, they’re tarnished for it and it follows them forever. And honestly, it makes me sad to see. I hate that society is still like this, because it’s not just a religious issue, it happens everywhere.

In the process of deconstructing, I’ve realized that being a free thinker without religious ideologies constantly shaping every thought has made me look at society and morality differently. I think it’s better to judge people based on how they treat others rather than focusing so heavily on their sexuality or personal choices.

One thing that deeply bothers me is how, when someone is assaulted, people immediately start bringing up purity culture instead of focusing on the actual harm that was done. It feels incredibly tone deaf. Instead of addressing the real issue, they blame the woman for “putting herself in that situation,” and that’s honestly so sad to me.

There are so many things I’ve noticed, but this would turn into such a long post.

It's lonely once you can no longer morally justify giving your life to an abrahamic faith. It's probably even harder living in the west in a large diaspora Muslim community. You can't tell anyone. You still fast and pray and say the words. And I don't hate that bit. I kinda enjoy the discipline and ritual.

But it's been a lie for years now. And I'm a Man in his 40s. I've found it so lonely. The things which consume me I can't discuss with anyone.

Why is hell eternal. Why do you think the lottery of life is God's plan when it's just far from it. Why are these structures built to control by powerful men mostly.

But I'm kind of resigned to it now. I made this throw away as I'm kind of worried people might clock who I am.

It has already messed my marriage but we stay and work together to survive.

Just so bloody lonely.

So I wrote this about the Bible hopefully somebody finds it useful. Otherwise I wasted it all the time it did only from my own enjoyment. Full disclosure I did use Grammarly to help improve it, but the thoughts and points made are my own.

A note before we begin: This essay is a critique of a text and the theology built around it — not an attack on religious people. Christians, like everyone else, span the full range of human goodness and cruelty. Many have done extraordinary good in the world. What follows is an honest examination of the book their faith is built on, and what it actually says.

Introduction
I came to the Bible not as a skeptic looking for ammunition, but as an atheist in grief looking for hope.
When my grandmother — a Bible-believing Christian — died in January after a long, painful battle with cancer, I found myself doing something I hadn't done before: reaching for faith. I wanted to believe she was somewhere where I could see her again and that her years of work added up to something. I wanted the comfort that millions of people find in the idea of an afterlife, and I was willing to look for it honestly. So I read the Bible.
What I found was not comfort. It was a text that endorses slavery, commands genocide, strips women of basic human rights, and at times celebrates the murder of children. I didn't go looking for those passages. I stumbled into them while looking for something else entirely. When I raised them with believers, I was told not to put too much weight on them — and at first, I didn't. But I knew something was amiss. So I kept reading, gathered the evidence, and reached a conclusion I hadn't wanted to reach: the God of the Bible, judged by any consistent moral standard — including his own, frequently contradictory ones — is not good and could even be considered evil.

I. Slavery
Exodus 21:20-21 permits a master to beat his slave with a rod. The only limit? Don't kill them outright. If the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment — because, the text states plainly, "the slave is their property."
Ephesians 6:5 instructs enslaved people to obey their masters "with fear and trembling, as you would obey Christ." 1 Peter 2:18 goes further, commanding submission even to masters who are "harsh" or "unreasonable."
The standard defense here is context: slavery in the ancient world was different, the Bible regulated rather than invented it, and Paul's letters were written to specific communities in specific circumstances.
But this misses the point. If the author of these texts is an omniscient, perfectly moral God — a being outside time and culture — why does the moral standard track so precisely with the brutal norms of the ancient Near East? A God who could speak galaxies into existence couldn't manage "do not own other human beings"?

II. The Treatment of Women
1 Timothy 2:11-15 commands women to learn "in silence and full submission," forbids them from teaching or having authority over men, and attributes the Fall to Eve.
The theological problem here is significant: Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil before she had any knowledge of good and evil. She could not have understood the moral weight of what she was doing. Punishing all women across history for that act — and using it to justify their permanent subordination — is a framework that doesn't survive moral scrutiny.
Deuteronomy 22:23-24 requires that a rape victim who did not scream loudly enough be stoned to death alongside her attacker — if the assault occurred in a city. The logic, apparently, is that she could have called for help. The text makes no allowance for a woman who was deaf, unconscious, or had her mouth covered. The burden of proof falls entirely on the victim.
Deuteronomy 22:28-29 instructs that a man who rapes an unmarried woman must pay her father fifty shekels of silver and marry her. He cannot divorce her. The woman has no voice in the matter whatsoever.
No contextual framing makes these passages into expressions of love or justice. They reflect a world in which women are property — and the biblical text does not challenge that world. It codifies it.

III. Violence and Genocide
These are the passages that trouble me most, because they do not merely permit violence — they present God as its direct author.
Numbers 31:17-18: After a military victory, God commands Moses to kill all the male children and all women who are not virgins. The young virgin girls are to be kept for the soldiers.
1 Samuel 15:3: God instructs Saul to destroy the Amalekites completely: "Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants."
Hosea 13:16 describes divine judgment in which infants are "dashed to pieces" and pregnant women are "ripped open."
Psalm 137:9 calls blessed those who seize Babylonian infants and dash them against the rocks.
The standard defense for these passages invokes the sovereignty of God — his right as Creator to take life as he sees fit — or argues that the Amalekites and others were so corrupted that their destruction was a mercy.
I find neither argument persuasive. The first redefines morality as whatever God does, which means the concept of God being good becomes meaningless. The second asks us to accept that infants and children are collectively guilty of their parents' sins to the point of deserving death. If a human general gave these orders, we would call it a war crime. The label doesn't change because the order comes from a divine source.

IV. The Character of Jesus
Jesus is rightly celebrated for many of his teachings — love your neighbor, care for the poor, forgive your enemies. But the Gospels contain passages that sit in uncomfortable tension with that image.
Luke 14:26: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters — yes, even their own life — such a person cannot be my disciple."
Many scholars read "hate" here as a Semitic idiom meaning "love less by comparison." That's a reasonable reading. But it's worth noting that this interpretation requires significant softening of a word that, in most languages, has a clear meaning.
Matthew 10:34-36: "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword... a man's enemies will be the members of his own household."
This is the same figure described elsewhere as the Prince of Peace. Either these traditions are in genuine tension with one another, or the peace Jesus offers is something far narrower and more conditional than the universal message many Christians preach.
Revelation 2:20-23: Jesus, speaking to the church at Thyatira, threatens to "kill her children with death" because of the influence of a woman named Jezebel, who he accuses of leading people into idolatry. No redemption arc. No teachable moment. Death.

V. A Verse with a Long Shadow
Matthew 27:25: As Pilate washes his hands of Jesus's execution, the crowd shouts: "His blood be on us and on our children."
This single verse has been used for centuries to justify antisemitism — the accusation of collective Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus. Its presence in the text, and the history of violence it helped enable, cannot be ignored in any honest accounting of what the Bible has meant in practice.

Conclusion
I am an atheist, and for what it's worth, I would reject the ethics of the God of the Bible even if he were proven to exist. A being who ordered the deaths of children, sanctioned slavery, and consigned rape victims to execution does not deserve worship. That's not a rejection of the divine concept — it's a moral position.
Beyond the text itself, the world we actually live in makes the case. Rape, murder, slavery, genocide, cancer — the existence of these things is very difficult to square with a God who is both all-powerful and perfectly good. Either God wants evil to exist, or permits it without intervening, or lacks the power to stop it. None of those options describe the God most believers worship. The simplest explanation is the fourth one.

I want to be precise about what I'm arguing. I am not saying that everyone who reads the Bible becomes evil. People are extraordinarily good at finding the humane threads in texts that are brutal, and billions of people have done exactly that. I am saying that the text itself — read plainly, without the softening filters of a pastors interpretation — contains passages that are morally indefensible. And that a book presented to children as the literal word of a perfectly good God deserves the same critical scrutiny we'd apply to any other ancient document.

There is a practical cost to this that I don't think gets discussed enough. When the Bible or any other religious text is treated as the foundation of morality itself, it creates two serious problems. The first is that its worst passages are always available — ready to be invoked by anyone who wants a divine mandate for cruelty, exclusion, or violence. History shows this is not a hypothetical risk, in this religion and others, you can find proof in violent evil acts like 9/11, The Salem Witch Trials, the American enslavement of African Americans,
There are even fake abortion clinics set up by religious groups meant to stop abortion by what can only be described by luring those seeking one into a trap, which is just plain evil to misrepresent something especially to a vulnerable pregnant woman, its wrong wether you personally support abortion or not, people can and will choose for themselves with or without public or legal support!

The second problem is quieter but just as serious: people who eventually see through the text and become atheists — and many do — can find themselves with no moral framework at all. If goodness was always "because God said so," what replaces it when God stops being convincing? We send people into that crisis with no tools and no warning, and then we hope it works out and they find good things to guide them. Some people who would identify as christian are picking and choosing which morals to follow so they are more moral than their god, they just dont know it yet.

We deserve an ethical foundation built on something sturdier — human dignity, reason, empathy, the demonstrable consequences of how we treat one another. These don't require a divine author. They just require us to take seriously the reality that other people suffer and matter.
The Bible is a remarkable artifact. Parts of it are genuinely beautiful. But beauty and truth are not the same thing, and goodness is not established by authority. There are still to this day gay people in countries like Russia where its illegal.

TLDR (because I love to go on tangents and I'm not even sorry): Even while deconstructing, I actually love praying with my Christian wife because it's very meaningful to her, and I'm coming to realize that it's actually healthy for me, personally.

I was laying in bed and my wife vented about having a sore throat. I offered to pray with her.

Some background:

She didn't grow up Christian. She was atheist, but had softened on her stance by the time we met. Now she's Christian. She's not devout, doesn't study the Bible, she doesn't pray publicly and her church attendance isn't great. She's not performative. Sometimes, I forget she identifies as Christian because she doesn't do all the Christian things and she's obsessed with horror movies, but I know she believes. She doesn't have to prove it to me or anyone else. I used to try and assess if I thought faith was legitimate. I even almost broke up with her early on because I didn't think her faith would meet my church group's standards. I've grown up since then, particularly after deconstructing.

She feels things so deeply. Her childhood was pretty sad, but she clung to whatever fond memory she could. Her mom died when she was 19, and her cat died around the time she met me. She has cancer. While it has been near undetectable for a few years, technically she's not in remission. Depression hits her like a wave at times. Anxiety isn't uncommon. Occasionally, she has panic attacks. Life has only gotten harder for us.

She has faith because she needs something to hold on to. She believes that we'll spend time with lions and possums and bats and anteaters in heaven, and that I'll finally get to meet her mom, who she says would love me so much. This is where her mind goes to cope with the difficulty of her current existence. I love her so much, it hurts.

Even though I'm deconstructing, I pray with her. We pray for every meal together. We pray when things are difficult, uncertain, or heavy. I don't have faith that it'll make things magically work out, but there's something cathartic about vocalizing my burdens into the air. I used to be very good with prayer. I was eloquent, genuine and insightful when I'd pray. There have been several times when I would pray publicly at church and I'd hear people choking up and see some holding back tears. I now know it's not because I was full of the Spirit, it's because people crave authenticity, which is in extreme short supply in life, and rarer in a church. It was one of the few things I was good at as a Christian.

So when my wife complained about her sore throat in bed tonight, I figured I'd offer to pray with her. She asked me to also pray for her dad, who's in the hospital with food poisoning. While I was at it, I also prayed for my cat. I prayed that he'd poop. Two days ago I found some plastic he ate in one of the 20 instances of vomit, so after an $800 vet appointment, his $450 X-rays showed that he was also pretty constipated. We are hoping that a change in diet and some canned pumpkin will be enough to rectify his ailments. I prayed about a lot of other things. It felt good, and I know that it helped make my wife feel better, even if not physically.

I didn't mean to make a case for prayer as a potentially healthy exercise, but I think it's helpful for me, at least. That said, I'm sure there are alternatives that don't come with implied theism. I'll explore that more if my wife gets on the same page as me. Until then, I'm under no assumption that it'll make anything okay, but I'll pray anyway for my bae. Amen.

Did you, have you told your partner, and if so, how and how did it go down?

I'm scared to do so, that I'd be rejected and that they'd want to end up splitting as we'd be unequally yoked.

Post is too short at the moment, filling in words till it hits 50 words.

I've recently been going to church with my parents. Really on the fence about Christianity. Lee Strobel was a guest speaker there recently. He had 5 things of "proof" for Jesus, except it was just him yapping about stories and "miracles".

The main 2 that blew my mind in utter obvious bullshit.

1. A pastor prayed over his wife with an eye disease, (macular degeneration) and cured her blindness that shes had for 10 years......even if this was true, at the very least. What about starving, cancer ridden children. I mean really. nothing else needs to be said about this.
2. He used Near death experiences as an example of being able to see Jesus. Yet, the church obviously isn't studied up on this matter. There is no consistent data backing up that all NDE have Jesus in them, and even if they do. Their description of him is not consistent either.

In the middle east they think they see "allah" aswell in their NDEs.

Like this man could have basically yapped about spiderman being real because there's a movie on him or a little boy dreamed about spiderman.

We have cellphones and cameras galore now. Where are his miracles on camera now? If he is real I don't mean to mock him. But now's the time to be performing some shit!!!!

An all knowing God knows exactly what every person on this earth needs to see to have no doubt in his existence, this shit sounds no more than Santa Claus for adults to get them to behave.

I've experienced a lot of loss and death in my life and to just throw a bullshit "Jesus" answer infuriates me.

This is one of many examples that turn me away. in short the others are rich pastors. "Kenneth Copeland" prosperity gospel, Erika Kirk using her husbands death for a grieving campaign. or just knowing people that identify as Christian but are the most racist and judgemental bastards I know.

Lee did state that "something" has to be after we die. and sure NDE can be used to argue that. But nothing is cut and dry or obvious with the data to point the Christian God, or Jesus.

Anyone share the same thoughts or feelings?

EDIT: Last thought, Infinte punishement, for a Finite crime. Life is so short. to be punished for eternity, for that sounds like emotional manipulation. Sounds like a way to get people in the church so they don't experience eternal torcher, That also doesnt sound like "unconditional love" to me either.

I stopped writing for a while because sometimes finding your voice and actually using it are two different things.

A lot has happened in the silence.

Not necessarily externally. Internally.

Lately I’ve been reflecting on a part of deconstruction that I don’t think gets talked about enough.

Not the theology. Not even the questions themselves.

But the moment you realize how much of your perception of “other people” had already been shaped for you before you ever truly experienced them yourself.

I genuinely believed people outside of my belief system must secretly feel lost, empty, disconnected, or morally adrift in some way. Not because I hated anyone, but because that was the framework I inherited.

Then over time I met people who completely complicated that narrative.

People who were thoughtful. Grounded. Kind. Ethical. Self-aware. People who carried humility without certainty.

And honestly, I think that realization shook me more than any theological question ever did.

Because once you realize humanity exists far beyond the categories you inherited, it becomes hard to see the world the same way again.

Has anyone else experienced this part specifically?

Not necessarily losing faith entirely, but realizing the world outside the framework wasn’t what you were taught to fear?

And if you’re currently in the middle of deconstruction, what has honestly been the hardest part for you lately?

I signed up for a youth church camp this summer but idk if I should cancel it or just go. I know very well it’s gonna be teachings about ideas I no longer believe in. I’ve been deconstructing my religion and I mostly signed up for the camp because I genuinely have nothing to do this summer outside of work and camp is often fun cause you’re around your peers and everything. Being raised in a Christian community, your life, free time, hobbies, sense of belonging and community is basically based around church and church peers. Deconstructing is the worst feeling cause u loose all that and also your sense of perception of reality regarding almost everything. ( a pastors kid in an African household by the way)

I come from an extremely religious and conservative Muslim family, and a few years ago I moved away to a new city and lived independently for the first time. Once this happened, I had the opportunity to renegotiate my relationship with the faith and begin deconstructing. I hope it’s okay that I’m posting in this sub despite not being Christian. A lot of the posts resonate with me and I think deconstruction leads to a lot of the same reactions regardless of what the original faith is.

Anyway, I’ve also recently been in a new relationship. He is the most wonderful, kind person. But he is not Muslim. I knew that eventually I would need to have a difficult conversation with my family about this, as he has already expressed to me that he wouldn’t feel comfortable faking a conversion (which I completely understand and am personally of the belief that interfaith marriages are not sinful). But I figured I would ease them into it to try to protect whatever relationship still existed with my family.

My family knows that I have been on this religious journey and it has caused a lot of fractures over the years which we have been slowly trying to repair. But they don’t know the extent of it. I only recently shared with them that I no longer wear the hijab, and those conversations went well despite me never thinking that could be possible, so I thought we were making progress. But it definitely was made easier by the fact that my parents live so far away and this double life has been easy to maintain.

Anyway, my mom is visiting my country currently and is staying in a neighbouring city with my sister. I had plans to drive down to see them for Eid. However, this past weekend, I was out of town visiting my partner for his dad’s birthday (he lives in a different city). I was accidentally injured while here and had to get stitches on my arm, and texted my family to let them know. Well… the next day I get a call from my mom and found out that she had driven to my city early in the morning (4 hours away from where she is) to surprise me and take care of me after my injury. She was told by my cat sitter that I was “out of town with my boyfriend”. I could barely get a word in with my mom with how much she was crying over the phone. She demanded that I never tell my father or siblings about any of this, and that she doesn’t want me to “infect the family with my disgusting choices”. She said she never could’ve imagined it was “this bad”. She also told me to stay away from my siblings.

I completely understand that she is in shock and pain and that I shouldn’t take this personally but this has been an incredibly traumatizing past few days. I’m not sure how to navigate this going forward. She is assuming I am only in this relationship to have sex (lol) even though that is not at all the nature of this relationship and he has been very respectful of my boundaries around intimacy. I think the fact that it was a secret + that I was away with him is adding to the shock. I really do wish it didn’t have to be a secret, but I don’t think they were ready for that conversation yet.

Anyway, I could really use some advice for anyone who has gone through something similar with their family who has more conservative beliefs? Do they ever get over it? Do I try to talk to her or give her space? I feel for how terribly she must be feeling, but I wish things didn’t have to be this way.

Started to go psychologist a month ago and deconstructing allot, and I’m becoming so aware of all the ways Christianity hurt me.

I’m lesbian and grew up in conservative household, this lead me to try to be perfect, to make up for constantly feeling like I’m sinning. The shame.

I have been aware that I am peacekeeper, I try to make everyone comfortable around me. But damn, it goes so deep. I can’t stop analysing everything I do and say and see the scars and shame in everything. Like am I even my own person? What do I actually like?

I have a genuine question for those who deconstructed and later chose Christianity again. What reasons motivated you to come back other than fear?

I feel like fear is the driving factor behind most Christians’ belief whether they admit it or not. When I was still a fully-fledged Christian, I didn’t think that was the reason for me either. But after deconstructing, I realized that fear actually was a massive part of my belief.

The Bible literally presents us with two choices: eternity in Heaven (choose God) or eternity in Hell (don’t choose God). Of course people are going to want one of those options to be true over the other. I don’t know about you, but the idea of being tortured forever in some eternal cosmic dungeon sounds horrifying. It's the biggest existential fear.

That’s why it sometimes feels less like genuine love and more like coerced love.

Deuteronomy 6:5 says:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

But what kind of love COMMANDS you to love someone back?

If a stranger randomly approached you on the street, told you that he loved you, that he made some sacrifice to help you out it would seem really weird right? It gets better. The stranger then says, "oh but you better love me back...otherwise...well - I might just do something to you". Would you feel compelled to love that stranger? Would you feel safe around that stranger?

And then the Bible also LITERALLY tells us to fear God.

Ecclesiastes 12:13:

“Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”

What makes this even more confusing to me is that the Bible also says:

1 John 4:18

“Perfect love casts out fear.”

Yet fear seems deeply embedded into the entire system?? Fear of hell. Fear of punishment. Fear of being wrong about literally anything - interpeting the Bible wrong, choosing the wrong denomination, not worshipping enough, accidentally making a tv show an idol, not repenting correctly etc.

That irony is something I genuinely struggle with.

I actually want to come back to Christianity in some ways, but this issue makes it REALLY difficult for me.

I'm new to this, and given how my life is falling apart, I want to face this with some humor. What's the funniest or most embarrassing thing you did because of your past religious views that you now look back and laugh at? Or what's the funniest incident you've had with religion since deconstructing?

Hey all,
First time doing a post like this.
Very long story short. Grew up in a very Christian family and ended up ultimately getting really hurt by the church and left. Refused to go to church for years but still had a very deep faith but still had a lot of questions. Really went through years of deconstruction and find myself not believing at all and almost aligning more with atheism than I’d care to admit. I feel like I’ve lost all faith mainly due to the fact that I have never experienced God or seen him. Lack of proof.
In my professional in my 30s with a wife and kids and really just looking to find a community to chat with. Don’t really have anyone who understands where I’m at.
By no means am I looking to chat with people who are where I’m at, just people who want to be real and ask questions and challenge each other’s thoughts.
Shoot me a message if this relates!

Decided to watch an online service with my dad from the church I had been a regular attendee of for years.

The pre-service started with the service leader reminding everyone of their fallen sinful nature and how God’s grace was sorely needed in our lives… ok…

Worship began with songs like Nothing but the blood of Jesus… ok…

The pastor began preaching from Zechariah 3, emphasising (yet again) how sinful we all are but there is hope in Christ and he not only cleanses us but commissions us yada yada. What disturbed me most was how he used these specific words to describe us all - Rotten, Broken, Fallen. Strong words.

The service left me extremely turned off in disbelief that these were things I used to be nodding and agreeing to in the past. Why would I have not sensed anything wrong. I also couldn’t help but cringe that the old me had banked on these messages to convert/convince someone.

My point is, are all these service structures planned? It felt like the pre-service, to the songs chosen, to the sermon, were all planned to drive home the theme that ‘we are unworthy and filthy on our own and need Jesus’. It all seems so toxic and troubling to me now to observe these all from a different lens.

I left the church about 2.5 years ago, and it's been a journey to say the least, lol. After the initial grief of walking away, I took a pretty long break from anything spiritual/religious, but I think I'm in a place now where I'm ready to face my doubts and the shame of walking away. I still have a lot of questions and I sometimes feel like I might have made the wrong decision. My whole family is still very Christian, and they have very good (and what seems to be sound) arguments for their faith.

I've had a hard time finding good resources for a deconstructing Christian. I've discovered that most people who reject Christianity really don't have a good understanding of the religion or the bible at all. A lot of them never even grew up in the church.

I am specifically looking for resources from people who have studied the bible very deeply explain why they left the church. I want in-depth books or articles that help to break down the philosophy of the bible and explain why faith does (or doesn't) work for some people.

Note: although I no longer align with Christianity, I would not necessarily consider myself an atheist. Most arguments I hear against Christianity come atheists... so I'm open to any resource from any viewpoint (especially spirituality) Lol. Thanks!!!

I was raised Roman Catholic and then my mom married a southern Baptist when I was younger. When I got older I realized most of each religion isn’t about being the best it’s more judgment, control, and hypocrisy more than anything else. I have a half brother(18 I’m 32) who has always been very neutral generally. He’s always dealt with the same guilt from our Baptist grandmother about choices we make, and god not like us for being disrespectful (and in his case gay). Over the last couple of years I’ve become estranged from my family due to having a child and not wanting to feed into the toxic environment anymore. I also just generally was hanging breakdowns from the mental gymnastics, and gaslighting. Unfortunately this left my brother to defend himself, and while he mostly does, he’s recently gotten into bible study. The issue is I’ve always tried to maintain our relationship but now that he’s falling into the same lack of accountability, pass everything onto god mentality idk if I can do it anymore. The self entitlement and attitude that has come from them was always too much to deal with and now it seems because I wasn’t there as a buffer they fully got to him. It’s so disappointing to see him turn over to this type of mentality and further reinforces my thinking that they’re controlling and manipulative. As soon as the one person with a different perspective was out of the picture they used that time to really hone in on his insecurities. The worst part is my mother is fully against how they carry themselves, but her being the martyr that I always am “abusing” she’s going to take this opportunity to separate him from my influence all together. So much for “they’re word” bringing people together

hey everyone i just wrote a poem about my experience deconstructing. i wanted to share it here in case anyone else could read it and maybe enjoy it.

did my angels leave my side?
did i take them by suprise?
jesus taught me lessons but god made my cry
id like to think things should have been changed
if someone told me as a child she didn't need to be saved
if i don't believe in god anymore who listens when i pray?
my loved ones that died, the trees, or the sky?
it's nice to think someone's listening either way