I grew up in the Christian church. My parents were pastors of a church in a service-oriented denomination that had roots in Methodism. Our church baptised people, took communion, and worked with people experiencing homelessness and drug addiction. Around the time I started high school, our family started practicing Biblical feasts that were typically seen as Jewish instead of Christian: Passover, Yom Kippur, Sukkot. We started eating kosher and observing the Sabbath, saying if Jesus did it, why shouldn’t we?
Although I was a typical teenage girl who was obsessed with boys, her friends, and her computer, I was also in love with Jesus. I went to every youth group outing, I read my Bible every night, I got into religious debates at school, and I wrote boys sanctimonious notes about how I was not that kind of girl.
I went on mission trips right out of high school and when I came back, became the youth pastor at my church. At nineteen, I married the drummer of our worship band. In my world, there was no way we could have sex or live together unless we were married, and it was going to be until death.
Through my adult years, my religious walk slowly changed. First, my parents moved to a different state, and my husband and I had to reshape how we were Christians if we didn’t have my parents as pastors. We stayed at our old church for some time, but then we moved and sought out a Messianic congregation.
These people also observed Sabbath and the holy feasts and ate kosher. Some were ethnically Jewish; many, like us, were not. These groups were typically full of anti-authoritarians who enjoyed questioning the Christian church and the things it held dear, like Christmas and Easter, which both have roots in pagan holidays. They always read the Bible literally–the six-thousand-year-old earth, the seven day creation story, the resurrection, and most especially, the end times prophecies. Many of our discussions centered around the rapture, the tribulation, and hell.
It took us time to find a congregation we felt fit us right, and even the one we settled on, at times, felt like fitting into a shoe that was too tight. But the people were friendly, and I enjoyed meeting with them every Saturday to read through the Torah, discuss it, and eat a meal together.
At the same time, my husband and I were expanding our social circles and maturing as adults. We started drinking socially, which our original church frowned upon. We met other young adults our age, most of whom weren’t actively religious the way we were. Barack Obama was president, and through the economic recession and various conversations about human rights like gay marriage, we were both becoming more liberal.
Slowly, my husband stopped going to our church while I remained. I didn’t mind going on my own, but the fellowship my partner and I had changed until we didn’t talk about God or the Bible much at all. We stopped celebrating the Sabbath and we only casually did the holy feasts unless we were visiting my parents. Messianic Christianity became a thing of his past, and it was something I was trying to hang onto.
At some point, he told me he didn’t truly believe anymore, and he felt like he could no longer be the husband he promised to be. The foundation we had built our marriage on–God, Christianity, and a literal reading of the Bible–was gone.
Throughout the next few years, I struggled to maintain my connection to God. I wanted to think about things in a new way. I looked into Rob Bell and his universalist interpretation of scripture. I had new conversations with family members and my church. But I didn’t know where to go after all of it. Everything felt so empty compared with the strict code I’d grown up with.
Growing up, I never really understood the phrase “I’m not religious, but I’m very spiritual.” A younger, more fundamentalist me would roll my eyes at such claims. How can you have spirituality if you don’t have a religion? If you don’t have a church and traditions and sacraments, how can it mean anything at all?
Religion, fundamentalist Christianity, and the way I held onto them also seemed inextricably linked to my identity. Without them, I didn’t know who I was at all. After I separated from my husband, I felt even more lost without the relationship I’d been standing on since I was nineteen years old.
I started exploring Eastern traditions such as Buddhism and Taoism with my friend, Ryan. It was a breath of fresh air to talk about God again, but without the constraints of the Western model of religion. We spoke about Jesus too though, and how his love was the most important part of his message. We fell in love and moved to Spain together where I taught English. While in Spain, we had many conversations about God, but it was the first time in my life where I wasn’t actively observing a religion. Contrary to what my fifteen-year-old self might have believed, it wasn’t full of sin, despair, and destruction. It was just life through a different lens.
Through the years, I finally started to understand how one could be spiritual but not religious. I still felt that calling toward something divine. Even though I could see how humanity had used God to their advantage, how we had misinterpreted or misled people, how we read scripture to support our beliefs, I couldn’t deny the deep truth of my childhood. I still believe there is a loving being, working for our good, and calling us to something greater.
These days, I focus on mindfulness, meditation, connecting with nature, prayer, and spreading love in my circle. I’m not finished with religion. I foresee a time when I’m participating in traditions again with a community that my daughter can be a part of. But right now, I’m more interested in the spiritual.
Much of what I grew up with is the masculine aspect of the divine. It’s the natural result of a patriarchal society. Instead of a hierarchical model that thrives on a black and white way of thinking, I’m fascinated by communal, compassionate, and grounded spirituality. I started Open Presence to discuss spirituality, to foster a community for spiritual seekers, and to give people a place to share their stories. I hope you’ll join me.
Photo by Lukasz Szmigiel on Unsplash