My deconstructed life

I must confess that my prior article wasn’t clear enough. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten that too many people have a lot to say to me, much of which isn’t positive these days. Well, I don’t give a damn about those people.

Since late 2019, I have undergone a period of deconstruction in my faith. According to Merriam-Webster, “Deconstruction doesn’t actually mean “demolition;” instead it means “breaking down” or analyzing something (especially the words in a work of fiction or nonfiction) to discover its true significance, which is supposedly almost never exactly what the author intended.”

According to faithjustice.net, “In the New Testament, the opening chapters of John offer a series of acts in which Jesus appears engaged in work that might aptly be called “deconstruction.” In John 2, Jesus tells the religious leaders to tear down (or de-construct) the temple.’”

I grew up in the Church. I would leave it at that, perhaps discussing a few of the beliefs I walked away from, but I must start at the beginning so you understand what I’ve been through.

It’s 1996, and I’m in children’s church. The children’s pastor calls for anyone wanting to pray the ‘Sinner’s Prayer’ to raise their hand and repeat the prayer after him. Of course, I do this without thinking. I was young. How was I supposed to know what I was doing? I was following everyone else.

Fast forward, I’m 9 years old. There’s an invitation for anyone wanting to be baptized. Well, once again, I follow everyone else who’s signing up. I don’t even believe I asked in the first place. To my knowledge, I believe I’m the only one in my immediate family to be baptized at such a young age.

Moving forward again, I’m now 13. Already, I’m playing drums in kids church for the past couple of years. This was only possible because a couple of years earlier, a couple at church invited us over for a meal, and I picked up the drum sticks in their basement and started playing their drum set.

I didn’t know how to play the drums; no one ever taught me. They were, however, impressed.

At the age of 15, due to my mother’s health complications, we left our church. I found myself running down a new rabbit hole. Not necessarily something I wanted to do, but rather I needed to do. I needed to start finding my connection in life.

I started going down to a non-denominational church a few blocks away from home. It was okay. Neither my mom nor my dad saw a problem with me continuing my religious experience. It’s something I wanted at the time.

On Easter Sunday 2008, I discovered a different church, a former “Baptist church with a really cool website,” as they described it. I remember the name still, Woodside Bible Church. It’s a non-denominational church with roots in the North American Baptist tradition.

According to their purpose and mission statement,

We exist to glorify God by making disciples — helping people belong to Christ, grow in Christ, and reach the world for Christ. Everything we do hinges on this mission as we create a disciple-making movement from Southeast Michigan to the ends of the earth.

All I can say is, good luck. Trying to go to the ends of the earth is impossible. With so many religions, and still so many that don’t care about religion, it’d be hard for the church to convert anyone these days. Probably explains why pastors are getting older with no one to replace them.

I attended Woodside for at least 2 years before leaving. Honestly, it was okay, but I was starting to feel like there was something else that I needed.

In April of 2013, I moved down to Nashville, TN. I was able to find work, and I also attended The Art Institute. It was an eye-opening experience that I will never forget. I found out I wasn’t the only gay person in school. That was pretty cool.

I left Nashville in May 2015, after meeting a ton of friends and amazing people along the way. I went back to Detroit, where I discovered an LGBTQ church that was championing LGBTQ rights in Michigan. Within a few months of attending, I became a member and started getting involved in ministry.

This was the church that I had been looking for. From the first day that I walked into the church, I was embraced with open arms.

When I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2018, they understood and put my name on their prayer list, without asking. It was absolutely amazing to be a part of that church.

While I attended there, however, my beliefs in God really started to change. It wasn’t until I took the pastor’s Christmas Eve 2017 message to heart. Yes, every religion carries a common light. But what does religion really mean to the world? What does it mean to me?

This sent me on a spiral of events that would really change who I am today.

In September 2019, following a bad break-up, I moved back to Nashville. Met an amazing guy, dated, and got married on New Year’s Eve 2019. Our discovered attraction and love for one another was like something out of a fairy tale. A fairy tale indeed, and one that continues to this very day.

I was still doing my podcast, even through the COVID pandemic. Still, something was changing. In February 2022, Apostles That Rock officially came to a close, and so did everything I loved and hated about the church.

It wasn’t until just a few months ago that I discovered that religion was invented by man. That’s all it is, an invention. I know that can be hard to understand or decipher, but history proves this.

I mentioned in my last article that, according to Wikipedia and Science.org, “the exact time when humans first became religious remains unknown; however, research in evolutionary archaeology shows credible evidence of religious-cum-ritualistic behavior from around the Middle Paleolithic era (45–200 thousand years ago).”

Given that fact, it is no longer difficult to dismiss such a relevant argument that mankind invented religion to try to understand where we came from.

At this stage in my life, I believe that I have made the best choice for me. I don’t believe in God. As part of the “circle of life,” I will die one day, and that will be it. I’ll be remembered for a short time. After that, memories of my earthly presence will become lost. 500 years from now, no one will know who I was or what I did in this life. This is all part of the human condition. This is real life.

With that, whoever reads this, I don’t know who you are. My best advice, however, is to research the history of your origins. Discover something new about life, and live in the love of community and helping mankind.

We all have a role to play in this current moment. We may not be known 1,000 years from now, but we can make an impact today, and religion doesn’t even have to be a part of that conversation.

Religion is nothing more than a form of control. Religion doesn’t explain how life began or how it ends. Science gave us that.

The only thing that really upset me about growing up in the church was that the Church disparages and disregards human potential. It was never about them hating the LGBT community.

I understand many have been hurt by religion, and I don’t blame those who left the church. I’m only admitting that I was never actually hurt by the church; rather, I left due to my expanding knowledge of religious history.