Stopped going to church. YAY
For the first time in my life I stopped going to church. After about a month of not attending, a couple things I remember.
The last day I went, a girl in my cell group was engaged, nearing marriage, and she was almost in tears as she described the feeling she had, that “she really felt in her heart that God wanted her to be happy,” as she described the newfound good things that happened to her. Maybe she meant that she had simply found joy in God alone, but from the context of describing all the ups of life coming her way, I lightly interpreted it as “Good things are happening – God must want me to be happy.” But after mulling over it for a couple weeks, I disagree with that sentiment. God makes you happy despite the circumstances. Actually, he may give you miserable circumstances, and He will still command you to joy. I say this from the perspective of someone that is chronically unhappy. I was afraid to say this before because I was afraid people would not believe God because of me or turn away from Christianity, but I am chronically unhappy. I don’t know if I’ve ever been happy in my entire life. In the few moments I have felt genuinely content, I’ve felt a deep sense of fear, longing, like something was off and everything would implode the next hour.
During my last cell group, I described how two months ago, I just gave up on the whole thing I was doing with faith, everything, because I couldn’t do it anymore. I was just miserable, and faith was making me more miserable. They looked concerned and offered me kind words, and said I should take some time off if I was struggling. I’m certain they actually cared. I was grateful for that.
New things:
My mind feels much more receptive to the vast possibilities of the world and life. My relationship with theology, the Church, was that there was a right answer, and that I was bound under tight moral quandraries. There were places my mind was allowed to go, and places where it was not. Things I wanted to say but did not let myself, now I speak freely. I feel the chains falling away. Maybe this is what other people just normally feel like all the time? It’s rather nice. I feel more human. I feel less trapped. I’m letting myself be a little delusional, chase ambition, the rather inconsequential things of this life that other people chase, and whatnot. Things I was already chasing before, now I chase more eagerly, openly, and guilt-free.
I realize how much of a time and energy sink going to church on Sundays was. Now I feel like I can actually relax on the weekend.
I’m trying more to do things I wouldn’t do because “a good Christian wouldn’t.” In some ways, I kind of hope I hit some kind of rock bottom. Maybe I just need to hit it hard enough to bounce back.
How did I come to associate the whole thing of Christianity with only the negative, so much that I detest even the idea of talking with other Christians, and going to church at all? Was there really so little happiness in that entire ordeal that I remember nothing positive and only the negative? To me right now, it seems even the positive was always tinged with the negative, the underlying feeling that I was not enough. Guilt. Punishment. Wanting to kill myself. Self-denial. Forcing myself to do things I did not want to. Emotional repression. Common themes.