2020 Was the Last Straw

 A Year of Transformation

2020 was a big year for me, spiritually speaking. I spent the entire year riding the wave of personal growth and I have come out on the other side a truly different person. I mastered something; reached a level of understanding that brought me the greatest sense of peace and harmony I have ever felt in my life and it came in the midst of one of the scariest, most uncertain times in US history. 

I feel, with certainty, that I have unlocked a secret of the universe. I have risen to the next level of frequency or understanding and I am on some next level shit. That probably sounds completely absurd. But, I really feel like I am coming to grips with some major stuff. I am allowing myself to let go of the expectations I was raised to believe were absolute and paramount to my existence and the only true way to experience the world and I have never felt so free in all my life. They say accepting Jesus and joining the church frees you from the bondage of sins. I have to say that leaving the organized church in favor of a very personal spiritual experience frees you from the bondage of religion.   

So what is this really about?

This is not about whether or not something bigger than us exists or not. This is about how man has taken an idea and twisted it into absolute evil, from the very beginning. This is about man’s understanding about what God is, being incorrect and then using their twisted ideas and interpretations of the past to oppress other humans throughout history up to and including today. There are a lot of people who are waking up to this and there are many others who are digging in their heels and doubling down on these sideways beliefs and teachings. 

I am not here to denounce God entirely. But, I’ll tell you what I am denouncing. I am denouncing the Bible man created and I am denouncing the Christian church and churches of abrahamic ideologies. I am denouncing the made up version of God. I am! I think that the way the God of the Bible is presented, followed and worshipped is wicked. It is archaic. It is outdated and it is wrong. I denounce it. I rebuke it! There, I said it. 

What Caused This Shift?

After a lot of reflection and exercises in self awareness (most recently, shadow work) I have come to the realization and conclusion that my involvement in religion AT ALL stems from my need to be seen as a good girl who does what she’s told. Simple as that. 

My entire identity, up until very recently, revolved around my need to exceed expectations of others, especially in terms of behavioral expectations. It is why my love language is acts of service. It’s why I tended to have a high degree of agreeableness. It’s why I have struggled to be assertive and been a doormat instead. It’s why I have a hard time telling people NO. Because to be the Jessie everyone expected, I had to be compliant, to be polite, cheerful, helpful, a hard worker, a good girl, a rule follower, a worker bee. Not all of those are bad things, but the combination and personality it created made it so I have been unable to live an authentic life for the first 39 years. 

I felt I couldn’t speak up for myself for fear of looking mean or coming across as difficult to work with. I didn’t allow myself to entertain the thoughts and doubts I had about religion and God, since forever, because I had been taught that it meant I was letting in evil. I couldn’t tell people I didn’t want to do all the work for their project, even if I had a good reason, because that would mean I was a selfish person. Definitely could never refuse a request simply because I didn’t want to do it! 

I can remember questioning the validity of the Bible way back in middle school. I remember even asking the Pastor about a contradiction I found, at one point. I got an annoyed response that was a non-answer. There have been many times that I have questioned things that made no sense, growing up and even as a young adult. I was always convinced that this was the work of the devil trying to deceive me and that I was called to have faith, which basically means to just believe what is written without questioning it. To do anything else was evil. Thinking back, church always felt like work to me, not solace or sanctuary. It was a place of judgment, not acceptance. Going to church always involved a job of some sort. I was always being paraded up front, asked to do things and given tasks. Aside from one girl, the peers of mine at church when I was growing up, were not my friends. I did not have a sense of community at church and always kind of felt on the fringes. My mother and grandmother signed me up for jobs to do at first and as time went on, others began to do the same. I don’t ever recall going to someone and saying, “I would like to be involved in thus and such, at church.” I was just signed up and obligated. This included things like acolyte, choir, soloist, performance group, youth group, nursery worker (from age 7), and eventually Sunday school helper turned Sunday school teacher and children’s program teacher and helper. Church always felt like work, never like home. 

My family was never one of those families that was really close with other families at church. We didn’t have dinners together or camp together. We didn’t go to small group or Bible study. We weren’t pals with the pastor and his family. We were just there, on the fringe; worker bees. Church was pretty an empty experience, but it was just something you did. You went to church on Sunday because people would notice if you didn’t.

I did believe in God and Jesus and the Bible, but always had some pretty nagging questions and doubts. I never allowed myself to delve into it because that would disappoint others. But, as the internet became a thing and information became more available, I started to get some more answers and that just created some BIGGER questions and doubts. My issue was that I still lacked the courage to allow myself to accept what I knew to be true, in my heart. And that was that the Bible wasn’t the infallible word of God, it was the very fallible, very dated, word of man. The God of the Bible is too human. There are too many contradictions, too many immoral things that are practiced and accepted. Too many things that just don’t add up.

This deconstruction is me taking the power back. It is allowing myself to entertain these thoughts and do the necessary research. It is sitting with the questions and doubts and it is being okay with the conclusions I ultimately come to. Because at the end of the day, I can’t force myself NOT to have these questions. I can’t shove these thoughts and feelings down any longer, because as it turns out, I was never doing that for my own benefit anyway, I was doing it to fit a mold that was created for me by others. It’s not authentic. It’s a fabricated version of me. 

I was thinking back to the one time I was truly “moved by the holy spirit” and it was at a weekend Christian concert festival where the entire crowd took communion together; thousands of people took communion simultaneously. It was a magical moment. What I see now, when I think back on that, is not what I was told about it at the time by the adults who also attended, which was that I had finally accepted Jesus into my heart, it was being moved by a group of people doing something as one. Because at the end of the day, that is what moves me because that is what I believe in. I believe in all people being connected, whether we know it or not. And those kinds of things, where people do things as one, move me more than anything. It can be a crowd singing a song somewhere, unprompted or it could be as simple as the olympics where everyone around the world gathers to do something together. THAT is god, to me. The collective acting in unity. As much as adults wanted me to have accepted Jesus and as many times as I was encouraged and went through those motions, I never felt full. It always made the adults excited though…

So this next phase of life for me is a phase where I am allowed to just be myself without checking everything at the door first. Without running it through the Grandma Margaret sniff test or the John Waite sniff test or the Doug Musbach sniff test. I practiced on this in 2020 by allowing myself to do things and like things without running it through the Victor sniff test. And you know what, he never noticed aside from noticing that I was happier and less stressed out. He has a share of my fears of inadequacy. Being my “person” since I was 15 he has had a lot of influence in the forming of my adult personality and those times in his youth when he was a little too harsh, a little too judgmental, a little too closed minded, did impact me. They were just aspects of his immaturity, most of which he has overcome. Nevertheless, he contributed to some of the hurdles I have had to climb in my growth journey. Thankfully, he has grown in his own way alongside me and our relationship thrives because of it, even in the face of changes and phases of life. That’s not everyone’s story, who is always evolving. I feel fortunate in that regard.

So, again, I am not at this point, full on atheist. At this stage I would consider myself agnostic with a side of omnism. What that means is, I believe I don’t know who or what God is, if God exists and I am okay with not knowing. I have ideas about interconnectedness, singular consciousness, energy and vibrations. I have ideas about the sun and the earth and the universe. But, that’s really it right now. Just some ideas. I am basically just a person who is full of wonder. And thus, I believe there is some truth in all religions in that they all attempt to point toward that unknowable. However, I am fully embracing and allowing myself to openly reject the Bible as poorly compiled mythology. It serves as an ancient text, but is NOT the infallible word of God. How CAN it be?

I realize there are implications of this declaration, but those implications are just in the way others perceive me. The implications are not supernatural or eternal. I won’t look to strike up conversations about this in certain circles and I realize I will very likely lose some relationships if I do have this conversation with anyone outside of my home and my mother.  And really at this point, even if there are everlasting consequences, I am pretty much powerless now, anyway. There is no putting that genie back in the bottle. There is no getting the toothpaste back in the tube. And really, I can’t even pretend I can go back to believing all that after all I have learned. (Didn’t believe much of it to begin with if I am being honest). I’m just too big of a thinker. I guess God just made me that way… Besides, I was already baptised, so I guess if everything turns out to be true in the end all I have to do is say sorry and it makes it all better anyway, right? Oh brother…