Walking Away From God Without Getting Struck by Lightning
Religions have reshaped over time to manipulate and control the population. Participants are often unaware they live under a…
Religions have reshaped over time to manipulate and control the population. Participants are often unaware they live under a self-prescribed spell. Just try to keep all of the 613 old or 1050 new testament biblical commandments. Then throw in a good story about burning in Hell if you break those commandments. Good luck!
The instilled fear is what keeps people from running off. I experienced this same oppression for years. It is a tactic meant to cause people to self-correct their behavior according to the biblical commandments. Christianity does not look as it did 2000 years ago when Christ roamed Earth. Instead, Christianity has been transformed more times than can be accounted for.
As society changes, Christianity appears to adapt and attempt to be relevant to new generations who find religion less appealing. At some point, all the trained oppression, daily guilt for being human, and impossible standard finally cause many people to walk away.
But when we abandon our faith, where does that leave us?
It is very human to feel nature as a being instead of nature as it truly is. Reality hides well, and the imagination tries to fill in the blanks for all the mysterious things that occur. As a result, we imagine events and everyday occurrences for ourselves.
As a runaway teenager might feel freedom initially, the short-lived feeling can quickly be replaced with guilt, shame, and fear. So the teen runs back home. So too, is the adult human as they shed their Christian identity and feel naked in an unfamiliar world.
When a person is indoctrinated from childhood, or for many years at any point, they are attached to the ideology. The ideology can sometimes be something other than religion. People subscribe to many things like patriotism, environmentalism, corporatism, etc. Regardless, people often cling to these concepts and practices in unhealthy ways.
When you remove all the layers, who are you?
Imagine yourself with no belief in religion. Now also imagine not switching to an anti-religion herd either. Strip yourself from work, education, cars, houses, clothing, makeup, and everything. Forget your hometown, where you live now, and who you know, including your family, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances.
Now imagine you were in an unfortunate car accident, and you can’t recall your name and see any familiar faces. Now imagine you can’t speak. You can understand others only by their body language. You are now in another country where everyone is babbling sounds from their mouth, but nothing you understand.
In Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, Zarathustra says, “Behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage — it is called Self; it dwelleth in thy body, it is thy body.”
Once a person strips themselves of their mighty lord, they realize it was themselves they turned to when they once believed it was a god in the sky. In the same book, Zarathustra says, “God is dead.” But what did he mean by saying God is dead?
Zarathustra gives us another clue, “and many a one hath gone into the wilderness and killed himself, because he was weary of being the battle and battlefield of virtues.” Essentially, he was saying people can’t live up to the standards religion projects onto a person. Once one kills the religion, they have killed God. However, God, in this case, is the Self.
So essentially, as religion wears off people, it is not God they kill, but themselves, their false hopes, their identity, their dreams, aspirations, and thoughts. Psychological suicide can occur in people who walk away from God, and it often leaves them feeling empty. But that’s a familiar feeling because the Self felt empty before religion too. And for a while, religion filled this void, but now it has returned.
Nihilism is part of the breakup process with religion. So is a loss feeling. It initially feels like a breakup from a bad relationship and simultaneously like death. Death is because we were told who we were for so long that we eventually believed it. That brainwashing became our identity.
So when a person denounces their faith, it is a death. You left yourself behind. But at the same time, there is no going back to the shackles that religion once held over you. Stepping away and looking back at your old Self is like looking at a prisoner. You were told you “once were bound and now are free, lost, and eventually found.”
However, religion no longer feels like home after all the years of psychological mistreatment by others and Self-caused abuse. We are the worst offenders because we still feel attached to something that caused us so much pain in the past.
Why does a spouse go back to the abuser? Why does a dog return to its own vomit to consume it once again? What is this behavior? My friends, this is what it is to be human. We are all humans with an identity problem.
“Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.”
— Albert Camus
How Religion Forms
We are great apes; accept that. But over the eons, we split away, and our brains developed as we learned how to harness fire, control the plants, and exchange ideas. Once we could communicate enough to devise hunting plans, we started killing animals larger than ourselves.
As we clothed ourselves with other animal skins and walked away from depleted land resources, we then shed our body hair. At some point, we got better at communicating and then learned how to trick the other animals in the wilderness. From hunting tactics, we taught ourselves how to lie to each other as well.
“Some early ancient ancestors could not hunt, gather, nor grow crops. So they eventually turned to lying for survival. At some point, our great ape ancestors convinced another ape to give up their banana. But it wasn’t easy.
First, the tribal ape asked his younger generation to give him a banana. But after that did not work, he pointed to the skies and said, you will go to ape heaven if you give me your banana. The ape laughed. So he described what Heaven must be like.
Still not convinced, the skies soon darkened, rain began to fall, and lightning crashed from the skies for many days. The wind blew, the community was flooded, and some members of the tribe even died.
Eventually, the weak elder ape looked back at the same younger ape and said, you caused this. Had you given me your banana, none of this would have happened. So the younger ape ran to get his fruit and returned with everything he had as an offering for the older wise ape.
Coincidentally the skies cleared, and everyone looked in awe as the elder ape said, “This great storm was the wrath of the Huracan god.” He then added, “From now on, you all must give up your offerings so the mighty one won’t smite thee again.”
And the Mayas lived for many years after that. Today we call these great winds Hurricanes. The narrative about the ape is an example of how religion forms in cultures. New religions are still for today. Are We Better Off Without Religion is another article I wrote that covers this topic? Regardless of the exact details, the Maya did name their god of wind, Huracan.
“often referred to as U Kʼux Kaj, the “Heart of Sky,” is a Kʼicheʼ Maya god of wind, storm, fire, and one of the creator deities who participated in all three attempts at creating humanity. He also caused the Great Flood after the second generation of humans angered the gods. He supposedly lived in the windy mists above the floodwaters and repeatedly invoked “earth” until land came up from the seas.” (Wikipedia)
I feel sorry for those who were programmed to feel bad as a result of religion. Religion is culture, and cultures are political truths, not objective truths or reality. The origin stories of religion are actually quite beautiful. The myths provide artistic explanations for all things human. However, in the attempts to keep the religion over the millennia, humans have gotten lost as a whole. We have taken myths literally and exerted them as a force into civilizations.
Undermining: How Religion Stole The Human
Eventually, individuals felt oppressed by the self-correcting mechanism of fear. But fear is a human trait. Fear is the feeling of the unknown. Humans dislike feeling uncomfortable, so we make up stories, tell them to our frightened children, and they grow up doing the same to their kids.
Eventually, the stories evolve, as well as the purpose of the stories. The wrong people saw the god stories’ effect, abused their usage, and wielded power over others.
No one can ever earn their way into Heaven. However, such overbearing restrictions do paralyze us — leaving one unsure if any behavior is okay. This causes oppression, which disables the human. By design, religion can generate a person to freeze for fear of “sinning.”
Furthermore, belief in an afterlife often causes many to give up on this real life. All while daydreaming of a magical wonderland in the end. As a result, many religious folks frequently lean on their god to do the work for them, practicing inaction.
Subsequently, thoughts and prayers are sometimes uttered with impaired judgment by people drunk on religion. They undermine what it means to be human and disconnect us from one another in a non-human-kind of way. Furthermore, is it any wonder where society learned inaction from?
Ultimately, we have allowed religion, people, places, and things to manipulate and disable us. These distractions undermine what it truly means to be human. Yet we allow it ourselves, and no one else is at fault.
But should we be angry? If so, at who? Remember, your parents were told what to believe too. They are only doing what they were told.
People can lose all sense of reality when fully subscribed to an ideology. It’s a human characteristic. We all unconsciously find ways to survive the feeling of nothingness. Friedrich Nietzsche encouraged nihilists to be careful. When he said, “God is Dead,” he referred to killing ourselves psychologically —not our bodies, but killing our imagined hopes.
Be aware that the nothingness feeling will remain until it is filled with an alternative. Nietzsche encouraged us to fill this void with philosophy, music, or the arts. Writing is a good start. So is reading, or whatever you enjoy. Free yourself to do the things religion held you back from doing. Never harm another person, especially yourself. But in your walk away from God, remember to go out there and experience the new you.
Walking Away
Never search for things that don’t exist. People seek happiness, love, success, and many other abstract concepts. However, those are imagined ideas that trigger emotions. And just like no one ever goes out into the world seeking anger, depression, or sadness, know that imagined ideas can never be found.
Instead of searching for happiness, experience it. Experience moments of joy that eventually lead to a better sense of well-being. It will take time for those who feel lost, but know that your Self is there waiting for you to participate in life.
So get up and walk a new walk. Give yourself permission to be human—show others’ forgiveness, especially yourself. Take away the things from religion that make you feel good; you don’t have to actually strip completely naked. Be careful not to attach to external people, places, or things.
Instead, reconstruct yourself on the inside. Write a new holy text that is custom for you. Create your own philosophy by living, being there for others, and being there for Self. You have been praying to Self for so long now. Get used to the new image of god.
God is misunderstood reality. God is the mystery around the corners we can’t explain. God is nature. God is humanity–humankind–coming together in what Christians interpret as the Holy Spirit, which is actually the Human Spirit. God is the helping hand, the stranger in need, the memory of the dead, the warm touch of the living. God is the essence of you; God is “it is called Self; it dwelleth in thy body, it is thy body.”
Now stop beating yourself up. Stop being afraid of wrath before you cause a Self-injury and run back to your Self/God.
Be here. Be now. Be human.
Read my other articles:
When Are Thoughts and Prayers on Social Media OK?
“Positive thoughts and prayer have been the best means available, since the beginning of time, to transform darkness to…medium.com
Who the Hell is God Anyway?
Who the hell is God, really? medium.com
Is It Okay To Ruin Someone’s Faith?
Let's say there is a man named Tom who adopts a particular religion and promotes kindness, compassion, and love.medium.com
Christians & Atheists, Get Your Shit Together
There are many good and necessary things religion has brought to society over the millennia.medium.com
Are We Better Off Without Religion?
“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.”
― Bertrand Russell, paraphrased.medium.com