“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” — Steve Jobs
I gave too much of my life away to Christ. I wouldn’t have admitted this when I was a Christian, even to myself. But I remember being deeply grateful, after 28 years of giving my life to Christ and “renewing my mind” to be in tune to God, to see myself in the mirror and not think of myself as a child of God, but as myself. It was a surprisingly beautiful moment.
I can remember, if I go back to my very earliest memories — back when I was about 4 years old — not believing in God. I was just me, interacting in the world. I remember it very faintly, but enough to get some sense of what it felt like. And somewhere along the line, I was convinced that this me was a sinner who needed to be “saved” — so I gave everything I was away to Christ. I wasn’t myself anymore. I was a Child of God.
It wasn’t sad for me. I was so convinced I was a sinner in need of grace, at the time, that it felt like the best moment of my life. I was clean! I was loved by the great God of the universe! I was His kid!
And I felt, after I committed my life to Christ at 12 years old, like I had made the most profound commitment of my life. I was a Man of God. It was so humbling and beautiful that there were several nights I cried in gratitude.
No, that’s not an overreaction. If you think you deserve hell, and then believe that a great God of the Universe loved you so much He would have His son die a cruel death so that He could adopt you and you could spend forever in eternity with Him, you would do the same thing now and again, probably. You wouldn’t be able to stop talking about it.
But I was wrong.
That old me wasn’t a sinner who needed God’s grace. It was just me. And I was still just me — except now I was trying to be someone I was not. And this someone was a lie of a phantom who didn’t even exist.
I was giving the one short life I had away to a phantom that didn’t exist. And it was taking over my connection to other people, the universe, and even myself.
After a few years of striving I could feel the cracks.
I could feel I was trying to be someone I wasn’t. It crept up on me slow. I saw things as beautiful that I, as a Child of God, was supposed to see as ugly. I saw things as ugly (like the concept of “sin”) that I was supposed to see as beautiful. I was told I was supposed to be a Child of God because that’s who, supposedly, I already was…but slowly it dawned on me that this was a trick to flatter me into giving my life away to a phantom.
That the person most alive in my life — the nonexistent Christ — was a void, like a black hole, consuming my life and keeping me from meeting the person I actually was.
And so, on April 6, 2012 — Good Friday — Jesus died for me, and I left Christianity.
It’s been a process, ever since then, getting to know myself. As silly as it may sound, thinking back to my earlier memories (even back to 4, before I believed in God) was how I began to sort out how I would carry on my life after faith. It was like I was meeting myself, the real me, and accepting myself for the first time.
It’s been a ride, but I’m glad I finally stopped chasing the phantom and managed to get to know the real me a bit more now, though I wish I had done it earlier.
Based on my experiences, I would strongly encourage people to leave the phantom if they wish to meet themselves and who they actually are.
Wouldn’t it be sad to go through your whole life giving it away to a phantom who didn’t exist? Taken over by a lie that wasn’t you?
So don’t give yourself to the Bible’s narrow vision. Go ahead. Broaden the focus. Explore the nooks and crannies of it. Accept yourself. And let the hundreds-year-old dead corpse die as you free yourself and discover yourself.
Letting the lie of Christ die can allow us to discover the truth of who we are. And, at least in my case…there is something profoundly liberating in seeing you don’t have to banish who you are in order to become someone else you are not — especially if they don’t even exist.
Thank you for reading.