Why I Left My Religion
*The views expressed by this article are those of the author and not of Her Campus GSU*
The photos in this article were photographed by Heather Hurtt (@heatherhurtt), a student at Georgia State University as a project where she highlighted the stories of people who left their religion as well. They are not intending to be disrespectful and are rather symbolically explaining how these now non-religious people feel.
For further reference, when I refer to being “spiritual” or a “spiritual journey” I am referring to the 12 Universal Laws. I am not referring to being committed to an organized religion. When I say Christianity I am referring to the Merriam-Webster definition. I am aware that Christianity has many denominations and I have experienced a few growing up so I decided to use one label. Feel free to replace any labels and names I used to help you further understand, if you will.
I was born into a Baptist family but I went to Baptist, Methodist as well as non-denominational churches growing up. From just a few months old to about high school, I went to church almost every week. I cannot emphasize how much faith I had in Jesus, the Bible, and Christianity as a whole. I felt energy when I went to church. Almost like a presence I couldn’t shake that I concluded was Jesus and thus made me heavily involved in anything church related growing up.
You couldn’t convince me my beliefs were invalid, you just couldn’t.
Then, in college, I started having this awakening, out of nowhere.
It started in college because Atlanta exposed me to things I had never experienced before. I found myself on a self discovery journey. I had no idea who I was and I was dealing with a lot of karma I created for myself in my past. It was like I was handed eyeglasses and the Universe was like “now look at the world”.
If you’ve been through your spiritual awakening or are currently going through it, you will understand me when I say the world was not at all the way it seemed to me before. It’s like I could see right through everything. I became highly intuitive and fantastic at manifestation. This was a total re-invention of myself that was needed to rid my life of the karmic cycles I created. Everything made sense now in the fact that everything I put out came right back to me. Basically to sum it up I experienced a third eye awakening. Samuel Sagan, M.D., from Clairvision School defines the third eye as the following:
“The third eye is the gate that opens to the space of consciousness and inner worlds. It is also the main organ through which the body of energy can be awakened and governed. In practice, the third eye acts as a ‘switch’ which activates higher states of consciousness and experiences of spiritual vision.”
My religious beliefs began to seem so silly to me. I was like, “why don’t we just spread love?”. “Why can’t we just use love as our one religion”? And I say this because I realized how “who’s in and who’s out” religion is, and I didn’t like that at all anymore. I couldn’t stop thinking about things like “if someone commits a horrific homicide then asks for forgiveness from the Church and commits his life to Jesus Christ, does he go to heaven or hell?” I was educated on the Bible since I was a kid and it suddenly made no sense at all. Every question I had was so open-ended and couldn’t be answered logically. It was like my perspective completely switched from one side of religion to the other.
I don’t think there is a logical yes or no answer to every question, however I do believe that there is reasoning behind everything. I believe that the Universe works effortlessly to create a perfect, divine “system” if you will. Like numerology and the laws of nature, for example.
I came to the conclusion that if God, if there is an existence, is something far beyond anything we could understand with our minds, then why would I believe anything a man has to say about it? Even if they were closely associated with God as being labeled a prophet, I still would much rather create my own beliefs.
I’m not completely discrediting religion as a whole. I do understand that there is truth in all religion, I just don’t believe that any one is right over the other. Instead, I believe they resemble each other and are all quite similar if you look at them from a critical thinking perspective.
Instead of living life to a certain standard of religious belief, I believe it is more important to accept life as the growing process it is. I don’t believe in sinning, I simply think that people do both good and bad things and some of us lean further on one side and do great things or very horrible acts. The world is so chaotic and hateful at times that all we can do now is to spread love, literally. Love is the only thing that connects each and every one of us despite our differences.
The Bible as well as the Quran and other scriptures offer great insight into what it means to understand the Universe, in my opinion. I think religion has scraped the surface of this magical universe and it’s powers, but their scriptures are worthy of educating yourself immensely. However, I prefer to live in the now and determine my life based off of my personal interactions with God, The Universe, Our Creator, whatever you prefer to call it.
A lot of my family isn’t okay with this. A few I haven’t even bothered to tell. They’d rather be lowered into their graves than find out I don’t personally put faith into Jesus Christ anymore, but I still persisted fearlessly towards my true self and beliefs. I hope that you too can find the strength to go against the grain of society and discover your higher self. It’s possible for everyone but some people will just never go through a spiritual awakening. As for those that do, it’s our mission to disassemble the divides society has created and spread love and nothing else.