Why I Left the Church, and I’m Not Coming Back

I didn’t walk away from faith lightly.

I was raised in it. I taught Sunday School and cared for children. Drenched in scripture. Surrounded by people who said they loved Jesus, people who spoke of grace and truth on Sundays, and then went home to gossip, to judge, to vote against the very people Jesus told us to care for.

It wasn’t the church building that broke me.

It was the people who claimed to represent Christ who pushed me out the doors.

They mocked the poor.

Justified cruelty.

Spread lies and hatred in the name of righteousness.

They weaponized their religion and called it love, but it was really hate.

I sat quietly beside them, trying to make it make sense. I questioned myself and God. I tried harder. I begged for clarity. I broke.

And eventually, I left.

Not because I didn’t try.

Not because I was angry or lost.

I was hurt, and I couldn’t keep lying to myself.

Because deep down, I didn’t believe in the version of God they reflected back to me. I don’t think I ever truly did.

After slow and painful reflection, like peeling away layers of skin I had grown into, I rejected everything and became an Atheist. It took me 15 years to even consider that something bigger might exist beyond the mess humans made of it.

But, even with a new belief system in my heart, I’m not coming back.

Not because I’m bitter.

Not because I hate Christians.

Every once and awhile I find a good one that heals that old wound.

But because I value truth more than appearances, and peace more than pretending. I was taught being lukewarm and hypocritical were the worst things to live as.

“So because you are lukewarm — I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” (Revelation 3:16)

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead.” (Matthew 23:27)

You know when Dorothy finds out the Wizard is just a man like her, and the illusion of the all powerful Wizard is broken in the Wizard of Oz? It was a lot like that.

So if you’re sitting quietly in the back row of your life, wondering why it feels so wrong, you’re not alone.

I see you. I was you.

And I hope you find a way to heal, in or out of the pews, that doesn’t ask you to betray your own spirit or values ever again.

I am joyful in a world that preaches at me to judge.

I am loving in a world that tells me to be hateful.

I am compassionate in a world that tells me to be uncaring.

I am the friend you call when you need someone to show up, because I always do.

Those aren’t just Christian values. They’re human values—ones I’m proud to live my life by. Are you?