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Buddha, Christ, and You
At the Philosophers’ Garden in Budapest, I was pleasantly surprised to find Jesus Christ and the Buddha standing beside each other. It seemed fitting to me, since at the time I was reading the book, “Living Buddha, Living Christ” by Thich Nhat Hanh. The book enthralled me. I knew that some similarities existed between Buddhism […]
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The Art of Using Labels
Since I left religion, I’ve been exploring my identity in more ways than I ever thought possible. There were so many aspects of myself that I had never really looked into closely before – my personality type, my beliefs and ideas about spirituality, my sexuality and gender identity, my mental health, my relationships, my dreams, […]
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Leaving Christianity – Outro
The “Leaving Christianity” series was a way for me to personally process, then publicly share, my experience of deconstructing my fundamentalist Christian beliefs and finally walking away from them altogether. Even in this series, I feel like I have barely begun to explain the many questions, answers, and ideas that led to me leaving Christianity, […]
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Why I Left Christianity: Sexuality [Guest Post by Laura Lanier]
Leaving Christianity – Part Nine Today’s guest post is written by my sister, Laura Lanier, who also deconstructed her Christian belief system as I did. Here she is speaking from her own experience and knowledge, but it closely echoes mine. I’m sure that there are many others who will relate to what she has to […]
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Why I Miss Christianity: Heaven [Guest Post by Erik Papík]
Leaving Christianity – Part Eight As a Christian, the idea of heaven was an important one to me. Heaven was a place I looked forward to, and I was sad to leave the idea of a literal heaven behind. However, my understanding of heaven has shifted and even now it is a comforting and encouraging […]
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Why I Left Christianity: Exclusivity
Leaving Christianity – Part Seven I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anybody, Christian or not, that I’m writing about exclusivity in this series. Christianity is known to be exclusive on the inside, even while pretending to be inclusive on the outside – something like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Christians will […]
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Why I Miss Christianity: Imaginary Jesus
Leaving Christianity – Part Six It sounds silly to say that I miss Jesus. I know. For Christians, it sounds silly because Jesus is always there. Any time I want to, I can just speak to him, and he’ll hear. For anyone else, it sounds silly because Jesus was just a man who lived and […]
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Why I Left Christianity: Money
Leaving Christianity – Part Five I find it funny that Jesus commands his followers to pay taxes (Mark 12:17), but churches are tax-exempt. I don’t find it funny that the president of the Bible school I went to lives in a mansion, owns several cars and has his own private airplane, while the students of […]
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Why I Miss Christianity: Purpose
Leaving Christianity – Part Four When I was 19, I moved into my own apartment and started living by myself for the first time. I had a map on my wall, and all the countries I’d been to were marked. I wrote a Bible verse in big letters and hung it above the map: “My […]
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Why I Left Christianity: Mental Health
Leaving Christianity – Part Three [Trigger warning: this post deals with depression and anxiety.] Mental health is a topic which Christians often seem very hesitant to speak about. It always felt to me like a taboo topic, which is why I didn’t speak up about my own mental health struggles for so long. Even when […]
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Alexandra Lanier 