For this episode, I'm talking about a topic that I have been avoiding for such a long time. I'm talking about my relationship with religion and the church. I'm recanting or - shall I say - rephrasing some of things I said in the previous episode. I was not "chased out" of the church. I made the hard decision to leave and take a step back to analyse/process some of things that had been happening in my life.
What you need to understand listening to this episode is that I'm talking to you about an aspect of my life that I am still processing. I recorded the episode many times because I simply would get to a point in the story that was too uncomfortable to articulate. It's not just a confrontation with past hurt but also owning and taking responsibility for the decisions I made when I was younger.
As you listen to the episode, you're probably wondering "why didn't you just go find another church?" It's the question I asked myself. It's the question that my therapist asked, that my friends asked, that my mum relentless asked.
When I first made the decision to stop actively attending and participating in my home church, I was left scared and felt very lonely. I had made the decision to leave behind the only life I had ever known. However, I made the decision to step back and not actively find another tradition church because, I knew if I did I would fall back into old patterns. I knew my intentions for finding a new traditional church were not good.
Selfishly, the church was where I was privileged, had access and 'church fame' as I used to call it. It was my place of comfort and in that comfort, I actually did not actively participate in my relationship with God. I was dependent on my church to motivate my faith, to 'feed me' spiritually instead of doing it for myself.
Without the church I had to find who God was for myself, I had to search for answers, I had to have hard conversations. The onus was on me. But, as I stress in the episode, even without the traditional church, I still tried to remain relatively close to various communities of Christians to help hold me accountable in my faith. I tried to honour church in its biblical meaning.
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