Feeling guilty about sin after church on Sundays?

I’m an ex-Christian atheist, so I’d obviously prefer you to leave religion altogether. But when I look at my history as a recovering Sunday-morning-guilt-session addict, we both know that this may not happen right away. So, I’ll propose a baby step.

Stop going to church. Seriously. Someone needs to say it. You’ll hear everything but that from religious people, so consider this a second opinion to their ridiculous advice (pray harder, go to church more, etc.) that only seems to be making the problem worse.

Need reasons? I have a bunch, but here are five.

1. You already suspect that the Bible doesn’t know what it’s talking about.

The idea that a bunch of desert dwellers, war-hungry tribes, or random people 2000 years ago had the entire universe figured out and should be followed is not only ridiculous — it’s dangerous. The people who wrote the Bible were limited to the confines of their culture. No, that’s not a big stretch, even if you’re a Christian. It’s likely that your church already will excuse the genocides in the Old Testament and the misogyny of the New Testament, for example, by saying that they’re based on the way people did things in that period — including the parts that supposedly came from God Himself. News Flash: That’s the whole book. It’s all based in a different culture, place, and time. It’s time to stop being “convicted” by a book written by people who didn’t know near as much about the way things work as we do today.

2. Your pastor is just a random person — who died and made them the boss of you?

It slowly dawned on me, sitting in church, that my pastor was no one special. He was just some guy. Why should he be in charge of my life? Why should he decide how guilty I feel about the things I do? The world is bigger than him. So I decided not to give him a hallowed 45-minute platform to tell me how to live my life every week. Life was better after that.

3. God just isn’t that into you (cause He isn’t real), and if you stopped going to church so often you’d realize it.

God is not real. There’s really not very good evidence for His existence — but most people who go to church every week are told so strongly and insistently that He IS real that they forget this. Spend some time away from church and some serious thought on whether God is real away from church, where the pressure to believe in God is much less, and it may be easier to walk away from your guilt. Maybe ask yourself: If you had never gone to church and this was the first time you heard about this, would you believe it, or think it’s ridiculous? Might save you from dedicating your life to something that’s not real.

4. You’re going for the people? News flash: the people are not the religion. You can party with the people without sitting through the guilt sessions.

You like the people there? Awesome! The people and the church aren’t the same thing. Y’all can still hang out, if you want. All the fun — just none of the guilt trips of going to church. Plus you could widen your circle of who you hang out with — it will do wonders for your guilt to include some non-Bible-Thumpers in the mix. Just the same, though, if your friends are those really rare people who talk about the Bible frequently — maybe branch out. Try seeing other people.

5. You’ll recharge your batteries better if you replace guilt sessions with “whatever I want to do” sessions.

Sunday is often seen as the period that refreshes you, recharges your batteries. So why would you want your batteries recharged thinking about guilt? Why not refresh it by doing something else — something relaxing, like sleeping, or taking a jog or hike, or even working to bring in some extra cash (if that’s your thing). Show yourself that there is a larger “you” than the you who goes to church, and that can diminish your guilt by giving you a deeper sense of belonging to the framework of your existence.

Thanks for reading.

[Featured image via Gealx under CCL 2.0; changes made]