Christianity, and religion in general, is an all-encompassing life path. Religion is a belief system, but also a community, an ideology, a support system, a series of experiences, a comfortable place, and so so much more. The longer you spend within Christianity the greater the amount of your identity that will be deeply interwoven with the church. People decide how many kids to have based on their faith, or what job to take, or where to live. The core foundations of who we are are so often rooted in our religion. When we walk away from that religion, it can often feel like we’re also walking away from the identity that we have spent a lifetime building.

As a bit of a comparison, you can look at the questions that arise for someone that is new to Christanity. Often times new believers are posed questions like, “What is important to you?” or “What is God’s purpose for you?”, or even “Why was I put here?” Christians agonize over these questions as part of their faith journey, but the answers they come up with are often tied so closely to that faith that they appear meaningless without the religious core.

Not only does the idea of ourselves seem to fall apart, but the way we look upon our past suddenly shifts with our changing beliefs as well. There’s so many experiences within Christianity that create pride - baptisms, conversion moments, sermons, missions trips - that at best are devoid of meaning post-faith, but at worst can be recast as negative experiences. At first glance, everything you know about yourself can feel lost along with your faith. You might feel like a stranger to yourself, and perhaps one you don’t particularly like.

We don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, though. You may have done religious things in the past that you would never do today, but that doesn’t mean those experiences are devoid of value. You may have decided things about yourself based on religion that don’t apply today, but it’s still you at the core. Some parts of you remain the same, and those are good things.

Regardless of how deep a person is in their religion, no one ever fully “becomes Christ” - even biblically, we’re all human and we can never fully cast that off. Losing your faith doesn’t have to mean losing your entire identity - it just means losing the Christian part. You need to figure out where religion stops and you begin. You need to decide which parts of you still hold true today - which parts do you like, and which parts do you not. You get to decide who you are going forward, and in many ways what you decide should probably look like who you always have been.

Finding yourself, whether it be a rediscovery or a fresh start, takes time. It’s not something that can be rushed, nor should it be. Losing your faith is a traumatic experience, and will run a person through every emotion imaginable. This takes a toll, and makes it near-impossible to think clearly about what you believe about yourself. Defining your new identity is important work, and it feels hard to move forward without doing so - that’s fine, think about it, but know that your definition can and should be fluid as you work through this life change.