My dad is a raging-alcoholic-turned-pastor. I went to Christian school. I went to a Christian college. I read the Bible in it’s entirety at least five times. I prayed every single day for at least thirty minutes.

Somehow, I still find myself walking away from everything I have grown up being taught. I have left behind the very world as I knew it, and somehow I feel more at home in this new, completely strange place.

Yes, I grew up in a Christian home and lived, walked, talked, believed, and breathed Christianity, but after many years of trying to get to know God, here I find myself stepping away. Most of my family and ninety-nine percent of my friends disagree with and are disappointed in my decision, but I am confident that I have done the right thing. I think I differ from them in that I truly question the things that I believe in, and I don’t attribute my integrity to anything other than a desire to be good. When you are able to dissociate your values from a belief system, it allows you to question your beliefs in a much more raw and meaningful manner, and that is exactly what I have tried to do. So now I bet you are wondering—why exactly did I turn away from Christianity? Well, let me tell you.

In spite of growing up in a Christian home, I felt depressed and alone for the majority of my childhood. I could go into so much more detail, but my intention here is not to write an autobiography. My point with this is that I felt rather hopeless growing up, and so I found myself in a place where God was my only hope for happiness. I had a stepmother who mistreated me and a father who was harsh and unrelatable, so when I felt sad, God was the only person I had to go to. I say this because it expresses the state of reliance on, belief in, and need for God that Christians say are essential to feeling him. Even though I grew up in this constant situation, I realized about a year ago that the only thing I ever felt concerning God was guilt. I always felt as though I was doing something wrong because I couldn’t feel him, and I noticed that the times that I thought I could feel him were during a lack of guilt when I finally forgave myself. I found that what I believed to be God’s presence was actually just my ability to forgive myself for doing wrong things (that aren’t even wrong to begin with), and once I realized this, I started really trying to feel God’s presence in and of itself. I quickly started to notice that every “manifestation” of God’s presence that I felt had more to do with my mindset and the way I looked at my circumstances rather than objectively real experiences. That’s where I started having issues with Christianity.

My problem with Christianity starts at its very core: faith and belief. Christians are saved “by grace through faith,” so without faith, there is no salvation. My problem with this is that when mere belief is the core of something’s existence and manifestation, well, anything can be true and real. To put that more clearly, anything you fully believe in will manifest itself in your mind and thoughts in a placebo sort of way. During all my years as a Christian, I never once felt anything objectively real concerning God’s presence. The times I felt the most confident about God’s presence were the times that I most believed. If you tell a Christian that you don’t feel God’s presence, chances are that they will either tell you that you just have to believe, or you just need to talk to him more. In other words, you must try harder to convince yourself. You know, this method is quite similar to the one children use to believe in Santa. The Bible itself says “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” and I find this rather humorous, as this is the very reason I no longer believe in it.

If you fully believe that you have a guardian angel that follows you around and touches your head once a day, I guarantee you that once a day, you will remember feeling your scalp tingle or itch in some special sort of way. Stop believing and it will stop. Believe that you can become an actor and that you’re capable of doing so, and you will sure as hell take the steps to get to where you want to be. Don’t believe in yourself and you won’t reach that goal. You see, it’s a universal concept. I can feel God’s presence the same as I can sense Buddha’s or Allah’s or whoever the hell else I might choose to believe in. I simply refused to let my belief that I felt God to be the sole thing that dictated my experience of him. One day, I said, “God, if you’re real and you really care, I need you to show me in some real way, because if not, I can’t go on believing in you like this.” I received no response.

I believe that some people are ok with convincing themselves day by day to believe. They establish rules for themselves either of their own accord or using a source such as the Bible (which is full of good ones, by the way), and then hold themselves to them. When they fall short of one of their standards, they feel bad and attribute it to separation from God. They are then met with a dilemma in which they continually feel guilty until they fully believe that God has forgiven them. It is a vicious cycle of belief. The good thing about this is that people who have screwed up lives and major internal or mental issues, when they are able to fully believe in this “system” as I now see it, can genuinely change because their entire view of themselves and the world around them can be changed. If they cling to this new worldview and the objective power of belief, it can result in long term change. My dad is one of these examples. The problem though is that, for people like me who have never done things that eat them up inside, who have never been addicted to a substance, and who control their appetites in a mostly healthy way, there is no desperate reason to keep believing. People like me believe in things because they are real, not because we are supposed to. We question what we believe because we can afford to. If my father were to quit believing in Christianity, he would soon become a raging alcoholic again most likely. But what has happened to me since “backsliding”? Well, I have become more productive, happy, at peace, confident, and mature. So I question the things that I believe in, and when they don’t prove to be real, I stop wasting energy.

Why do people feel the need to put their faith in something? What is the point of all of this trouble, and what is the need for religion? Well, I like to think that this big world makes people feel insignificant. People have this need to feel valued and important, and when they can’t find that value within their own selves, they look to other things such as God to give them meaning. It is simply comforting to think that there is a plan, and it feels more secure to believe in someone who is in control.

I would not write off the existence of a god, but one thing I know is that I have learned to find value and significance in simply being a human being who can experience, cherish, and create things in a way that nothing else can. Rather than clinging to religion and its restrictions, I have chosen to simply live big. Pursuing my dreams, loving other people, becoming the best that I can be: those are the things that I have come to find meaning in. Ever since then, the ride has been much smoother and the scenery much easier to enjoy. I finally feel at peace, and I finally feel confident enough to pursue my dreams, even if my whole old world disagrees.

Learn to find value within yourself.