This week’s guest is Taylor. Taylor grew up in a small church in a small town, surrounded by Christianity. She had family devotions at home and a private-Christian-academy curricula at school.
By twenty-one, however, she moved out and stopped attending church completely. Her “personal relationship with Jesus” was more important than church-going.
While watching a loved one live with cancer and then face death, Taylor’s faith gave her hope and meaning, until it didn’t. Depressive episodes came for a while and Taylor knew she needed to get mentally healthy.
Once her head was “out of the fog,” and she began reading the Bible again, she was shocked at what she read. It had been there all along, but now she could see. “[People said,] ‘Well you just need to dig deeper in the Bible.’ It had the complete opposite effect.”
Now Taylor has let go of many childhood beliefs. She doesn’t have all the answers. but she has peace—a peace that hasn’t come from supernatural help but from doing her own inner work. She is her own savior, no one else.
Links
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/skeptical_heretic/
Recommendations
Watching online debates
Encouraging myself rather than praying
You are Your Own by Jamie Lee Finch
Quotes
“I feel I am currently in the trenches of deconstruction and deconversion.”
“While digging deep to heal my trauma, it got really hard and it is strange to say, the happier and more at peace I became with my healing the more I doubted my faith.”
“This is such a hard time for me but I have found that talking about this out loud is very helpful to me,
as I can not do that often since every single family member I have is a serious Christian.”
“It felt like I really didn’t have to deal with [death and grieving] because I was given this idea that life is just very temporary and the big part of life is going to be after we die…”
“The second I started healing and unpacking stuff, I had the motivation to really look into my faith and my religion and start asking questions…I was like, Wait. I did this on my own. I helped myself, and that’s the only reason I got better.”
“[People said,] ‘Well you just need to dig deeper in the Bible.’ It had the complete opposite effect.”
“Well, that makes sense why [Christians need apologetics] because some of the stuff is awful.”
“I started looking at my earthly father versus my heavenly father, and I was like, The stuff that God is doing and threatening to do, my dad would never do to me.”
“[Not having to have all the answers] gives me the opportunity to keep learning about stuff and also learn from my experiences.”
“Taking all my morals and thoughts from the Bible stopped me from growing as a person.”
“I wasn’t willing to give up my true morals and values just to stay part of that community.”
“Religion really pushed me to be critical of myself…and I was doing that to others.”
“I can mess up as a human without it being this inherently evil thing. I can just mess up and make mistakes and that’s okay.”
“For me, if the Bible wasn’t correct, everything else was just done for me. Whether there was a god or not didn’t really matter…”
Interact
Heather Wells interview mentioned in Taylor’s interview:
https://gracefulatheist.com/2022/11/06/heather-wells-trustworthy/
Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!
Deconversion
https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/
Secular Grace
https://gracefulatheist.com/2016/10/21/secular-grace/
Support the podcast
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
Paypal: paypal.me/gracefulatheist

Attribution
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats