Blind Faith Vs. Blinded by Faith

     Whenever I was a child, I was taught that we should have faith. Our faith was to rest in Jesus Christ and in him alone and were to believe that everything was going to work out for the good. We were taught that we should keep the faith in good times and in bad, knowing that through it all Christ would see us safely through. The sentiment is beautiful that there is a creator, someone who loves us, someone who cares for us; who is there beside us in every situation and sorrow. I haven't deconstructed to the point of deconversion, I feel that I am a Christian and I feel that I should still pray and ask God for help. My prayers are less different now than they used to be, but they are still prayers. I find comfort in my faith. In a world where I have increasingly less safe spaces, my faith is still a place I can go and feel comfortable and secure. Across the world, there have been millions of people who have had a beautiful face in a beautiful relationship with those things that they called holy. People with simple faith who felt compelled to do the right thing because of it they have been making an impact throughout history. 

     There is something interesting about the idea that rests inside of a human's heart that makes them want to ascend, to be better. It seems that in every culture there is that desire to reach out and touch the divine, to become closer to it, and to emulate it. Whether it was in a shinto shrine, a buddhist monastery, or in a small wooden church on a small backroad in appalachia. And faith is beautiful.It is this notion that there is something tangible in the intangible unseen world. Something like an anchor that we can hold on to and brace ourselves with. Something that whenever you feel unmovable, can move you whenever you feel unworthy, can lift you up. A thing that can reach across the fear that grips us and cause us to be courageous in ways that do not make sense. There is a romantic notion about being able to let go and embrace this faith that it will bring us all the way through and end us up where we ought to be. 

     The problem that I was beginning to see with my belief and with the beliefs of others like me was that this faith that we were told was something that we accepted blindly had become a blinder to the issues of the world. In 2018 moving back from norfolk, stepping back into my old life, I learned that faith, is different for different people. My wife and I had taken a leap a faith to move, and now we were coming back, seemingly defeated. For the next few months we were displaced, we weren't homeless, we lived with her mother and her aunt, but I knew that would only be temporary. Eventually that situation blew up and we moved in with my brother and his four kids. I spent the better part of two months sleeping on an air mattress. It was not fun. What got me through was faith, surely God wouldn't leave us in this position, He is going to move in our situation. The whole time that I was thinking that and we were attending church, we were also getting to see firsthand how it felt, to be out of the good graces of the in crowd in a church. It seemed that people did not care we had left and just like a Pez dispenser, someone had risen to take our place. I wasn't expecting to be able to come back and jump right in, but I also wasn't expecting to come back and get a cold shoulder and sideways glances. I continued to try to carry on, yet I knew that nothing would be the same. The same faith that I was told would bring me through was the same faith that those that thought that I had done wrong and was wrong were using to judge me. 

     In 2019 my wife begin deconstructing or deconverting. I'm actually not sure where she landed, and that's okay. I was thirty six years old, and my whole life had been wrapped up in and guided by that singular faith that I had placed in Christ. I could not understand it. In that same year, I took some college classes, and one of those classes was an english class with a very strong focus in critical thinking. I began to step back from the blonde faith that I was given and let the light of science step in in small ways. I took a church that year to pastor a small church in southeastern kentucky. Whenever covid became a thing, I remember watching in the beginning and thinking it was all a hoax, another ploy to get us to submit. Death doesn't lie, and the amount of life lost was overwhelming. It was time for an election, and I remember watching our country's response to covid and our president's idea, as something that was a failure. I felt that he had failed not only us as a country, but he had failed to lead in the capacity as a world leader. I also did not want to vote for Hillary Clinton. So I did what every good passive, aggressive christian does I made posts on Facebook. My christian friends did not take it very well. And they rise to say, bad things about our president was to betray, the gospel. What I found out was that instead of having blind faith that God would see us through, they had been blinded by holding on to their faith, even when it was twisted by politics, fear and stubbornness. They were blinded by faith. They could not see how they were acting, what they were saying, and how it affected those that they were trying to reach with the "love of Christ". After being rejected by my church family, learning to think critically on a very small level, and now, watching as Christians that I loved knew and respected turned on me for only questioning the status quo, my deconstruction had begun.