Dear Church Camp Friend:

Hi, old friend:

I saw your comment on TikTok under one of my videos in which I share about my deconversion journey.  You seem concerned, so I wanted to touch base and let you know a little about my last few years.  I know it’s been decades since we’ve seen each other, and honestly, you wouldn’t recognize me now…in many ways.

Back in the day, when we were at church camp together every summer, could you tell I was a complete wreck?  Anxious as all get out, worried about every action, every word that came out of my mouth.  Was I pleasing God?  Was He mad at me?  Would I get into Heaven?  If I had a crush on a boy, I had no idea what to do with that or how to approach it, knowing that I wasn’t supposed to have “lusty” thoughts, but having them anyway.  Then guilt because I couldn’t control my thoughts.  I was supposed to want to be modest, and purity culture was an incredibly strict bar that we had to meet.  Remember how, at church camp, we had to wear t-shirts over our swimsuits but the boys didn’t?  And, how we had to wear shorts that touched our knees, so our moms had to sew them because the stores didn’t sell them that long?  I learned at an early age that my body was something to be feared.  It could lead a boy to assault me.

I always wanted to be a good friend, too, but that was difficult due to my anxiety.  I didn’t want anyone to know that I sometimes got so anxious that I would pull my hair out, because a Good Christian Girl doesn’t drink, or smoke, or sleep around, or any of the other things other teens did when they were anxious, so I had no place for my anxiety to go.  And I wasn’t even SUPPOSED to be anxious, because the Bible said “be anxious for nothing”.  I felt something must be REALLY wrong with me because I was anxious all the time.

I felt such pressure to save everyone.  Like, literally SAVE them.  From hell.  I was inundated with messaging that put the impetus on me to make sure that my friends and family were all going to heaven, and if they didn’t, that was on me.  I remember this from the earliest days of church and church camp, which would have made me about 9 years old.  Telling children that they are inherently sinful and wicked, that they cannot trust themselves, their feelings, or their intuition, and that they are singlehandedly responsible for saving other people from eternal torment really seems like emotional abuse from where I sit these days.

About a year ago I decided I was done.  I was done allowing an institution to tell me what my value was.  I was done outsourcing my coping strategies to things like “give it to God”, “it’ll all make sense in Heaven someday”, and whether or not I was modest enough to protect men from “stumbling”.  I also had to take a long, hard look in the mirror and admit that it had been years since I could say I actually believed what the Bible says.  I was just afraid of losing my community, my good standing with my friends and family, and my identity.

But let me tell you, friend, it has been incredible.  I know you may not believe me, and trust me, I know literally all the rebuttals you might have for me.  I know, because I used to use them on other people.  If someone stepped away from the church, that just meant they had “taken their eyes off of Jesus” and were “being influenced by the world”.  And we had to pray that something would “prick their hearts” and they would “turn from their evil ways”.

So how, you ask, did I get here?

I spent hundreds of hours with hurting people.  In my work as a therapist, I have a front row seat to others’ pain.  And it was remarkable to me how many people had been hurt by religion.  I don’t just mean the fundamentalist cult-like ones, but even the mainstream ones who let them know, in no uncertain terms, that they were NOT OKAY.   These people had devoted their lives to organizations who told them they couldn’t trust themselves.  They learned codependency from childhood (“I can only be okay if everyone around me is okay”), and they lived with a lack of self-worth like nothing I had ever seen from non-believers.  They were afraid, of everything, all the time.

Fear is an amazing control mechanism.  If you can make people afraid, you can control them.  It was at the moment of this realization that the veil started to lift for me. 

I had lived my whole life in fear of a God, of a hell, of disappointing others. 

And I was done being afraid.  Even if that meant walking away.

So, to sum up…I don’t believe in sin.  I don’t believe in heart-pricking, I don’t believe in hell, and I don’t believe in God. 

And I’m okay.

I’m actually way more than okay.  I’m a hundred times less anxious.  I trust myself.  I know my worth, and it’s not in being a part of any faith system.  I am not constantly worried that I am disappointing Someone who cannot be pleased.  I am far more kind, far more loving, and far more understanding than I ever was when I was a Christian.  I remember how we used to be taught to be humble and not “full of ourselves”. Well, now I am completely full of myself in the best possible way and it has truly been transformative.

Because I see people now.  TRULY see them.

They are not just souls to save to put in the Won column.  They aren’t sinners who need Jesus and who need to turn from their wicked ways, they are not pawns in some cosmic chess match.  They are humans, and they themselves are divine.  It’s weird, when you stop seeing people as saved/unsaved, bad/good, holy/sinful, turns out you are a lot happier and people like you better.

Like I said, I know all the rebuttals and things I can expect from Christians to say to me once they read this.  There is nothing you can say that will surprise me.  And, friend, I don’t need or expect you to understand.  You are going to see things the way you see them for as long as you decide to see them that way.  Nothing I can do about that.

In the summer of 1998, while I was a student at a Christian university, I went on a mission to Scotland for 6 weeks.  During our training for that mission, we were taught how to knock doors and talk to people about Jesus.  The first thing we were supposed to do was establish whether or not the resident we were approaching believed that the Bible was true.  If they said, “yes, I believe the Bible is true”, then we knew what to say next to try to convince them that OUR interpretation of the Bible was truer than anyone else’s (how audacious, but whatever).  If they said “no, I do not believe that the Bible is true”, we were just supposed to wish them well and move on to the next door, because it was futile to try to argue with someone when your belief foundation was different.

I’m in the latter camp now.  Because when you peek behind the curtain and realize it’s just a bunch of old men trying to keep you afraid, everything changes.

-KS