I grew up technically Catholic. I was baptized, did communion, all of that, but my parents were pretty secular. We were Catholic by name, not really by practice. That was just the environment I grew up in.
Around 25, I started dating a Christian guy I’d known for a very long time. He was really passionate about his faith. I’m a passionate person too, so his dedication really influenced me. I wanted to actually read the Bible and understand Christianity deeply, not just by name.
A lot of the Christians I knew hadn’t even read the Bible from front to back. Even my own mother admitted she found it to be a very tough read. I didn’t want surface-level faith. I wanted to understand what I was following.
But as I got more serious about following what I read, people in the Christian community around me started calling me “preachy.” Friends and even some family members began distancing themselves from me. It felt isolating because I was genuinely trying to live by the faith, but no one around me seemed to take it that seriously.
My Christian boyfriend did something that really shocked and disappointed me. It was personal, and I don’t feel comfortable sharing the details, but it was serious enough for me to cut ties with him forever. He was the only practicing Christian I knew, so losing that connection made me feel even more disconnected from the religion. After that, I let go of the whole thing and I slowly drifted back into my secular life. I no longer was wearing the rose-tinted glasses. There were also other significant things that led me to leaving.
After that, I let go of the whole thing. I drifted back into a more secular life. The rose-tinted glasses were gone. But there were other significant realizations that made it impossible for me to go back even though our breakup pushed me in that direction.
Growing up, I never liked going to church. The music felt disorienting to me. The atmosphere didn’t feel spiritually grounding. Some churches turned me off completely with flashy pastors, performances, and a kind of spiritual spectacle I couldn’t connect with. It felt more like a show than a place of reverence or reflection.
Something in my body always felt unsettled there, even when I tried to push past it.
There were certain verses that raised questions for me.
In Matthew 26:39, Jesus falls on his face and prays. If Jesus is God, who is he praying to?
In John 17:3, Jesus says: “Now this is eternal life: that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.” He clearly distinguishes himself from God, calling the Father “the only true God.” To me, Jesus sounds far more like a prophet sent by God than God Himself. It seems very clear.
I also learned that enslaved Black people were only given selected portions of the Bible. That didn’t sit right with me at all. It made me question how much humans have been able to remove, edit, or control what is claimed to be “God’s word.”
Something else I didn’t realize I was carrying until it was gone was how much whiteness had been centered as default holiness in the Christian spaces. The white, blue-eyed Jesus imagery. That image always felt imposed, not authentic. It never felt realistic or culturally accurate. Jesus was most likely a Palestinian Jew with darker features.
A lot of things simply didn’t add up for me. I’ve always been someone who questions what doesn’t make sense. I don’t follow things just because everyone else is doing it.
For a long time, I thought my difficulty connecting with Christianity was purely intellectual. That maybe I didn’t understand it deeply enough. Or that I just hadn’t found the “right” church, the right interpretation, the right people.
But the truth is, the disconnect was never intellectual.
It was somatic.
Instead I wanted structure. Clear obligations. Clear boundaries. Clear ethics. And room for private struggle.
Christianity, as I experienced it, could never give me those things. It felt emotionally loud, morally vague, relationally confusing, and spiritually entangled with power. In the end, Christianity just never felt like home for me. That’s just my experience, and I’ve made peace with it.
Honestly, Vanessa 