The Great Falling Away - or the Great Awakening?

The Truth You Cannot See from Inside the Box

I recently heard that 15 million people have left Christianity in the last ten years. I am one of those people. 
I wonder why? 
What is happening that would cause such a large number of humans to leave behind a system supposedly built on love, compassion, and “truth”?

There are more people waking up than ever before. From a Christian point of view, I know exactly what I would once have thought: It’s the great falling away before the return of Christ. These are the end times. I get it. For many years, I believed what I was told to believe about God and followed the doctrine I had been taught. Anything outside of it felt wrong and threatening.

But something changed in me the summer of 2016. I woke up. I truly heard "Gods voice" for the first time in my life. And after that, everything changed for me.

I still remember sitting in a Bible study shortly after my awakening when someone brought up Muslims. A man became angry and began yelling, “We must get rid of these people and send them back to their own country.” I had recently become friends with a lovely Muslim coworker, so I spoke up and challenged him.
“Actually, I find them to be very loving and friendly. Have you ever taken the time to get to know them? Not everyone who believes differently is wrong or evil. People often believe what they were taught, and sometimes they believe in something because it gives them hope, comfort, and something to lean on during difficult times, just as Christianity does for us.”

The man became even more angry and argued with me. I sat and watched his rage and wondered where it had come from. I realized in that moment, I could no longer walk along side people that had so much anger and hate in their hearts. I never returned to that Bible study.

Before that moment, I had looked up to those people. I saw them as "authorities" on the Word of God who possessed more knowledge than I did. But the more I listened, the more I recognized the hatred in their hearts. I began to see that what they believed, what they said, and how they treated others did not align with what Jesus taught.

If we are called to love our neighbors, how can we judge them? If we love our neighbors, how can we hate them? If we love our neighbors, how can we take away their freedom and their rights? Before that moment, however, I had followed the “leaders” without question.

If you believed in a different God, participated in a ritual outside of mine, or practiced a holistic healing modality that didn’t have the label “Christian”, or “essential oil”, attached to it, I believed as everyone else and what I had been taught, that it was of the devil.

Still, from the day I walked in the church setting I always had a quiet voice in the back of my mind asking, What if this isn’t right? This doesn’t add up? I spent hours thinking about God, eternity, heaven, and hell. I thought about members of my own family who didn’t attend church and imagined them being tormented in hell for eternity. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around a supposedly loving God sending people to a place like that.

Reading Scripture confused me too. In one book, I would read about God damning people. But in the Gospels, where Jesus actually teaches, he speaks about love. He challenges the beliefs of the religious leaders and tells them they are wrong.

I truly understand both sides, and I have compassion for both those who have left the church and those who are still in the church. But I find it incredibly interesting that so many people are awakening, just as I did, and leaving behind structures of judgment that were built to keep humanity living in fear and separation.

What you cannot always see from inside the religious box is all the fear, control, anger, bitterness, and judgment. You cannot see how restrictive it becomes to believe that even calling God anything other than “He” or “Him” is wrong. The labels we place on our understanding of God, and the communities we build around those beliefs can hold enormous value and provide us with support. That makes leaving them behind terrifying.

When you leave the church, you may not only leave your beliefs. You may lose family, friends, your support system, your way of life, and even the schedule around which you built your week.

Church on Wednesday evening. Bible study on Thursday night. Women's or Mens group on Saturday. Sunday School and Church and on Sunday. These things fill your time and shape your identity. Sometimes, you even miss recreational activities to make sure you are at church “serving God,” because you were taught that missing a service meant you weren’t honoring God.

Beneath the fear of not honoring God lies great responsibility to walk in complete obedience, and an even greater fear if you don't live up to that: hell.

I can assure you that anyone who experiences a true spiritual awakening and begins deconstructing their Christian beliefs faces many tormenting questions:

What if I’m wrong?

What if this is the devil disguised as light?

What will my family think?

Will I lose all my friends?

Are demons real?

...

The questions that pass through someone’s mind during deconstruction can be brutal. All the shame and judgment you once carried about yourself, other people, and the world come rushing into your awareness. You must examine every part of it, slowly deconstructing and reconstructing your understanding of God, yourself, and life. Everything changes. 

Many people go through a period of anger. Some leave behind the belief that Jesus was ever real. Others, like me, begin to see him differently. Beginning to recognize the true teachings of Jesus.

I no longer believe Jesus came to tell us to surrender our lives to him, obey him, and serve him. I don’t believe he was trying to persuade people to worship him by standing inside a church building on Sunday mornings, singing songs that shame us into declaring that we are nothing without him.  When I listen to his teachings and truly pay attention, I hear him telling us to follow what he taught, not to worship his human identity.

He was teaching the people around him about their worth, value, and inner power. He was directing them back to the Source that created them and reminding them that they could become as he was. He came to teach humanity that we do not have to live beneath systems of shame or surrender our power and beliefs to people who claim to possess greater worth or spiritual authority.

I remember how I would have felt reading these exact words I am writing as a Christian. Boy, would my defenses have risen. I probably would have shouted, “Blasphemy!!!” Isn’t that interesting? The same accusation the religious leaders directed at Jesus.

They were threatened by his teachings, and that fear has continued to echo through religious teachings today: 
Don’t follow this man. Don’t listen to what he is saying. Don’t go within and discover your own power. That is where the devil is! Blasphemy!

I will never tell someone that they must believe as I do or that they are wrong for following a different path. I know the true peace I have found within the teachings of Jesus. There is nothing to fear. There is no hell waiting for us to be damned for eternity. I believe he came to help us release judgment, shame, and the karmic loops in which humanity remains trapped in when we feel separated from the Source within ourselves ... our Creator. The one we are a direct reflection of. 

The great falling away is an awakening to truth, not a falling away from it.

It is the realization that the box of beliefs many of us were taught to live inside may not be accurate or completely true. It is the rediscovery of Jesus’ message without polluting it with the rhetoric, hierarchy, anger, fear, and judgment found within so many church teachings.

Faith is not about projecting fear onto others or telling them they are right or wrong.  
Faith is believing in something so deeply that you can allow others to be exactly who they are, because you do not fear where their path to truth may lead them. It is understanding that each person has a choice. If someone wants to live according to a particular belief, that is their right. We all have free will while we are here.

But once you awaken, once you realize there is more to this life than following the crowd to church on Sunday morning, you can step out of the cycle of shame. You can stop constantly pleading with a God who never wanted you to feel unloved, unworthy, or ashamed.

God is love. That is it. Jesus came to remind us of that, not to make us afraid of it.