Remarkably, I didn’t feel a gaping hole in my chest when I left the church. I didn’t feel the emptiness that I feared, or the emptiness that I thought existed before I “gave my life to Christ”.

Life simply moved on.

Instead of spending 3 nights a week serving, I built stronger relationships with my friends, I helped in community-based initiatives, I wrote, I rested. I filled the empty spaces in my schedule with other activities that provided me with the social support, sense of purpose and emotional satisfaction that the church once gave me. All that was missing was the Christian doctrine, something I no longer believed in. For some reason, the empty space it left didn’t mind being left empty.

Of course, the initial leaving was a rollercoaster. Dismantling beliefs and values and schedules I had held for the first 22 years of life was hard work. The rebuilding even harder. But it’s been 2 years now and I feel good. I believe I live a meaningful life.

This fear of meaninglessness, or a lesser life, is perpetuated in the language of popular hymns and worship songs. Take Amazing Grace for example:

…I once was lost, but now I’m found
Was blind, but now I see

My chains are gone,
I’ve been set free…

Now that I’ve left Jesus/the church/Christianity, am I lost again? Do I lose my sight and return to blindness? Do my chains re-appear?

Have I, alongside my apostate friends, gone from “living in the light” back to “living in the darkness”?

In the strikingly relatable words of Matt Corby’s “Monday”, I was never lost, I only chose to never go home.

Singing hymns is one thing. I remember barely paying attention to the lyrics, subtly raising my hands with the band (I was Anglican, after all), feeling the energy of praise radiating from the congregation and feeling connected to the Divine. I could have been singing anything to be fair. Anyone who has closed their eyes during a Sigur Ros gig has probably felt the same kind of connection.

However, this message of meaninglessness is also spoken in evangelising conversation and in Sunday sermons. The following might sound familiar to some:

“A life without Jesus is a life without hope or purpose or meaning”
“God created a void in your heart that only He could fill”
And my personal favourite: “Life without Jesus is like a pencil with no point”

Christians might read that and think “well, yes… that is true. I wouldn’t always say it so bluntly, but at the heart of it, yes….” and my non-Christian readers are probably thinking “what the hell? That’s fucked! That’s another prime example of a mechanism adopted by the church to assert their control over their congregation”. The disparity is stark, and it is important for Christians to remember what the people they’re preaching to are thinking when they say things like this.

As a Christian, I was well acquainted with these messages. I didn’t really think anything of them until I left the church and started my journey of deconstruction. “Hang on, does my life have a point?” I’d ask. “Can it be meaningful?”.

I remember being the person that spoke these words of “a pointless life” haphazardly. I remember it so clearly. “That inherent question in your heart, that emptiness, it’s a sign that Jesus fits right there…” I’d say to people questioning the existence of god/s. “It’s the Christian God that created that little hole of searching in you. That’s all the evidence you need that He’s real.”

Now that I’m no longer a Christian, I obviously no longer believe that that the answer to that question inside of me is Jesus. I think it’s simply a sign that I need a sense of purpose.

I’m reading “21 Lessons for the 21st Century” by historian Yuval Noah Harari at the moment, and he writes of the Orthodox Jewish men in Israel who don’t work and instead dedicate their lives to studying holy scriptures and performing religious rituals. He says:

“Although they are poor and unemployed, in survey after survey these ultra-Orthodox Jewish men report higher levels of life satisfaction than any other section of Israeli society. This is due to the strength of their community bonds, as well as to the deep meaning they find in studying scriptures and performing rituals.”

Unsurprisingly, Christianity doesn’t hold exclusive rights to a meaningful life. 

Many who aren’t religious or spiritual find their sense of meaning in business and money and charity and family. Of course, “only Jesus is eternal” and the “fleeting things of this world” only provide us with temporary satisfaction, but nobody outside religion is claiming a need for eternity with wherever they’ve found their purpose. Businesses have exit strategies. My impact on a charitable organisation will only be momentary in the scheme of its history. Our friends and family, like us, will one day die.

The stress of eternity doesn’t really exist outside religion.

When our sense of purpose crumbles, we learn to rebuild. We learn to find other things to provide us with meaning. Our purpose shifts and changes as we age and learn and interact with others who challenge our moral compass. For many who have left the church, this sense of freedom has provided them with, what they state is a “more meaningful life”- they no longer have to subscribe to rules or beliefs that seem meaningless in the context of their faith. Others report a more intentional moral code, which in turn has provided them with more meaning, purpose and direction.

If a Christian believes my life has no point without Jesus, that doesn’t make my life pointless. It simply means they believe my life is pointless, because their worldview has a Christian lens. If you’re not a Christian, you don’t have to look through that lens anymore. If you want a meaningful life, go and bloody well have one. It’s yours to make.

Also published on Medium.

by Ruby Claire
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