Why I Am No Longer Christian

Introduction, Part 2

The first seed of doubt was planted near the end of my first semester, when I figured out that my church group didn't support the LGBTQ+ community. It was an inexplicable kick to the gut. I had always believed that being queer could go hand and hand with being Christian, and yet here I was, faced by a group of devout Christians telling me otherwise. I spiraled into a spiritual crisis. What started as a simple question — "what if I'm wrong that being gay is okay and I've been ignoring God's will this whole time?" — led to questions about the very nature of God and my relationship with him.

If being gay was wrong and I could not disregard those biblical passages as a product of the environment and cultural norms of its authors, did I need to reevaluate the passages involving the subordination of women, death by stoning, slavery, and the murderous rage of God, too? Were those also God's truth?

Furthermore, if every single passage in the Bible was God's truth, then what kind of God was I paying tribute to? Why was I following a god whose will was that man shall rule over woman and master over slave, and that marriage is only between one man and one woman? The Bible talks about God being full of love and grace, slow to anger, and merciful and just, but how could he be if he demanded these things?

And how could I tell whether I was right or wrong? How could two believers, equal in the sight of God, read the same Bible passages and come to different conclusions, both convinced that they were privy to God's truth? Who was right and who was wrong? If they came to their conclusions in an attempt to please God, was one of them still wrong? Could they both be right? What if they were both wrong?

But the ultimate question that I reached by following these thoughts was: "if I don't agree with everything God wants, why am I even Christian?"

Desperate to salvage my relationship with God, I threw myself into research. When I wasn't doing school work, I was absorbing and annotating the Bible, praying, meditating, talking to my Christian family and friends, and praying some more. Even when I was studying for my classes, the underlying spiritual turmoil threatened to overwhelm me with despair. I needed to know the truth, whatever that happened to be.

Eventually, I came to the conclusion that anti-gay Christians were wrong, after all; there wasn't anything wrong with being queer. People were ignoring important historical and cultural context around the Bible passages because of their blind dislike, mistrust, and ignorance of the LGBTQ+ community, but God was all-knowing and all-loving. Hence, Christian and an Ally was born, and my crisis was temporarily averted.