Letting go of your faith prompts a visceral reaction followed by much uncertainty. As with mourning any loss, your feelings may be all over the place at first. Even when leaving something behind by choice, your emotion needs time to adjust to your logic.
Part of the process of navigating life after faith will involve practical and self-care matters you may have never consciously considered simply because you never had to. If you followed a religion for as long as you can remember, it likely fulfilled a lot of roles without you realizing.
Following are three questions you might have about navigating life after faith and some suggestions for how to cope with them.
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Where Do I Find Support?
If leaving the faith you were indoctrinated into caused you to feel isolated from your family and friends, you will need to reach out and find new humans to depend on. This does not need to be as scary as it sounds. For purposes of this post, I’ll offer some suggestions for group options, although I realize jumping into a new gaggle of people won’t be for everyone.
The Sunday after I broke things off with Jesus, the Agents and I visited a Unitarian Universalist congregation. Now, you may be thinking: What? You decided you did not believe one church anymore, and literally the next week you showed up at a different church? Yes. Yes, I did.
At the time I really still craved the unity and support of a church-like family, even though I knew it could not be a Christian church. UU traditions and principles align nicely with humanism. They provide a structure similar to what we were used to without the whole Jesus loves you but if you don’t love him back you’ll go to hell aspect.
Unitarian Universalism is a good option for a lot of people. However, they tend to be very different depending on the location, reverend/minister {yes; they still call them that}, and people involved.
Personally, we had a UU family we adored when we lived in upstate New York, but after we moved to southern California we found we didn’t click with any of the ones nearby. We moved again recently {this time Virginia} and have not attended a UU here regularly yet.
There are also organizations such as Sunday Assembly and Oasis that provide a congregation-like structure for humanists and nones, although neither is very widespread. Again, it is something you would need to try out and see how it feels to you.
You can also find humanist organizations in or around most major cities, although YMMV with how useful you find them.
{Full disclosure: We attended a Sunday Assembly in California for several meetings, but for various reasons ultimately decided not to return. I cannot speak to what other groups in different areas would be like.}
The Hard Truth
I will be honest: No longer having a church connection can be one of the loneliest aspects of letting go of your faith.
While we have met a few people {and re-connected with a some we knew from our previous military tour in Virginia} we still do not have the kind of local support we did when we were members of a Christian church or a UU congregation. It is hard to be without this kind of built-in “family” to depend on and socialize with.
I hope to find this again someday. I especially miss the opportunities for the kids to get involved. {UUs in particular are known for doing a fabulous job with religious education for youth.}
What Do I Do Instead of Pray?
What if you have always turned to prayer in time of need and you honestly feel that it helped you? Do you just stop? In time of crisis or worry, what specifically do you do instead?
It took me a while to accept that praying to someone was not the factor that made me feel better. Simply the act of sitting quietly with my thoughts, maybe talking them through a bit, was the key. I could have been talking to my cat, or a stuffed bear, or Luke Skywalker. If you can envision someone listening to your most private concerns, it makes you feel less alone. It works even if the listener is imaginary.
So, on some level, you can still “pray” in the sense that you might concentrate on a specific need or issue or person and seek clarity. Except in this definition of prayer, no deity listens. It is more of a meditative process by which you attempt to better understand yourself and focus your thoughts.
I felt similarly about Bible reading. It was calming, and relaxing, and an ingrained part of my morning routine for years. If I dropped it, what would I replace it with?
Turns out, other books work just as well. If you really want to stick with a similar “theme” there are secular devotional-style readings out there. I find that many of the works by His Holiness the Dalai Lama convey a simpler, gentler spirituality without all the god-speak.
When Will It Stop Feeling Weird?
Being a non-believer in a sea of believers can be overwhelming, eye-opening, and just plain weird—especially when you live in a very god-assuming culture. You begin to notice everything through the lens of disbelief, and to understand just how entrenched most people have become.
This may surprise you—given that I write a public blog where one of the primary focuses is helping atheists, agnostics, humanists, and nones feel less alone—but many people in my “real” life have no idea that I am no longer a believer.
I basically have a don’t offer, don’t refuse policy: If they ask, I will answer honestly, but it is not necessarily information I hand out willingly.
Truthfully, it still feels odd to me that I am one of very few in my circle of family/friends who doesn’t buy the whole Jesus story and embrace all the Christian myths. It can be strange to be the only one on the outside looking in. However, I know that I am content now in a way I had not been for years.
Navigating life after faith takes time. Be gentle with yourself during the process.
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