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. I mean I could how many times I’ve been to church using one hand.
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 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.
Growing up, I never liked going to church. It was sensory overload for me. The atmosphere didn’t feel spiritually grounding. The loud music and singing. The crowded rooms. The super long sermons. I feel like I would do a whole lot better with quiet forms of reflection. Definitely not that.
Some churches turned me off completely with flashy pastors, performances, and a kind of spiritual spectacle I couldn’t connect with. Some churches felt more like a show than a place of reverence or reflection. It was a mess.
Something in my body always felt unsettled there, even when I tried to push past it and I’ve been to different churches.
There were also certain verses that raised questions for me too as I read the bible.
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 here, but people will find ways to make it seem like it’s not.
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.
Along the way, I found out something really disturbing about my Christian boyfriend so I broke up with him. It was pretty shocking 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 and influence solidify things for me. After that, I slowly drifted back into my secular life.
I no longer was wearing the rose-tinted glasses.
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 