No Jesus, No Peace?

Morning light is peeking over the mountain as I sit on my porch and write today. I’m excited to welcome the day, and to see what it will hold.

This morning as I watched the sun rise, I contemplated my deconstruction from Christianity. This truly has been one of the biggest events in my life…when it comes to inner growth, at least. The more experiences I have post-deconstruction, the more I realize how important it is to share my story. I hope it might help someone, anyone, to break free from the chains of Christianity. Not in order to “sin.”

No, this is the excuse Christians often give when someone leaves their faith. But instead, breaking free involves realizing that Christianity is a man-made religion. The premise that everyone is desperately wicked, and their only hope is to conform to a religion’s belief system is a big red flag. It took me awhile to see it, since I had been raised in this religious dogma for most of my life.

I’ve been told that the “proof” of Christianity is in changed lives. People who’ve come to Jesus have claimed victory over their sin, and their lives have been changed.

While I used to think this way too, I now believe that it was really us doing the “changing” all along.

What made our lives change was our immense desire for it to. We might call the catalyst Jesus, but it was inside of us all along.

I understand why people might believe they need to call on Jesus, or spirit guides, or Allah, to change if they are fully entrenched in their ego. Most of us are. It’s very easy to simply live in the part of our brain that comes naturally. The part that is more animal-like and is tied to survival urges, like food consumption and reproduction. When we let ourselves go into “survival of the fittest” mode, we probably will covet our neighbor’s new car or will want the perfectly painted life that we see on Instagram.

But we all have the ability to see this thinking for what it is, and tap into the Source that is inside of all of us instead. We might use different tools to do it, whether it be contemplation, meditation, calling on Jesus, etc. But I think we will all reach the same result as long as we are willing to put our ego aside.

Christianity is simply a tool some people use to calm their primal urges and existential fears. But do I believe it is the best tool to use? Absolutely not.

Calling on Jesus is not a foolproof way to find peace. We see this all the time in people who say they are believers.

The Christians who seem to have peaceful and virtuous lives usually have a lot of systems in place. They are disciplined, and have ordered their lives to include times of contemplation, prayer, and reading. Others have gone even further, and have removed outside influences from their lives in order to stay on the Christian path.

But rarely, if ever, have I heard of someone with a deep, continuous, abiding peace from Jesus who’ve done nothing but ask him for it.

It’s not Jesus.

It’s the tools. It’s the systems. It’s the pushing past the ego and going to that still spot inside of us.

Realizing this has been amazing for me. If you have suffered while walking the Christian path, I hope it’s amazing for you, too.