I'm so sad - I thought Christianity was everything

I don't even know how to explain this feeling of fear and loss. I feel so conflicted. I think I've lost my faith, but it's not what I want. I want the Christian God to be true - I want to feel secure, and like I can still connect with other believers, but I'm struggling. Over the last few years, I was in a church that felt like home. The people were, and still are, kind, I felt like I was contributing to the church via tithe and volunteering, and despite doubts I had had before, I felt like the answer to any gaps was mostly faith, and as long as I could accept that God could never truly be proven by physical evidence, then faith would bring me the rest of the way.

I thought I was happy with that. I tried to be content with faith as the answer for unanswerable questions, and I still believed in the inerrancy of the bible. But over the last 2 years, things have changed. People that I love, who are devout christians, whose opinions I greatly respected, voted for Trump in 2024. They said it was better than the alternative, that our country is in a moral backslide, and that any negative consequences would be worth the net gain that his direction provided the country. It didn't make sense to me. Still doesn't. How could people that are Christian support a man who is as morally bankrupt as I perceive him to be?

I thought that maybe it was just that I was being fed liberal news through the choices of media that I consumed. Maybe I was just seeing the worst version of everything. So I went down rabbit holes, consuming right wing news content and comparing it to left wing news content, and the story the right wing was telling just wasn't adding up. Why was it the right thing to do to impose a moral code that was determined by our faith on other people? How could America's core values of freedom and respect for inalienable human rights align with that? Even if we did impose that moral code, without faith, the people we were imposing it on still wouldn't be saved - how could we justify the suffering we were causing by not collaborating or listening to those who were most affected by the social issues debated about in the country? Jesus didn't come to be a conqueror in the bible, he specifically rejected that title, so why were we taking it upon ourselves to enforce what we thought to be true on others? Especially when we wouldn't tolerate that behavior from another religion.

I also moved away from my home church at the beginning of those 2 years. Every church we visited in our new area, upon hearing that I was from the south, mentioned how I was 'going to fit right in with their conservative values.' After visiting for a few weeks, something would happen that made me feel like politics were embedded in the church. I thought, 'maybe I'm just choosing poorly in the churches that I'm visiting,' but then it happened over and over again. Are all the churches like this? After having a kid, I began noticing themes in the scriptures that were taught from the pulpit felt one-sided. 'Jesus was a servant, and you should serve too, even if it costs you greatly.' What are the practical realities of that statement? While it's good to serve and can bring meaning to your life, rest is also necessary to be healthy. What if my kid takes that tenant to heart and works themselves to the bone trying to meet this ideal? They're going to burn out.

Or something like, 'You are a sinner, no matter what you do, and only God can bring redemption.' I remember this being a core facet of my life when I was a teenager and a little younger - it destroyed my self esteem. I believed I couldn't trust any of the decisions I made because I couldn't determine if the direction I 'felt called to' was God's voice, or my own selfish desires. Is this something I'm going to inflict on my kid? Especially things like lying, or being rowdy. As I get farther into parenting, I've been learning about normal developmental behaviors. It turns out that many of the things we believe or claim eternal punishment for are part of the normal developmental cycle for humans. Am I going to condemn my child for behaviors they can't actually stop or help? Things that they naturally will grow out of when they get older? How can I justify that?

After that, I began to realize that, even if scripture is truly free from errors and divinely inspired by God, our interpretation as a religious group of people could be error-prone. Examples of this would be using scripture to justify keeping slaves, like our ancestors did in America not too long ago, or the Crusades, which intended to spread the word of God via the sword. And that dangerous people, like Trump or Hitler, could twist or warp scripture to suit their needs. And rather than standing up to that perversion using the gospels, we (the church) were condoning it! As long as it met our current interpretation of what we believed to be true, we could justify even the worst atrocities.

Then, from there, I started to apply the cognitive bias tools that I learned in therapy that really helped during dark times of my life to the arguments for scripture. I asked myself if there was anything, any evidence or moral judgement, or act attributed to God, that would cause me to lose my faith. Because if the answer was 'no,' then I wasn't a believer in faith, I was a believer in dogma. And I could be easily manipulated through a singular lever. And that's scary.

My faith was questioned by my believing family. They asked if I still believed in the resurrection of Jesus. My answer was, 'I don't know.' So they sent me theological books. These books are just raising more questions. Not even apologetic theologians agree on what is true and what is not. Even more damning, scriptural historians can explain how at least portions of the bible were almost certainly informed by culture. There is more than one story of people rising from the dead or performing miracles from this period of history - something that was never covered by my christian upbringing. I can see how Christianity could be explained by people's beliefs and actions without any of the supernatural aspects. Just like today, despite significant evidence to the contrary, some people believe we didn't land on the moon, and others believe in a flat earth. If people in modern days with much better evidence recorders than in historical times can believe in something that isn't true, how much easier would it be to convince groups of people who relied on eyewitness testimonies in bible times?

How do I reconcile this? Why can't I just believe like other believers? It feels like the only foundation I've ever known is crumbling under my feet and I'm so scared of losing the people I love. They all believe - so many of my friendships are founded in faith, including my most important ones. Why is this so damn hard? They told me that if I truly believed, my faith would not crumble, but it is crumbling, and if it does, I know that the people I love will tell me that I never truly believed.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I don't know where to go from here, I just know that I'm hurting.