I want you to know that believing in God is not required for you to be a good human or live a good life. I want you to know that unbelief in God is not a sin. I want you to know that atheism is not a bad word.

If you ever get tired of discoursing about the attributes of God and just want to stop believing in supernatural entities altogether, that’s ok. If you are weary of holding on to your beliefs white-knuckled and teeth-gritted, you can let go. You will be ok.

I promise.

We were given so much bullshit, so much fear-inducing propaganda about the importance of mental assent to the notion of a supernatural mind in charge of all this. We were told it was the only way to be happy, to be a good human, to live a meaningful life. We were told blessed are those deny their embodied experiences of reality and call it faith. We were told blessed are those who call curiosity doubt.

The Bible invites us to taste and see what God is like, to judge a tree by its fruits. I did, and here is what I found: The God I once believed in promised me freedom and gave me shame. The Gospel I preached promised me life, and it crushed my soul. The Christianity I knew promised the Kingdom of Heaven, and instead it destroyed the Earth.

My religion told me that if I ever left, I would never be ok. I left anyways. I’m ok.

The truth is this: For some people, belief in God is live-giving and good but for many of us, belief in God severed us from our own humanity and divinity. For many of us, letting go of God was the only way to find our way home.

I am called to be a witness to what I have seen, and this is my story as true as i can tell it: Doubt was the door to salvation. Freedom is found on the other side of unbelief. God is gone and I love the world and

it is well with my soul.