I Need to Get Off the Religious Merry-go-round

Christmas Eve 2024 was the last time I'd stepped foot in a church. After a year of going back and forth, oscillating between Christianity and Islam, I was convinced the grass was greener in Islam.

For anyone who knows me, you know I don't do anything halfway. If I say, "I'm in," then I'm in running 100mph. When I was a younger man, I was regularly told I had a tendency to operate out of a "Ready, fire, aim" mentality. The expression "ready, fire, aim" is a play on the traditional sequence "ready, aim, fire," suggesting a careful and deliberate approach to action.

This phrase is most often used in business and entrepreneurship spaces. Entrepreneurs with this mentality are often applauded. These are people who are willing to take risks, be proactive, and learn from experience rather than get stuck in analysis paralysis. "Ready, fire, aim" emphasizes the importance of action over perfect planning.

My turn to Islam over the last year—I actually started this journey in March 2024, which is the exact year as of this writing—is a perfect example of how being more deliberate definitely has its place. What I've learned over the last year is that almost every issue I had with Christianity was very much alive and well within Islam.

To be clear, I have no intention to trash Islam or argue how Christianity is 'better' or 'more true' (whatever that means). Instead, my point in this article is to express how the same trainwreck that exists in Christianity exists in every major world religion. If my journey into Islam has taught me anything. It is that people are masters at making an attempt to know and worship God and completely fucking up the institution they inevitably create.

The Same Hubris of Theological Supremacy

The majority of my Christian life was spent in Baptist or Baptist-lite religious spaces. Theologically, my 'tribe' were Reformed Calvinists. For context, Calvinists tend to believe their theological convictions aren't a way of understanding Christianity; they are THE way. Furthermore, Calvinist theology is shaped in many ways by humanity's fallenness along with God's sovereignty and predestination.

I won't go into detail here, but the gist is as humans, we're all inherently sinners, deserving of eternal hell. But God, since eternity past, has chosen (predestined) those people throughout human history who will be saved and those who will justly spend eternity in hell. We can say God 'justly' does this because God is sovereign, meaning God is in control of all things at all points in time. The notion that someone could go to hell or heaven outside of God's will would ultimately undermine and break the whole system.

Much to my surprise, Islam, even in the more progressive spaces I was in, holds essentially the same ideology as Calvinism. Specifically, Muslims hold virtually identical views about God's sovereignty and predestination. They don't usually use exact theological words, but they believe that God controls everything and that only what God wills can happen.

Recently, as my family and I attended an Islamic event, we overheard two Muslim ladies discussing how something good happened to one of them and how they were praising Allah because nothing is a coincidence. I ran that logic through my mind, going in the other direction. What about bad stuff that happens to us?

For example, last week a 17 car accident on I-35 killed five people including children while injuring about a dozen others. It turned out that the driver of an 18-wheeler caused the accident. The driver was arrested on five counts of intoxication manslaughter.

Was God the one who not only willed but predestined that this man would become intoxicated, leading to the death of five souls, one of which was an infant? If this is true, could we call this type of god good? Would a god orchestrating tragedies for no apparent reason be worthy of worship?

I don't think so. But Calvinists and, sadly, most Muslims would say yes. Ironically, though they would use their scriptures, they argued the same thing. How dare I even raise these types of questions! Don't I know that God's ways are not man's ways? Who am I, a simple man, to question God?!

I know, I know, I've heard it all before. At one point, I even shared with my friend, who is a leader in a Muslim organization, how this kind of speech raises red flags for me. I shared my concern about how applying this type of logic on a larger scale means it's God's will for genocide to be happening in Palestine.

To my utter shock, my friend agreed that it was God's will for genocide to be happening in Palestine. My jaw could've hit the floor. With almost a sense of pride, they shared how Palestinians would gladly lay down their lives because they understood exposing this type of behavior is part of a long game to bring about justice. When I pushed back on how that line of thinking creates several problems with both the nature of God and the lack of accountability for our own actions they shared, "You'll understand better as you go deeper into Islam."

Nope. The terms and scripture being weaponized are different, but the ideology is the same. It's rooted in hubris built on the belief that this religion's knowledge is the only true knowledge. As such, it cannot be questioned; it can only be submitted to and obeyed.

Even as I wrote the last paragraph, I couldn't help but take a deep breath and rub my forehead in disbelief. I couldn't disagree more.

Performative Religiosity

Since I was a tween and my mom started dragging me to church, one of my biggest pet peeves was the performative nature of church. I'm not referring to the church's liturgy or how the Sunday service is organized.

What I'm referring to is the congregation. The way the people in the pews put on their Sunday best and, for those few hours, carry themselves like they are some of the most upright and righteous people on God's green earth. When in reality, their behavior is simply an act—a mask they wear for the few hours they're in church to give the allusion of being righteous, holy, or Christlike, whatever you want to call it.

I remember a time as a youth when the reality of who a person was and the performative nature of how they acted at church came to a head. I was 13 or 14 years old when one Sunday, a man who at one point wanted to 'disciple' me walked into the services with a woman wrapped around his arm. The issue wasn't that the man was showing affection to someone, the issue was that woman wasn't his wife, it was the woman he was cheating on his wife with.

The way he carried himself and acted as if he wasn't flaunting his adultery in the church where his family was married has never left me. This same type of performative nature is alive and well within Islam.

In many ways, Islam's emphasis on practice creates an unhealthy judgementalism that runs rampant in many spaces. For example, I've been criticized for my tattoos. I've been criticized for wearing earrings.

From a more 'spiritual' side, I've been told that if my palms and forehead don't touch my prayer rug in a specific way when praying, God won't hear my prayers. If I miss a day or break my fast during Ramadan, then I have to make that day of fasting up on a different day during the year. Otherwise, I'll be on God's naughty list.

The tragedy here is one of the leaders who was openly teaching how a misstep in prayer leads to God ignoring you was recently caught having sexually abused multiple women, including children. The biggest shock to me has been how anti-LGBTQ, even self-proclaimed 'progressive Muslim' spaces, have been toward the LGBTQ+ community.

Honestly, there have been signs that I should've seen this coming for months. Many of the amazing humans who regularly engage with my writing have reached out to share their stories in Islam. Some have openly challenged me to consider what I am expecting to be different and what that expectation is rooted in.

Where do I go from here? I have no idea. A dear reader who regularly interacts with my writing shared this with me a few months ago.

"Instead of leaving Christianity altogether why don't you follow the lead of others like Brian McLaren, Diana Butler Bass, and Phyllis Tickle, who have found a way to create an enclave for themselves within Christianity?"

As I ponder this reader's words, I think of folks I've connected with, like Jonathan Foster and John Carl Lewis. Maybe the path forward for me isn't so clearly beaten, but one that few have been willing to walk and mark the way for others.

Hey, thanks so much for reading this article! Did you know I recently wrote a book? If you're interested in picking up a copy, you can do so by clicking here.