Recently, I have had a falling out with my belief in Jesus of Nazareth. It is not that I no longer believe in God, or in the figure (and divinity) of Jesus, but rather that I have been moving toward a rejection of the faculties of belief in him (and God) altogether. I began to fully believe in religion during my freshman year of undergraduate study, committing myself to it midway through the year, perhaps in the spring. I had previously thought about committing to it, but I did not go to mass until that spring. Up to that point, I had always thought about God and the philosophy behind divinity, but had never spoken about it, at least not openly. 

Now, when I look back upon those four years of attempted belief in God, I see nothing but a waste of my own time. And ask myself, what was I thinking? It has brought me to a place where I struggle to even accept myself, questioning my worth and my choices. At times, I feel like a failure in the life I am living, as if I fall short not only before God but before my own eyes. I figure that I am not alone in this, but I feel alone in the way my own mind has become ADX Florence for doubt and disappointment in anything I attempt to accomplish.

Before going forward, I do want to mention my absolute disdain for Christians. Yes, a wretched claim, but hear me out. I don’t know why, but people who find themselves happy within their belief in God make me so ruthlessly selfish, yes, that is bad, I know. You may ask why; it’s more than just ‘simple jealousy’ or ‘bitterness’; it feels instead like more of a personal affront that others can find peace in something that I have spent years trying to grasp and always failing. Their contentment highlights the void in my life, the exhaustion of striving for a belief that no longer exists for me. Comically, it makes me confront not only my disbelief, but the ways in which I have been shaped by the pursuit of said faith.

Further, believing in God has done very little for me; in fact, I would argue that it has made my life worse. I have tried time and time again to find some sort of divinity within the natural world, but I have failed. Moreover, I have tried to find some form of divinity within the human experience, and I have failed there as well. The world I live in has become totally sufferable in a certain sense; it is a state of complete existential exhaustion to realize that what I had tried to believe in—the Roman Catholic Church, the object to which I dedicated a great deal of my private study to—has become utterly worthless in my now-glazed eyes. While that may be a stretch of words, I can’t help but agree that it is truly how I feel, which stinks to see me write out on my computer.

Recently, I have spent much of my time writing about this, as I am doing now. However, this scribbling was not done in a serious manner, more or less just me jotting down ideas; 1,000-word essays that will go nowhere beyond my hard drive basically. And, I hate to say it, they have become increasingly melancholic and contain one key message, painful as it is for me to admit: the God of the Christians is so unbelievably wretched. This figure, this man from Nazareth, has made life almost painful to wake up and deal with over the last 12 months. I try to please, but am rejected with silence. It is quite comical, actually. This supposed God only survives in the mind of the modern man as a moral demand, and not as a being. He is not strong enough to exist, but only to command. For a man can appear in the desert, yet refuse to speak to his believers years later. 

Christianity calls this being “love,” but it is the love of a jailer for his prisoners. A love that watches. A love that records. A love that forgives only after humiliation. Before this God, one must first become small, then grateful to be spared annihilation. And what does he demand in return? Not excellence. Not courage. Not the greatness of a man’s soul.
He demands repentance. That peculiar art of self-loathing elevated into virtue—??????

Even if a man is guilty of ‘sin,’ I see no reason to worship a God who refuses to appear in the flesh today, for his absence proves nothing of his divinity. If God hides while demanding worship, then all the moral rules built around him are deemed to be suspect. Humanity praises meekness and self-denial because God commands it, and calls defiance sin. What a wretched design: the strong are made to feel guilty, the weak are crowned. Man has created this God in the eyes of the meek and mild, a refusal of natural selection, and a forced reason to prefer a specific attitude towards one’s life. And, if no God dares appear, then man should be left to create our value system. For what is it worth to have a supposed work of the divine, the Bible itself, if he still refuses to show himself?

If God’s eyes are truly fixed on me, why does he not reveal Himself to me now, as I write this obtuse discourse? What restrains him, if he is all-powerful, from standing plainly before me in this very moment? If he truly wants my faith, why must it rely entirely on absence, doubt, and unseen proof, rather than the clear evidence of his presence? If God is all-knowing and all-loving, withholding evidence of his existence from those who seek it seems incompatible with his desire for genuine belief—a logical fallacy (internal-contradiction). Would he not wish to justify belief in himself, to silence doubt at its source, and to send me back into the world as proof rather than rumor? Instead, he remains hidden and asks faith to do the work that power refuses to do.

And what faith can exist where power is refused? I want, trust me, I WANT to believe in God; I want the comfort of such a thing my peers have (as mentioned above), the certainty of a law, and the promise that my striving is not in vain. Yet no sign is given, no presence risked. I see my peers so joyful in the ideals of Jesus (and his divininty), laughing together after Church, sharing memes about faith in group chats, debating scripture with an enthusiasm and purpose, or volunteering on weekends with a sense of purpose that seems 1) effortless and 2) untroubled.

My faith is not weak; it is nonexistent. This is a shocking result when I look back at my junior and senior years of my undergraduate studies, when I was fully convinced of the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth.

This God, who I have tired to have faith within and for; through his own dam design of the universe, belief is withheld from me, and so my rejection is not rebellion but consequence. For was I destined to reject his faculties? If so, what a wretched man he is. I do not refuse him freely; I arrive exactly where his silence leads.

How, then, could I worship him? To believe would be to honor absence itself, to kneel before a void. This God demands devotion without demonstration, obedience without proof, and reverence where there is no voice. He asks me to surrender my senses, my reason, my eyes, and my hands; all for a claim untested in the flesh, like a king. I cannot obey what refuses to meet me. I cannot praise what will not risk itself before me. 

These words are a combination of several essays put together. I assembled them late at night, on February 11th, 2026, around 10 p.m., in my office. Yet I know this combination of imperfect writing is beyond saturated with rejection, almost to the point of boiling over. My words, however, have been shaped by my exhaustion with belief in this figure, and perhaps unfairly so. This essay was written not from certainty, but from weariness. If there is belief left in me, it no longer resembles faith as I once understood it; it is hesitant and fragmented, like broken glass, unsure of what it once was. I do not know whether I have truly ceased believing, or whether I have simply lost the capacity to recognize belief when it no longer consoles me. And thus, what remains in my rather gray life is a quiet and unresolved tension between me and the divine. I long for meaning that does not disappear in my life, but continues to push me forward, to my own demise one day. Perhaps this is not disbelief, but suspension. Not rebellion, but confusion. I do not end here with an answer, only with the admission that I no longer know where belief begins, where rejection ends, or whether the two are as distinct as I once thought. 

Even when I feel lost and uncertain, I know I will keep searching, questioning, and yes, writing. I might never find the certainty I used to want, but I am not ready to give up, but dam am I close.