Some preferences are pretty inconsequential like whether you prefer strawberry or vanilla ice cream. However, some have huge ramifications. I’m going to focus on a person’s religion here though this could be applied to other things. A person’s spiritual state is like an equation, what comes out of them is a fractal that can be zoomed and zoomed and all kinds of structures seen. I’m like this. There are good reasons why I am not a Christian (destructive experience of God, lack of evidence for the existence of a personal god, being treated like garbage in church, etc..) but those don’t really explain it all the way. So much of what I am stems from my beliefs just like a simple formula for a fractal can get you a structure that you can zoom and zoom in on to infinity.

I think this is why Christians drop out of people’s lives who have left the faith. It isn’t so much what they believe is different, it’s that it has manifested itself and everything they are is different.

The most powerful testimony for or against the faith is lived. I live Christianity being a lie by what I experience with my mental illness, what and how I think, ostracism, and low value. Christian friends (who haven’t already ghosted me) won’t even read my writing, that’s how far gone I am in their eyes. I’m speaking my truth and it flies in the face of what they have been taught to think and believe and is often literally off their map.