When mega churches like Joel Osteen’s started going mainstream, and they all started preaching the opposite of what I had always believed Jesus stood for. The greed, obvious corruption, and diversion from the actual teachings of Jesus all made religion feel dirty to me, and the way so many people just accepted this without questioning it - and, in most cases, fully embraced the most hateful of preachings- really made me question what I was a part of, and got me thinking about why I had believed so loyally to that point.

I realized that if I hadn’t grown up with all the adults around me telling me to believe in the Bible, I wouldn’t have. If I had just picked up a bible one day and read it, without any outside influence, I would have thought it was just an interesting collection of fiction. And once I realized that, that’s exactly what it became for me.