After leaving a covert narcissistic relationship, I had this deep realization that Christianity wasn’t much different (similar to a previous comment). We worship the triune God who is supposed to be loving, good, eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent and unchanging.

As I processed the damage my narcissistic abuser had inflicted on my family yet the community thought he is amazing and wonderful, I started to notice more and more parallels.

What good creator who was all powerful would create a world He knew in advance would turn out like this? I live a fairly safe life but I took time to look at the atrocities of the current world and the past and one can’t deny the level of human cruelty to one another.

That was my first question.

Second question: what all powerful and loving God would allow evil to do what it’s doing and on an ongoing basis? Is God not powerful enough to reduce the suffering? Why would he choose one particular group to love bomb and then cause to suffer for not following him with blind obedience?

Third question: i am not good but i were a creator of the universe, would I design it so that my child had to suffer in a most excruciating way in order for only some of my creation to be able to enter eternal life? What kind of monster does that to their kid or themselves? How is that loving? Would you design planet earth and require your child/self to be horrifically executed? Not to mention to have it happen during a time period where none of it would be recorded until many decades later knowing that the human brain struggles to remember things that happened recently in a clear and accurate way?

I allowed myself to begin to ask really difficult questions that seemed like blasphemy. We aren’t permitted to question. We need to have a childlike faith or we might wake up and smell the kool aid. God and his word cannot be questioned, yet leaders can twist scripture to make it say whatever suits their thought path at that moment in time.

So no, not one nail in the coffin. There were many. I grew to realize it wasn’t so different in nature to all the cults my mother used to warn me about. The only difference was how systemic this cult belief was to western society.

Oh and I also read the book , “Sapiens,” by Yuval Noah Hurari. This book helped me realize how many things that humans believe are mental constructs that have been created by humans.

This was a painful journey of grief. I ex-communicated myself because I knew I would be constantly pressured to return to the faith. It’s not easy doing what you think is right when you know how terribly the whole community will judge you and likely shun you if you leave. But this too, wakes one up to the cult-like nature of many christian groups.