When you’re a Christian, you’re told that you are an image bearer of God. That means you’re his representative to the rest of the world. You’re supposed to demonstrate grace, love, empathy, forgiveness, and a whole host of other traits that are supposed to draw non-Christians and unbelievers to Christ.

But my background is with evangelical Christianity, and it’s become clear that evangelicals especially evoke judgmentalism, anger, hatred, and other qualities that call into question their role as image bearers of a loving God. I’ve been burned by more than a few evangelicals in my lifetime, their backs turned on me when I needed support for my mental health (“Oh, you have a sin issue you need to deal with”) and my divorce (“Divorce is a sin, you know”). Their Gospel is impotent and powerless to change the hearts of those who are supposed to be bearers of a light in a supposedly darkened world.

The thing is, I’ve found greater love and empathy and support from unbelievers and from non-Christians than I ever have from religious circles. As a result I have no place in my heart for evangelical Christianity anymore. They bear the image of no God I ever want to serve.

I won’t say all Christians are bad, mind you. I’ve met some who get it right, but by and large, these individuals fall outside the borders of evangelicalism. They tend to be more liberal and thus more sympathetic toward the plight of their fellow man. It’s not enough to win me back to faith—I’ve had enough of lies and falsehoods, and there are numerous other reasons why I’m no longer a believer. But I want to acknowledge that there are at least a few people out there getting it right. It’s just that there are so many getting it wrong that it sours the taste of religion for me completely.

I used to think that the Bible had the answer to every issue a human being could face in life. I was certain, like the meme below demonstrates, that if only I read the right passages, I could find the solution to any problem I faced. In reality, I found out, though, as my mental health became worse, that I was wrong.

You see, as my depression worsened, I sought out spiritual answers for my condition. I still had faith, and I was sure God would provide me some form of relief if only I read the right scripture or prayed the right prayer. I had faith that God would meet me in my time of need.

He did nothing of the kind, of course. Instead of the answers and relief I expected, all I got was silence. The more earnestly I sought God out in prayer, the more fervently I read his Word, the more I found myself staring into the abyss. The pain of my depression and anxiety grew and grew, and there was nothing my spiritual search could do about it. I had my Bible open, but God wasn’t speaking.

Ultimately, I found help through physical means — doctors and therapists and psychiatrists. But there was no help forthcoming from the spiritual realm. As such, this resulted in the partial crumbling of my faith. Cracks began to form, cracks that could not be easily repaired. They joined others that had developed from other areas of my life. My faith had not failed yet, but it was only a matter of time.