Losing one’s faith is never any easy process. However there are many factors that can make it even more difficult. These can be categorized as investment and entanglement.

On the investment side there’s the amount of time and money you’ve given to the cause. Here’s a few examples of highly invested people:

• The 70 year old widow who has been little more than a pew warmer her whole life. She got married in the church, raised her children in the church, and her husband’s funeral was in the church. Her three hours per week going to church works out to almost 11,000 hours and the tithe of her household’s combined income could easily measure in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. She also has many important memories tied to the church. She is heavily invested.
• There is the 35 year old woman who grew up in the church, was married in the church, has been raising her children in the church. For the last 10 years she has taught Sabbath School or Sunday School classes and has served on the church board for the last five years. Her financial investment is much lower than the 70 year old, but still significant. As far as her time, there’s the 5500 hours just from he life of church attendance, plus the 2600 hours spent on preparation lesson plans, and the 300 hours spent in church board meetings and related projects. That’s a total time investment of 8400 hours. That is a substantial investment, but slightly less than the 70 year old’s investment.
• Let’s use my past as an example. I had a 6500 hour investment in my five years of theology studies. Add in another 4000 hours for church and vespers attendance over my 23 years in the church. Various ministerial type duties, such as summer internships, sermon and worship talk preparation, Sabbath School lesson prep, and my ministry in the residence halls comes to about 4000 hours. So I had a total time investment of 14,500 hours. So obviously I was pretty invested.

For comparison’s sake, one year of full time employment comes to 2080 hours, but that investment is low due to the financial compensation it provides, that is assuming a fair market wage in a position well suited to you.

On the entanglement side there’s the religiosity of the community you live in, the social exclusivity of a lot of denominations (such as SDA, LDS, JW, etc), employment, and family ties. Here’s a few examples:

• A Mormon living in Rexberg, ID (95% Mormon) is going to be more entangled due to the community ties than a Methodist in Seattle (very secular community).
• Someone who is married to a fellow believer and has children with this person is going to be far more entangled than someone who is single, especially if a loss of faith would result in a divorce and a adverse custody decision.
• Someone who’s entire social life revolves around the church will be far more entangled than someone who has a diverse and varied group of friends.
• Someone who’s employment is either for the church, a denominational institution, an independent ministry, or otherwise tied to their faith will be much more entangled than someone who works for a secular business.
• Someone who is dependant on church social programs, such as food banks, free child care, housing assistance, or educational subsidies will be more entangled than someone who does not have those programs.

Both investment and entanglement will make leaving religion and losing faith more difficult. It will also make it so you have so much more to lose. I think the balance between investment and entanglement will make the difference between whether it’s a time of anger or depression.

In my case, I was heavily invested and loosely entangled. Sure, I left my friends and my campus job, but those were all tied to my education. It was a packaged deal. As a whole, the entanglement was more costly to me than it benefited me, so breaking from that was relatively easy. I spent the next year or so as an angry asshole. This shouldn’t be surprising because I was left with the realization that I had wasted so much time and money on a load of bull shit. I had been duped, and I paid dearly for it.

In the case of Rich Lyons of the Living After Faith podcast, he much more invested than I was, but he was also completely entangled. This entanglement brought a lot of personal and social benefit to him so it was hard to lose. The way his denomination was set up, the life of a pastor was the church. When he began to lose his faith he lost his job, home, car, friends, community, wife, and daughter, essentially everything. He had everything and he lost it all. It shouldn’t be surprising that he was left with several years of depression and PTSD.

I have a great deal of respect for anyone who can see through the bull shit and leave religion, but I tip my hat to anyone who can leave it in spite of a high degree of investment and/or entanglement. I know how hard it is, I’ve been there.

For those of us who can survive the pain, an amazing world awaits.