Trust Issues
Why I Still Go to Church
Reconciling the harm Christianity can inflict with the joy it can bring
I’ll never forget the day I discovered that Mary Magdalene was never a prostitute. I had just returned from yet another unfulfilling service at a Baptist church just one block away from my former apartment, and I was beginning to feel as though my relationship with God was reaching an impasse. I tried everything I could to improve my connection: church on Sundays (though I spent more time scrolling through Twitter than paying attention), Bible study sessions (despite missing the sentimentality and ecstasy of sermons), and prayer (although I did not know where to start or what to say). Finally, I admitted to myself that maybe I needed to try a different route and do more in-depth scriptural study on my own.
There are 66 books in the Bible. Rather than erratically scanning them page by page, I chose to find some appendix resources online. And there I found it: Mary Magdalene, the most famous prostitute of the Christian faith that I knew of, wasn’t a prostitute whatsoever. Her image was conflated with that of an anonymous woman in the Gospel of Luke, a mistake that began with Pope Gregory in the sixth century and has persisted ever since. When I read there was no biblical evidence to support that Mary Magdalene was…
