Help! Why Did You Trade God for Marxism?
I stopped waiting for paradise—now I fight to build it.
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Dear Xavi,
You talk a lot about Marxism, but I know you also grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness. That seems like a huge shift. What led you from religious faith to revolutionary politics? Was it a gradual process or a sudden realization?
Do you see any surprising connections between your past beliefs and your current worldview? Jehovah’s Witnesses emphasize community and a coming transformation—did that shape how you think about collective struggle? Or did you have to completely break from that mindset?
What was that journey like for you, and what advice would you give to someone questioning their own long-held beliefs?
—Lost but Looking
Dear Lost but Looking,
Thank you so much for sending in this question! I'm excited to see you going through your own process of questioning your beliefs.
At first glance, it might seem like going from being a Jehovah’s Witness to a communist revolutionary is a huge leap. But in some ways, the transition was more natural than you might think. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe in an imminent “end of the world,” where God will destroy the wicked and create a paradise on Earth—a society where no one goes hungry, no one is homeless, and suffering is eliminated. In that sense, they could be seen as idealist utopian socialists. Their vision of paradise mirrors a communistic society, but with a key difference: they believe only divine intervention can bring it about.
It’s not hard to see why this worldview resonates with people. The world today is full of war, hunger, homelessness, and despair. As Marx famously wrote:1
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
In other words, religion doesn’t arise in a vacuum—it reflects the suffering and alienation people experience under capitalism. Jehovah’s Witnesses, like many religious groups, tap into that reality, offering people an explanation for their suffering and a promise of something better.
However, their philosophy is ultimately idealist, meaning they believe that ideas (or in this case, God’s will) shape reality. Marxists, on the other hand, take a materialist approach: we understand that people’s consciousness is shaped by their material conditions. To change society, we don’t need divine intervention—we need to change the material conditions that create suffering in the first place.
For me, leaving religion wasn’t an overnight process. I first started questioning my beliefs in 2017. Religion provided answers, but they felt arbitrary: Why is life the way it is? “Because God said so.” Why are gay people condemned? “Because He decided it.” I valued truth, and these answers didn’t hold up. I started identifying as a communist in 2021, but it wasn’t until later that I really understood what that meant. Through this process, I’ve realized that admitting you were wrong isn’t a weakness—it’s the most intellectually honest thing you can do.
And yet, I still want a paradise on Earth. I just no longer believe we need to wait for a God to bring it to us. We already have the scientific knowledge, technology, and productive capacity to create a world where no one goes without. The only thing standing in the way is capitalism itself—a system that prioritizes profit over human needs.
As Marxists, we’re atheists not because we oppose religious freedom, but because we recognize that if people had full, meaningful lives today, the need for religion would naturally wither away. Imagine a world where people only worked a few hours a day, where all their needs were met, and where they had the freedom to reach their full potential. That’s not utopian—it’s entirely possible with a democratically planned economy.
Jehovah’s Witnesses claim to have unity, but it’s a unity based on blind obedience, not understanding. True unity is built on ideological clarity—on people being **convinced** of ideas, not just following orders. And in that sense, they’re right about one thing: the end of this system is coming. Capitalism is historically exhausted. We live in a world of monopolies, overproduction, and artificial scarcity. The climate crisis alone shows that we need a global, rational, democratically planned economy.
The journey of breaking away from religion was difficult, confusing, and at times painful. It meant dismantling my worldview—but as dialectics teaches us, change is a process, and the useful parts remain. My advice to you: be curious. Read. Think. Compare ideas to your own experience. If you do, I believe you’ll find, as I did, that the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky are the most important of our epoch.