I’m not throwing it away,” she explains. “I’m simply preserving my spiritual options while I focus on healing, podcasts, and finding myself.”
BROOKLYN, NY — Newly deconstructed former Christian Eliza Maren announced this week that she has begun the careful process of freezing her Bible, explaining that she is not ready to engage with Scripture right now but does not want to rule out the possibility of someday returning to selected verses under more favorable emotional conditions.
“It has been a really difficult decision,” Maren said in an Instagram video, holding a leather-bound Bible beside a bag of frozen peas. “I used to think I had to either believe every word immediately or throw it in a bonfire while calling my youth pastor abusive. But I am learning that spirituality is a journey, and I deserve the freedom to preserve my options.”
Maren said she had been considering Bible freezing for years but finally took action after realizing that she was “recently single, spiritually overwhelmed, and not prepared to commit to an entire canon right now.”
“I have a lot going on,” she said. “I’m re-evaluating purity culture, my relationship with church authority, whether I ever actually liked contemporary worship music, and why every adult in my old church used the word ‘season.’ This just isn’t the time for me to make permanent decisions about Genesis through Revelation.”
The former Christian documented the process online, beginning with a thorough inspection of the Bible for potentially triggering material. She reportedly placed removable tabs over difficult passages, including commands, miracles, judgment, sexual ethics, church discipline, marriage, repentance, and any verse that could be interpreted as having an opinion about her current lifestyle.
“I want to be clear: I am not rejecting the Bible,” Maren said. “I am creating space. There is a difference.”
According to Maren, the Bible will remain in a temperature-controlled freezer drawer until she decides whether she wants it back in her life, perhaps after “a few years of therapy, a better church experience, a long period of self-discovery, and an algorithmically curated collection of former worship leaders explaining why certainty is violence.”
Friends said they support her decision.
“She is just trying to feel more in control of her spiritual future,” said one friend, who previously described reading the Bible as “a high-control practice” but now sells decorative verse journals with all the verses removed.
Maren’s freezer reportedly contains several other objects from her former faith: a purity ring, a conference wristband, a half-used devotional, three youth-group T-shirts, and a handwritten note from an elderly church member saying she would always be loved and prayed for.
“I’m not sure about that note,” Maren said. “It feels emotionally manipulative because it does not affirm every conclusion I have reached.”
A local deconstruction coach applauded the Bible-freezing decision, calling it a “brave act of reproductive spiritual autonomy.”
“People need to understand that faith is not binary,” the coach explained. “You can preserve the possibility of returning to Scripture later, after you have carefully removed everything in it that makes you uncomfortable.”
The coach added that clients should never feel pressured to read the Bible before they are ready, especially if they have not first completed a 12-part podcast series titled How To Heal From Being Told Words Mean Things.
Maren said she chose a freezer rather than a bookshelf because the refrigerator represented “too much traditional Christian pressure to consume things regularly.”
“I am leaving the door open,” she insisted, labeling the frozen Bible: DO NOT THAW UNTIL ALL DIFFICULT DOCTRINES HAVE BEEN REPLACED WITH PERSONAL AFFIRMATIONS.
At press time, Maren had posted a tearful update explaining that freezing her Bible was not an attack on Christians, but merely a personal decision she hoped everyone would publicly celebrate, validate, and never question.
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