Jump to content
Goodbye Jesus

Walking Away And Waking Up


Meta

Recommended Posts

There's really not a lot to tell about me in terms of what made me turn away from religion, but I've seen that it takes all kinds here, so...here's my story.

 

I was born into a family whose lives quite literally revolved around the church. My grandfather was the pastor of a local Pentecostal church, and my dad (his son) was the worship leader. Everyone sort of assumed that I was going to grow up just like them and spread God's word to the four corners of the earth and et cetera. I was exposed to Christianity pretty much right out of the hospital.

 

Like so many others, I was a child when I "gave my life to Jesus." I remember it was at a summer camp run by the Church of God of Prophecy in North Carolina. The kids from our church (of all ages) would go there every summer. My first year there, when I was four and honestly had no clue what I was doing, I responded to the altar call and became saved. It wasn't an epiphany for me--I was four, I barely had mental processes beyond "I want food" and "I want to play"--so much as it was a chance to do the things everyone else was doing. In hindsight, I don't think I ever really had a ton of choice in the matter. I was going to be "saved" eventually, whether I wanted to right then or not.

 

Anyway, yeah. My family went the whole nine yards--they even enrolled me in a Christian private school just so I wouldn't have to deal with such terrible things as rational thought. And let me tell you, I ate it up. I was that terrible Christian kid. I regularly asked my parents (who, by the way, turned out to be surprisingly progressive in comparison) whether what they were doing or what music they were listening to was "Christian." I equated Christianity with good and everything else with evil, just as God intended.

 

Then 9/11 happened.

 

It's trite, sure, but in hindsight that may have sown the seeds for future curiosity. I still remember what happened that day, to an extent. I remember getting brought into school and sitting in my first-grade class for a little while, before suddenly we were all asked to head out front for our parents to pick us up. When Mom got there, she was on the verge of tears trying to reassure me even though I still had no clue what was going on beyond getting out of school early.

 

In the weeks and months afterward, all I really figured out was that a group of people had done something bad and hurt a lot of people, and that someone named Osama Bin Laden was responsible for it. Except when he wasn't, in which case it was Saddam Hussein. Or it was someone named Al Kaida. Something like that. I had no clue and frankly the whole thing confused me.

 

After I finished second grade, my parents (again, they had a lot more foresight than I did, and I thank them for it to this day) pulled me out of the private school and homeschooled me for two years. (Come to think of it, usually the reverse of what seems to happen with homeschooling.) I found out later that the school I was attending was severely low on money, and resorted to combining grades into one classroom. If memory serves, they closed the year after that.

 

Between third and fourth grade we moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, away from my family and friends in the Carolinas. Nothing really changed at home, with the exception that when fifth grade rolled around I started attending the local public school. To say I had a difficult time adjusting was...an understatement. I had no prior connection to anybody there, and it just so happened that the few people I managed to befriend were the weird kids, the ones nobody really liked anyway. To make matters worse, I got labeled as "that dumb religious kid," and I ended up being judgmental and distant in equal measure. I got in trouble multiple times, and even got suspended twice in one year, where I'd had little trouble before. And to make matters worse, just as I started to get the hang of things a bit more, we moved again, this time to Memphis. Despite all of this, I stuck with God, telling myself that there was a plan for everything and that I just needed to be patient.

 

My time in Memphis was actually somewhat more tolerable. We found a nice megachurch near our house, and my disciplinary issues started to tone themselves down once I got through middle school. Unfortunately, my time being hyper-religious left its mark, in that I was slower on the uptake in most things. As a result, I didn't really "get" most of the things other people were saying, and I often came across as just some fat, socially inept kid three years behind in his mental development. I don't mean to say that I was picked on for no reason; in fairness, I was kind of a jerk in middle school myself. But at the same time, I still relied on God to help pick up the slack, hoping he'd pop down with an answer someday.

 

It was my last semester of middle school that really started to mess with my head. All my life I'd mostly ignored politics, except with the assumption that the Republicans were the good guys and the Democrats were the bad guys, simply because Republicans were more Christian than Democrats, or so I'd been told. But that year, America inaugurated its first president of color--kind of a big deal. We all watched President Obama's inauguration speech in the library. He struck me as a guy who legitimately had the country's best interests at heart, despite being (as far as I knew) one of the "bad guys." I'd supported him throughout the entire campaign. I didn't know why, I just kind of did. I remember sitting there, watching his speech, wondering what this meant.

 

High school was probably when I started to realize that Christianity wasn't all that great. Among a number of smaller instances, the biggest tip-off I got was when I visited my aunt and uncle in South Carolina one summer. In the midst of conversation, I mentioned that I happened to be friends with a guy who practiced Islam (I haven't talked to him in ages, sadly, but at the time we were pretty close).

 

I'll never forget how wide her eyes got when I told her that. Nor will I forget her very next words: "Well, haven't you tried to convert him yet?"

 

This was from my aunt, a woman who until then I'd thought was entirely on my side, unconditionally. True, she was the type of parent who legitimately thought that her kids could end up dabbling in witchcraft if they so much as read or watched stuff like Harry Potter or Wizards of Waverly Place (I am dead serious). But I'd never expected this. When I told her no, she asked why not, saying that it was a Christian's duty to tell people the "good news." I lied and said it just hadn't come up in conversation. But that question continues to haunt me to this day. If I had to mark a specific moment when I began my deconversion process in earnest, it would be that day.

 

By the end of high school I was still Christian, but I was beginning to really have my doubts. I'd started really reading through the bible--Old and New Testaments both--and I really questioned whether something like this was worth it. I always answered myself with Pascal's Wager or some similar logical catch-all, trying to silence my doubts, but they'd still crop up again. I didn't tell anyone, of course, because my parents wouldn't get it, my church friends would probably turn their backs on me, and I wasn't about to burden my school friends with something like this.

 

It was during this time that I started to realize the true problem I had with Christianity: I would never be good enough. Being raised in a household where you're always told to "do your best" and being chastised whenever you come up short doesn't make for great self-esteem. It's gotten to the point that I still struggle with self-worth issues. I've never been able to shake that feeling of not being good enough, and even now I still worry that I'm not going to succeed even when I keep being told that I'm doing fine. Maybe it's the idea of reaching an impossible level of perfection that causes this. We're told to be like Jesus, who was perfect, while simultaneously being told that we'll never be quite like Jesus, who was perfect. Being a Christian taught me me to push myself harder and harder for a goal that just kept getting farther and farther away, and now I can't even live up to my own standards.

 

Entering college was probably the last straw. My first introduction to campus came from a pre-college event hosted by the Baptist Collegiate Ministry. It was fun enough, but it all just seemed off, now. None of what they were teaching was really making sense. On top of that, I was now working for the college newspaper, and as a result I became more connected to the "real world" than ever. I realized that if God were benevolent, then there's simply no way he would let stuff get to this point. I also realized that, despite my prior belief that atheists were by and large hopeless and pessimistic, the ones I met were more focused on spending the time they had making the world a better place. Stereotypes gave way to reality, and for the first time I saw the world for what it really was--both the good and the bad parts.

 

So I stopped going to church. I stopped attending the BCM. I stopped reading my Bible or praying or anything like that. And while it didn't bring me happiness, per se, it did help me realize that I was more than my religion, that I didn't need purity promises or a medieval novel to dictate my worth. Earlier this year, I finally admitted to myself that I am no longer a Christian. I don't have anything against people who are religious--it's their life, I'm not about to tell them what's best for them--but I do have a problem with people who try to tell other people they're going to hell. And sadly, that's what Christianity seems to have become.

 

I still haven't told my parents. They've been surprisingly progressive throughout my entire life (and probably the only reason I didn't become a hardcore fundie), but they're still Christians. They still tell me that "God has a plan for me", and they still don't seem willing to help me confront some of my personal issues (I told them about a year ago that I was worried I was becoming depressed and wanted to see a therapist, to which they replied that it was the devil trying to make me doubt myself). But they're still a far better environment than I would have had otherwise, which makes this whole thing seem bittersweet.

 

Once I graduate college in May, I'm leaving the South as fast as I can, hopefully to Washington state. I want to tell them before I go, but in a way that ensures there's no ill will or regret for any of us. The problem is twofold: one, I don't know how to tell them without upsetting them greatly, and two, I don't see them often and I never have great timing with telling them. I've wanted to tell them the last three times I've visited (Christmas, Mother's Day weekend, Father's Day weekend and the week afterward; yes, I know, I'm a terrible person for waiting four months in between visits) but it's never been the right time to tell them, and something's always come up. I just wish I knew the best way to deal with it.

 

So...yeah. Hopefully some of that stream-of-consciousness wove its way into a coherent story. Suffice it to say: I was a dyed-in-the-wool PGK, now I'm just some guy who likes writing and video games. I don't have a story that's as heartrending or as provocative or, hell, even as interesting as most of the others here, but if someone gets something out of it, then that's all I'm concerned about. I guess I just needed somewhere to talk about it at length.

 

Anyway, that's about it. Thanks for reading, and I'm sorry that I ended up essentially vomiting up way more than I intended at first. That happens to me a lot... 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Welcome Meta! Glad you were able to see through it after all those years of mental/emotional programming.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Welcome!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Welcome, Meta!  There were a lot of little nuggets in your story that I could relate to.  It's interesting to me how all our stories are vastly different, but also so eerily similar.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the encouraging words. I was kind of worried that I got a bit lost in my own word hurricane there, but I'm glad that it ended up making coherent sense.

 

Fuego: It's weird, to be honest. On some level, I know that I basically was being conditioned to see the world in a very anti-secular light, and that were it not for my parents pulling me out of the private school when they did, I might have ended up just as bad as some of the more radical fundamentalists. But at the same time, I can't bring myself to get mad at anyone for it. They were just doing what they thought was their job, and for all I know they'd never really known anything different. I just count myself fortunate enough to have been introduced to the world at large before more damage was done.

 

Megan: That's something I've noticed as well, browsing through some of the stories on this board. So many different paths people take, yet we all share a common thread. It's kind of uplifting, in an unorthodox way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Moderator

Hey Meta, welcome!

 

We're glad to have you here with us. I just posted my own story a few months ago and I gotta say it's great to be part of a group of like-minded people, where I can talk about my rejection of Christianity, or just read what others are saying, or even get advice. There are some people here who really know the scriptures (a good way to become an ex-Christian, as it happens) and can debunk just about any Christian argument. There are some who are very warm and encouraging, and will lift you when you're down. And there are some who are still hurting as they continue their deconversion journey. But above all, we are a family here, and I'm happy to welcome you.

 

As for how to break the news to your parents, that's a tough one, and of course every family is different. You don't have to be in a hurry and you don't have to let them have it all at once. Maybe you can 'sow the seed' by letting them know you've had doubts. I'm still 'coming out' to my wife in a very slow-motion manner.

 

As well as having this online group of fellow-travelers, I hope you will find friends with whom you can be yourself and open about your unbelief. I must say this: I and many others here wish we had listened to our doubts when we were as young as you are! So you can be very glad that you have become a free young man with a free mind as your life stretches out ahead of you. Good for you, my friend! Good for you!

 

I hope you'll stay around and became a regular contributor, if that works for you!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Meta,

 

PNW great place to be if your religious preferences are "Leave me the hell alone please".

 

You escaped. Set sail and go your own direction. 

 

Do feel welcome to ExC and a bit of sanity this lil Community on.line can offer.

 

kevinL

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the encouraging words. I was kind of worried that I got a bit lost in my own word hurricane there, but I'm glad that it ended up making coherent sense.

 

Fuego: It's weird, to be honest. On some level, I know that I basically was being conditioned to see the world in a very anti-secular light, and that were it not for my parents pulling me out of the private school when they did, I might have ended up just as bad as some of the more radical fundamentalists. But at the same time, I can't bring myself to get mad at anyone for it. They were just doing what they thought was their job, and for all I know they'd never really known anything different. I just count myself fortunate enough to have been introduced to the world at large before more damage was done.

 

Megan: That's something I've noticed as well, browsing through some of the stories on this board. So many different paths people take, yet we all share a common thread. It's kind of uplifting, in an unorthodox way.

 

I know what you mean about them doing their best, and nearly becoming a radical fundy. I was promoting a guy that claimed to raise the dead multiple times, healed every kind of disease and even regrew body parts. I "should" have been able to see through that, but if one believes the bible, then it should all be possible for any believer, so I threw in with him and defended him for 9 years online. Until the day I caught him red-handed lying about a very detailed story about witches in a German church. Turns out everything he preached was in fact biblical, but simply wasn't true. We all felt power, sometimes a buzzy electrical thing zipping through us, sometimes heat like a furnace, but none of it ever seemed to DO anything to heal. I have a lot to think about from the old days.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

TABA: I'm definitely thinking about staying a while. First impressions are certainly promising, I can say that much. ^_^ The fact is, my parents already know that I've become disillusioned with the idea of Christianity. But that's because I told them that I follow Christ's teachings independent of organized religion; they don't know yet that I've given it all up entirely. I don't plan on actively going counter to the theoretical concept of Jesus' teachings--I'm under the impression that the general message of "don't be a terrible person" is something that should be common sense, regardless of one's religious background--but I do understand that you don't have to be religious to be moral. The trick is going to be getting them to understand that.

 

Skip: I'd be lying if I said that wasn't at least part of my motivation. In general, what I know about the PNW is basically the exact opposite of what things are like here in the Southeast, which is pretty much exactly what I want. Right now I'm hoping to end up in Olympia or Tacoma or somewhere else around the Puget Sound, but time will tell. Small chance I may even end up in Canada, who knows. That's still about a year off, and I have a lot to deal with before I go that far.

 

Fuego: That's...wow. That had to sting when you discovered that. It sucks when you try to defend someone like that, only for them to turn out to have been lying the whole time...hope things have gotten better for you since then.

 

Thanks again for the warm welcome, everyone. It feels good to finally have a place to talk about all of this, and I'm looking forward to getting to know you all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm from Washington State, and if you love the nature and want religion to be largely kept out of your life if you choose then this is the place for you.  There are plenty of religious people, but those who are tend to not be so in your face about it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please don't feel any great compulsion to tell your parents before you move. I have this theory about people who deconverted and their strong need to tell others. It is the logical reverse of all the pressure to tell others about your religious belief and try and convert them.

 

For the rest of the world, who are "normal", religious views are on the periphery - sort of like what genre of music you like, or whether you are in to movies or gaming.

 

You will have less hassle if you just move and are just vaguely "looking for a church" when you see them. Even reasonable parents have been known to become very dedicated to religion when faced with their children departing from the path. Some of the problem seems to be that they are taught that people leave religion because they have some dreadful sin that they refuse to give up.

 

As you read various posts here, you will see this, both with parents and spouses.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Meta...eerily similar and occasionally ironically coincidental. I was also a part of the Church of God of Prophecy as a child (although that was in the 1970's) I remember the members washing each other's feet and the general free-for-all atmosphere that was drawing young families in at the time. This was South Western Pennsylvania near the border of West Virginia where I was born.

 

I love your story. It is so refreshing to hear younger (younger than me...please don't take offense) people tell their stories. It shows just how much the same the process of indoctrination is after all these years.

 

My father and step-mother lived on a little island in Puget Sound for about a decade. (Anderson Island) they loved it but moved back here to Ohio when I started giving them Grand babies. It is definitely a beautiful part of the country.

 

On coming out...I've been an atheist for 8 years now and just came out a few weeks ago to my super religious extended family. It was a battle to decide if it was more important to be honest and free to be open about things in public, or to preserve the relationships that would inevitably suffer and save my family the pain of facing it.

 

It was easier now than it would have been to do it earlier. I'm less tied to any of them now...more secure in my own situation. I would recommend not rushing into it as far as coming out publicly. But I have to say that my father has taken this journey with me...kicking and screaming the whole way...and is now agnostic. That wasn't my goal, but his mind has also opened to new ways of thinking as a result of exploring these issues. If your parents can handle it...and especially if they will support you...telling them may be a very good move. It's great to meet you!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines.