AKR Posted November 25, 2006 Share Posted November 25, 2006 welcome back to the dark side, sarah. i'm assuming you have brought a baby for the sacrifice? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
truth Posted November 25, 2006 Share Posted November 25, 2006 Welcome! I can understand the need to tell your roomates but don't feel like you can at the moment. Luckily I live by myself and am at a place where I have been able to tell my friends mostly because it has come up in conversation with them at their promting of what I believe. My family on the other hand may have a slight inkling of my disbelief but for the most part they just assume that I think the same as they do..since they have been brainwashing me for three decades of my life and since i am basically the second generation to be taught this since birth... I haven't come to the place where I can tell them.. maybe the next time my mom asks me to go to church or talks about being worried for my soul.. I am weighing my need to be true to myself as well as knowing it will upset and worry my mom more and not to mention she will probally pester me more to come back to the faith... So don't feel so bad, babysteps, babysteps my friend. Welcome to the boards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sithprincess Posted November 26, 2006 Share Posted November 26, 2006 welcome back to the dark side, sarah. i'm assuming you have brought a baby for the sacrifice? LOL!!! Welcome Sarah! Glad you found the site! It's been really helpful to me during my deconversion process, and there are a lot of nice people here. And your original post didn't sound at all pretentious. It was just fine. I can relate to being socially uncomfortable around new people, but I think you'll fee comfortable here. It's good to have support when going through something like this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sarahgrace Posted November 26, 2006 Author Share Posted November 26, 2006 welcome back to the dark side, sarah. i'm assuming you have brought a baby for the sacrifice? Uhm, the only baby I know is my niece and i'm kinda attached to her... so i brought a few kittens instead. Is that okay? I mean, i figure there are enough guys out there whacking off that God's going to kill them anyway... might as well make it more fun for everyone. i'm so lame. who let me online today? seriously. sarah, back away from the keyboard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mick Posted November 26, 2006 Share Posted November 26, 2006 Hi Sarahgrace, Welcome. You are already sane! I would not recommend pretense forever, but you must think of your immediate interests as well. If you truly have abandoned the false god of the Bible in your heart, you need to start making other friends. Christians who are in denial and dedicated to the BibleGod will not love you much if you tell them the truth. Be thankful that you are young and not too tangled. I was thinking yesterday hor painful/tragic things would have been for me if I had become a Pastor or a missionry or something. (I had thought hard about those options 15 years ago) Imagine coming tot he conclusion that the Bible is shit when your actual earthly LIFE depends on it. i believe now that this is happening to people all the time. Look at life as a big opportunity in front of you. You are young! Life is good. There are SO many cool things to do. Have you seen the Grand Canyon? I have and its awesome! Think like things that. I want to go to Ireland and rent a car for 3 weeks and explore. I don't know if that will ever happen, but I am looking forward to that kind of thinking. I would love to see the Pyramids, but I'm too scared to be an American in that part of the world any time soon. (Another tragedy of religion.) Anyway, know you are sane. Use your mind at all times. Think critically, and CONTRIBUTE to the world. thank you again for the warm greetings. mwc, you're right, I am on the young side - i turn 24 next week. I was xian for about 10 years - raised atheist, converted in my teens, and am now 'backsliding' like the wind. whatever that means. my father will be proud, probably. you raise a good point about taking time... i'm probably not ready for those sorts of pressures. i realize that i'm in a really vulnerable state right now and maybe it's not the right time to be waving my flag just yet. Does anyone have any advice on how to maintain my sanity amid the pretense? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amethyst Posted November 26, 2006 Share Posted November 26, 2006 Hi, welcome! It does get better, and you will make new friends as time goes by. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparkyone Posted November 27, 2006 Share Posted November 27, 2006 Welcome! I can understand the need to tell your roomates but don't feel like you can at the moment. Luckily I live by myself and am at a place where I have been able to tell my friends mostly because it has come up in conversation with them at their promting of what I believe. My family on the other hand may have a slight inkling of my disbelief but for the most part they just assume that I think the same as they do..since they have been brainwashing me for three decades of my life and since i am basically the second generation to be taught this since birth... I haven't come to the place where I can tell them.. maybe the next time my mom asks me to go to church or talks about being worried for my soul.. I am weighing my need to be true to myself as well as knowing it will upset and worry my mom more and not to mention she will probally pester me more to come back to the faith... So don't feel so bad, babysteps, babysteps my friend. Welcome to the boards. Hi, I'm a relative newcomer to the forums and think this one will be a place where I can talk a little about my own experiences, but I'm replying to this post about how or when to tell friends and family about losing faith in Christianity. I've been taking it pretty slowly, and people have found out through church gossip or possibly from some things I've said. It's mostly been the fact that I haven't been as involved in church services and no longer participated in ministry (I was teaching S.S. and played piano sometimes), that led folks to (rightly) assume that something was going on with me. The strange, but somewhat good part is that only a few people have confronted me with it. One was a friend who no longer wanted to spend time with me out of fear of me causing harm to her spiritual walk, if I remember correctly. We're also next door neighbors and she teaches at our church school where my boys attend. She started being more friendly again after awhile. I didn't say much to her accusations, so maybe she decided it would be better to try to be nice after all. I have a hard time sitting through sermons sometimes. Nearly every sermon I hear has mention of the evils of missing services, not giving, and so on. Another thing for me is that although my dad is a Baptist pastor, my parents have been loving and pretty outwardly accepting of what they know about my changing beliefs. It would be hard, but I would want to limit my contact with them if they started attacking me. My sister, who is also a fundamentalist, lives across the country and I have little contact with her, so I don't have to deal with talking to her yet. I suppose it just depends on each person's experience and who is around you. I have been taking it very slowly, not volunteering much information, but willing to listen if a person wants to "sound off" about the dreaded changes they see in me. That's because I'm a pretty forgiving and nice person, if I may say so myself. (having been told for decades that I'm rotten without Christ and still rotten even with Him, undeserving of anything good, etc. I find it hard to mention my good traits. Does anyone identify with that?) So just keep going slowly if you need to, Sarah, and I think you'll know when the time and situation is right to disclose more info to your friends. I'm just curious: Are you afraid of them treating you harshly or ostracizing you when you "come out"? Sadly, ostracism is routinely used by human beings to punish others, so don't take this wrong, but it might happen, at least by some people. Take care, sparkyone Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sarahgrace Posted November 28, 2006 Author Share Posted November 28, 2006 sparkyone, thanks for sharing that. I have three roommates... and i 'came out' to one of them last night. It came out of some comment she made... she remarked that i had a calendar in my room with Jesus on the front. i told her i'd bought it from a nun who was selling them in the mall i work at... figured i'd feed some starving kid in Ecuador or something, or help out a couple of homeless people in my downtown (i'm familiar with their convent and what they do - they're a pretty decent bunch for humanitarian work). She kinda chuckled and said i should write a book on faith, because mine is so strong yet cynical at the same time. I sorta snickered but that was a really tough moment for me. So i retreated to the kitchen to contemplate whether or not to tell her the truth. She came in a few minutes later asking if i was okay or needed to talk about anything so i decided to just spill my guts. She took it surprisingly well. She was sad, but supportive. She encouraged my bravery and told me that the most important thing was to be honest and true to myself. I think she probably cried, though... but yeah. It went well. She promised not to tell the other two. I don't think they'd take it as well. My instinct through this whole thing so far has been self-isolation... probably a pre-emptive strike sort of idea. I'll isolate myself before they get a chance to isolate me. Make any sense? But i've been trying to make an effort to sort of reach out and get support from a few people i know will understand. Now I'm just rambling, so I'll sign off for the time being. So far, so good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lapdog Posted November 30, 2006 Share Posted November 30, 2006 Hey Sarah, Welcome. You sould like a really cool person. Anyway, my experience is that it's not worth telling too many people. They just don't get it, like you didn't get it years ago no doubt. Maybe best to 'pick your battles' as they say about raising teenagers and stick to the ones that are worth it or you know you can win. Inevitably, since Christians are such gossips (what with having the unenviable task of trying to stop billions of people from going to Hell), they'll tell each other. I think that's easier since then they have to approach you rather than the other way around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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