I Keep Having To Revise The Date At Which I First Began Having Doubts

[Chikirin]

If you were to ask me when I started to doubt Christianity, until recently I would have told you that it was probably in my mid thirties. But the more I think about it, the doubts probably started much earlier. More likely in my mid twenties. I think back to when I  was 7 years old, when I first prayed the sinners prayer. I was hoping to find some loophole or way around having to accept the horrible proposition christianity offered, but I couldn't, and so I had to accept it.

[amateur]

You made me smile with that picture of you as a 7 year old lawyer looking for the loophole in the prayer!!!!  Good for you for even being aware that it was a horrible proposition at that age!

[TheRedneckProfessor]

The earliest memory I have is of when I was 4 years old and I ripped up a plaid button-up shirt that had been laid out on my bed for me to put on because I knew that shirt meant I had to go to church.  How I could have seen it so clearly at such a young age and still not have deconverted until the age of 30 is quite beyond me.

[Adam5]

...  How I could have seen it so clearly at such a young age and still not have deconverted until the age of 30 is quite beyond me.

 

I think many of us are asking that question.  How did it take so long to deconvert?  I think being born into a religion has a part to play.

[Vigile]

I couldn't figure out why my Mormon best friend had to go to hell and I got to go to heaven simply because he was born into the family that taught him the wrong religion.  I knew he and his family were as sincere as I and mine.  When I asked my dad, he just told me that's what the bible said was so, and since I was too young to question that reasoning, it sufficed until I took the question off the shelf again in my early 20s. 

[TheRedneckProfessor]

 

...  How I could have seen it so clearly at such a young age and still not have deconverted until the age of 30 is quite beyond me.

 

I think many of us are asking that question.  How did it take so long to deconvert?  I think being born into a religion has a part to play.

 

As does the extent of one's indoctrination, which for me was quite thorough.

[amateur]

The earliest memory I have is of when I was 4 years old and I ripped up a plaid button-up shirt that had been laid out on my bed for me to put on because I knew that shirt meant I had to go to church.  How I could have seen it so clearly at such a young age and still not have deconverted until the age of 30 is quite beyond me.

And you made me smile, RedPro, with that image of you as a 4-year-old juvenile delinquent!  You little vandal, you!  I bet you were a cutie!

 

One of my earliest memories is of my grandmother dying in front of me.  My grandfather and father were on either side of her, holding her up, and walking her from the front door of their house to . . . the car?  the doctor's office next door?  Well, she suddenly slumped but stayed supported by the men, and my mom, who was a few feet behind them with me, called out, "What are you doing to her?"  She was dead and at that point they did get the doctor next door.  Anyway, during the subsequent funeral, I remember laying in bed one night and thinking, "Bubba died," which made me feel sad.  Then I thought, "Someday mommy will die," and I got really sad and a bit upset-feeling.  Then I thought, "Someday I'll die," and I burst into tears.  I had no thoughts, and possibly no knowledge, of an after-life or heaven, but I did know that Bubba was dead and I'd never see her again, and the thought of mommy dying (especially just slumping over dead in one moment) and never seeing her again was frightening to a 4-year-old, and the thought of ME dying -- well hell, that just SUCKED!

 

Found out years later when I actually LOOKED at her tombstone and bothered doing the math that she was only 65 years old when she died!  She seemed ANCIENT!  After that my family continued dying (at not super-old ages I also later found out) until I had attended 11 funerals between the ages of 4 and 9.  I don't ever remember thinking about an after-life or heaven/hell at any of them, or of that being discussed by any adults at any of the funerals or after-parties.  I knew my relatives that died were gone for good, that's all.  I always loved the funerals and especially the after-parties!  The adults ignored me and my sister and we got to run around and watch the waxy-looking dead person to see if they breathed (they never did!), the flowers were pretty, and if there was another dead person in another part of the funeral home we'd "visit" them too, and at the after-parties we could eat tons of desserts without getting yelled at, and the adults said stuff like, "You can't take it with you, so don't save 'good' things for later," and "Enjoy today because you don't know what tomorrow brings."

 

My sister and I practiced laying like dead people in our beds at night, seeing how long we could lay still and not breathe.  I was an adorable little girl with long blonde hair and I was Emo before Emo was invented!  Somehow, coming from this rather agnostic background (most of my relatives were loosely associated with different denominations, but none of them took it seriously that I knew, and some were quietly antagonistic towards religion) I became born-again at age 13.  It took me some decades to logic my way out of religion again.  I hated it when as an adult people would say stuff like, "I can't wait to see my grandmother in heaven someday!," because I'd think, "I can't imagine any of my relatives in heaven."  And I really hated it when they said stuff like, "Too bad people today aren't religious like in the old days.  I can remember my grandmother singing hymns as she cleaned and there was always a big family meal after church on Sunday!," because I'd think, "My grandmother died in front of me and she was always old and sick and I never saw either of my Bubbas cook, but not everybody in the OLD DAYS was religious because my whole dead family wasn't, and LEAVE THEM ALONE because they were cool!"

 

Looking at that, I have no idea why I bothered going to church for those extra decades.  I'm sitting here shaking my head at myself and thinking, "Amateur, you are SUCH an amateur about EVERYTHING."  

 

I'm glad I quit and I'm glad neither of my kids bothers with it.

[R. S. Martin]

If you were to ask me when I started to doubt Christianity, until recently I would have told you that it was probably in my mid thirties. But the more I think about it, the doubts probably started much earlier. More likely in my mid twenties. I think back to when I  was 7 years old, when I first prayed the sinners prayer. I was hoping to find some loophole or way around having to accept the horrible proposition christianity offered, but I couldn't, and so I had to accept it.

 

Possibly that was your natural mind asking: How do I know this "horrible proposition" is true? You wouldn't have been the first seven-year-old to doubt the story. Like most seven-year-olds, most likely your survival depended on pleasing/obeying the adults in your life. And for many, many years to come. That, in my mind, is when religion becomes child abuse--forcing children and young people to profess things their own minds convince them are not true. It is not voluntary belief when social pressure or emotional manipulation is applied to get people of any age to "accept Christ," but especially not young children.

[Lerk]

I think most of us can look back and remember doubts we had a long time ago, long before we finally said "hey, this isn't real!"

 

I was 52 when reality finally slapped me in the face, but the more I thought about it, the more I remembered praying to try to get proof way back in my 20s. But we fight the cognitive dissonance very well!

 

Having been told it was real for our entire lives by our families and our culture, when we see things that don't add up, we go looking for evidence. But we aren't looking for the answer, we're looking for evidence that would prove it to be true. It's only when you quit doing that that you realize how much evidence you've accumulated through the years that show definitively that there was never anything to it.