wasted years on religion

By Megizzle ~


My parents divorced when I was 5 and my brother was 1, and we moved
from the country to the city with our mother while our father stayed
behind. Our mother would tell you she was a Christian if you asked
her, but we never went to church or talked about Jesus much. She
worked two jobs and went to night school to learn to use computers,
helped with homework, read us bedtime stories, patiently answered our
endless questions, and encouraged us to read often and think
independently.

Our dad, on the other hand, was a complete religious fanatic, control
freak, and hypocrite. Every other weekend, he would make the 175-mile
drive to the city to pick us up, and we'd be subjected to a 2 1/2-hour
drive in his cramped little pickup truck with Christian rock music
blasting at full volume while he blared his horn at slower-moving
vehicles (saving his middle finger and his F*** YOUs for those who
honked back), tailgated and swerved maniacally through traffic at top
speed, and, on one unforgettable occasion, rolled down his window and
pointed his handgun at a man who was committing the cardinal sin of
doing 65 in the fast lane (this ultimately resulted in us telling our
mother, and our dad spending a week in jail). During our drives, Dad
would also frequently startle/scare us with sudden, random, painfully
loud screams and war-whoops, which he attributed, wild-eyed, to his
being "ON FIRE FOR THE LORD!" (My brother and I privately imitated and
giggled helplessly over these ridiculous displays of religious
fervor.)

Once we reached his little place in the country, we generally spent
most of Saturday doing intensive Bible study (I knew who St.
Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and Martin Luther were before
I hit third grade) followed by a rousing game of Bible Trivia (groan);
the next day, we'd get up at the crack of dawn to get ready for church
(which was *only* 40 miles away). We participated in Sunday school and
Children's Bible Study, and went on church outings to "share the
Gospel" with people in poor neighborhoods. We were always anxious
about going to Dad's house, not only because of the long, traumatizing
drive to and from, but also because he would frequently say
frightening and/or inappropriate things for young children to hear,
such as "Your mother is a wh***. She only lets you come with me so you
won't see her having sex with all her boyfriends."; "You know that
clicking sound you hear when you first pick up the phone? That's the
FBI listening to our conversations."; and "Your mother worships Satan.
I'll kill both of you if it means I keep her from dragging your souls
to hell with her." Our mother unintentionally alarmed us further by
(sensibly) requiring us to memorize her phone number and every address
we moved to, so that if our father ever abducted us and we were able
to get away, we could call her and/or provide the police with her
contact
information so we could get home again.

After a few years of this, my father moved to the city (he returned to
the country a couple of years later) and, unfortunately, played an
even more actively religious role in our daily lives since we were
physically closer to him. My mother encouraged me to join Girl Scouts
when I was 7 or 8, even scraping together enough money (we lived well
below the poverty line) to buy me a brand-new Brownie uniform, and I
happily complied only to have my father use Christianity to ruin that
for me. He was furious that our Brownie Troop met on Wednesday
evenings (which were also our "extra" church nights), and forced me to
leave the group by accusing the Girl Scouts of being a Satanic
organization which was making me choose between God and The World by
having their meetings on the same nights we were supposed to be in
church.

When he moved back to the country, we were once again forced to endure
the white-knuckle journey to and from his house. Bible studies
intensified, and we bounced from church to church as he endlessly
alienated entire congregations. Our dad was a loud, aggressive, burly,
tattooed man with a ninth-grade education who had done hard drugs for
most of his teenage years and hard manual labor for most of his life,
so he intimidated and flat-out scared a lot of people. Once, my
brother and I each invited a friend up for our weekend with Dad
(naively assuming that he would be nicer in front of company and
perhaps allow us to skip Bible study and/or church); on the contrary,
he required EXTRA Bible study and insisted that our now-captive and
reluctant audience join in, whereupon he expressed shock at their
ignorance of the Bible and the great theologians, ordered them to give
their lives to Jesus before they died and went to Hell, and pressured
them to decide whether or not they believed in predestination and the
post-tribulation rapture. On the way to church the next day, he
further alarmed them (and humiliated us) by cautioning them to watch
out for black helicopters because they were using infrared technology
to spy on us, and detailing how Bill Clinton was having people
murdered in the White House. Obviously, that was the first and last
time our friends accompanied us to visit our dad.

As I grew older, I began to pick fights with Dad (over the phone) so
I'd have justification for refusing to go with him on his
court-appointed weekends. My quieter and more easygoing brother was
still obligated to go, and on one occasion this resulted in a phone
call from him to tell me that Dad had captured a rat on a glue board
in his kitchen and spent fifteen minutes shooting it with blowdarts
before taking it outside, shooting it, and taking pictures of it. My
mother and I were both horrified and furious, and it was several
months before my brother made the trip up there again.

Despite my Dad's best efforts to show us that Christians were scary,
paranoid people who should be confined to rubber rooms, I genuinely
believed in the Bible and often read it in my spare time. One night
when I was 16, I was sitting alone at my little desk in my room and
reading the book of John. Suddenly my independent, reasoning mind
started waking up. I had a QUESTION. Uneasily, I called Dad. He might
be nuts, but he knew the Bible like the back of his hand. "Dad, Jesus
said 'I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No man comes to the
Father but by Me.' But He also said the Jews were His chosen people,
and Jews don't believe in Jesus. So do Jews go to Heaven or Hell?" Dad
hemmed and hawwed, he mumbled various vaguely-pertinent Bible verses,
he hesitated and false-started a few times, and then launched into
some story from the Bible that had nothing to do with my question. I
chalked it up to "He doesn't know." After I got off the phone, I went
back to my Bible and realized I had ANOTHER question! I called Dad
back. "Dad, if belief in Jesus is the only way to Heaven, what happens
to people in remote parts of the world who have lived for generations
without even knowing that an 'outside world' existed, and have never
had the opportunity to hear the Gospel? Do they die and go to Hell
just because they were born into the wrong place?" Dad did some more
hemming and hawwing, and then had an epiphany. He answered, "Well,
they can still look around at the sun and moon and stars and trees and
animals and think 'Some power greater than myself must have put all
this here', and then choose to honor and respect the Creator of
nature. Then God can work on their hearts so that they will be true
Christians in His eyes." You know how, when you hear the truth, it
just rings true in your ears and you recognize it for what it is?
That's how I felt when he said the first sentence (not the second
one). I was delighted/surprised but also puzzled, and asked "Well,
couldn't everyone just do that?" He responded that Christians are
instructed by Jesus to spread the Gospel. I said that didn't make any
sense; why should we bend over backwards to tell everyone something
they can all figure out for themselves? He said it was because we
needed to tell them the Truth before they were led astray by false
religions like Islam. I thought for a minute, then hesitatingly
observed that everyone thinks their religion is the correct one, and
asked how we could be sure that ours was right and theirs was wrong?
He explained that we know ours is right because we have God's Word
right there in our Bible; I rebutted by saying that they think they
have Allah's Word in their Quran too. Dad started getting agitated in
that way that religious people do when you start asking questions, and
asked if I was turning into an atheist. I quickly reassured him that I
was not, and the conversation ended there on an awkward note.

I spent the next few years telling myself that my questions were the
result of inadequate faith on my part, and tried to squelch and ignore
my growing doubts. When I was 19, I met a remarkably intelligent and
articulate 20-year-old fellow college student with whom I shared a
love of reading, learning, integrity, and intellectual debate...and
excellent sexual chemistry. We began dating, but the relationship was
kept secret from my father's side of the family because he was black.
I had never dated outside my race before (I had barely dated even
within my race because I simply wasn't particularly attracted to
anyone and was a bit of an intellectual elitist), but I didn't think
it was strange or unusual, although I was aware that my father hated
black people (and Hispanics, and Asians, and women, and Muslims, and
Buddhists, and Catholics, and foreigners, and democrats, and the
elderly, and everyone else who wasn't a middle-aged conservative white
Protestant male from the southern United States). We each recognized a
kindred spirit in the other and spent every waking moment together
when we weren't at work or school, arguing race relations, politics,
religion, and foreign policy (and doing other things, of course!), and
ultimately fell very much in love. Six months after we began dating,
we moved into an apartment together (as far as my father knew, I was
just getting my own place).

In an attempt to appease my Christian-upbringing-induced guilt over my
very active sex life outside of marriage, I joined a church and began
semi-regularly attending services there. The pastor and his wife
invited me to their house for dinner, as was their custom with all new
attendees, and both were impressed with my Biblical knowledge and
theological awareness; I was repeatedly invited back for dinner and
Bible-based discussion, and became something of a family friend. I was
flattered by the attention and conveniently failed to mention my
ongoing sexual indiscretion, although I felt increasingly like a
hypocritical, lying fraud for the year or so that this went on. Then I
got pregnant.

When I admitted the pregnancy to the pastor and his wife, they were
upset. When they met my boyfriend, they were horrified (the whole
interracial thing). They privately urged me to give the baby up for
adoption and abandon the relationship, which I refused to do. Neither
they nor my other church "friends" ever spoke to me again, and I
stopped attending church altogether. I knew I was wrong for having
lied to them, but I felt angry, hurt, and betrayed that *Christians*
would drop me like a hot potato for not living the perfect Christian
life. How unChristian of them. I finally began allowing my religious
questions and doubts to rise to the surface, and discussed them with
my boyfriend, who understood the difficulty I was facing in beginning
to work against my brainwashing; he patiently encouraged me to use
logic and reason to determine the truth for myself. (He was two steps
ahead of me in the religion department, although I wasn't aware of
this at the time; he let me figure out what I thought for myself
before telling me about his own journey to similar conclusions.)

Ironically and completely unexpectedly, my dad was elated to find out
he was going to be a grandfather. He wasn't even fazed when I told him
who the father was (they had met once, but I had introduced my
boyfriend as "my friend", and they had gotten along surprisingly well)
and was utterly shocked that I thought he was a racist, which he
adamantly denied being. I later figured out that, with my dad, it's
nothing personal; he's just one of those people who hates everyone
equally.

Shortly after our the birth of our daughter, I found out I was
pregnant again, despite my faithful use of birth control. When our
first child was 13 months old, our son was born. We moved into a
larger apartment and I halfheartedly attended another church with a
friend a couple of times, but finally had to admit to myself that I
wasn't buying it anymore. I went home, looked myself in the eye in the
mirror, took a deep breath, and thought (I was too nervous to say it
aloud, as though I might be struck by lightning for my insolence) "I'm
not a Christian anymore. I don't believe that everything the Bible
says is true. I don't know if Jesus ever existed or not. Religion is a
tool used to control people. I'm not a Christian anymore." If you were
brainwashed from birth to believe that Christianity is the only right
way to live and that to deviate is to die spiritually, then you know
how hard it was to overcome that programming and dare to think what I
thought. I never went back to church again, and I've never missed it.

We went on to have two more daughters, and sometimes (particularly
after I get off the phone with my dad) I look at my beautiful,
intelligent, happy (when they're not fighting over some stupid toy)
children and am silently grateful that I "woke up" before I inflicted
another senseless religious brainwashing on a new generation. They
will never have to suppress their natural curiosity or shut their
perfectly functioning minds down in order to accept ancient
Middle-Eastern fairy tales as their basis for how to order their
lives. No one will dangle the threat of hellfire and eternal damnation
over them in order to frighten them into compliance with an outdated
mythology. Their parents are both back in college (after several
years' hiatus spent trying to cope with the sudden influx of
children); their mother is working on a Bachelor's in Biotechnology
(despite their grandfather's advice to "Be careful about gettin' too
educated; it'll turn you into a damn lib'ral atheist."); their father
is preparing to enter the Master's program as an MIS major. They're
growing up in a household full of books about science and business and
technology, and developing a healthy thirst for knowledge and
understanding instead of an irrational fear of a vengeful,
bloodthirsty god who hates women, gay people, and questions. I don't
mind them learning about various religions, including Christianity, as
long as they understand that different people believe different
things, that it's up to them to decide what they believe, if anything,
and that no one will ever force them to accept any belief system
against their will. I'm so glad I "got out." Also, to my everlasting
delight, I discovered just last year that my brother (who spent three
years in the Navy and now lives in Hawaii) has also been questioning
religion and is now at the phase where he clearly doesn't believe in
Christianity anymore but is reluctant to say it aloud for the same
reasons most of us are afraid to. So I'm not the only one breaking
free!

The only problem is that I still can't bring myself to admit to my
family that I don't believe what they want/expect me to believe. My
father has mellowed considerably in recent years; our relationship has
greatly improved and I've forgiven most of the insanity with which he
generously peppered my childhood, so you'd think he'd seem more
approachable to me than he once did, and you'd be right.

However, he still has the soul of the religious fanatic and the
black-and-white worldview that will tolerate no shades of gray, making
his stability questionable. In spite of everything, I do love my Dad,
and I'm especially close to my grandparents (his parents). What if I
tell them that I'm not a Christian anymore and they sever ties with
me? (Or, perhaps worse, engage in endless and fruitless efforts to
convert me back?) In my family, it could easily be THAT big of a deal.
My brother hasn't told them yet either, but he's never been very
family-oriented and is not nearly as close to our relatives as I am,
so I think the lack of emotional investment on his part would make any
excommunication by our family ineffective. For me, it would be very
upsetting, even devastating.

I've been postponing telling them for years now, but I'm afraid I'm
about to reach the point where I'll have to. They (my dad in
particular) are bringing up the kids' religious education more and
more, especially around religious holidays. For instance, my mother
(who has gotten slightly more religious over the years) called on
Easter morning a few months back to wish me a Happy Easter. "Have you
told the kids about the true meaning of Easter? Jesus died for us on
the cross and rose again from the dead to ascend to heaven. Today is a
holy day. It's not all about colorful eggs and chocolate and candy,
you know." (Me, rolling my eyes and thinking "To me it is!") Later, my
father called and demanded to know whether the kids have a Children's
Bible. I answered yes, although I didn't tell him it's in a box in the
back of my closet and that I have no intention of unpacking it. He
told me I needed to give it to my oldest daughter to read, and
mentioned that he's "going to start really working with them to teach
them about Jesus." I thought, "The hell you are!" but compromised
aloud by promising him that the kids would certainly know about the
Creator (and they will, as soon as they can look around at the sun and
moon and stars and trees and animals and know...). Thankfully, my dad
has a short attention span, so I can just - Hey look, a squirrel! -
and he forgets what he was talking about, but I can't change the
subject forever and I don't want to keep being such a coward. I'm a
grown woman for heaven's sake; I shouldn't be so scared to tell my
family. Not sure what to do at this point.

Anyway, in the unlikely event that someone is still reading after all
this time, I sincerely apologize for the length and detail, but it
feels better to get everything off my chest, even if no one ever reads
it. I love reading the other stories on this site; although I'm not an
atheist like many people on here (I consider myself a Deist), I
definitely sympathize with the atheist perspective and can certainly
relate to the Christian brainwashing, de-conversion experience, and
familial troubles I see being shared, and it's encouraging to be
reminded that I'm not the only one struggling away from lies and
toward the truth.