Eventually, if your family is anything like mine, the truth will be squeezed out of you. My family (the whole thing, aunts, uncles, cousins, mom, dad, siblings, ALL) is a family of Christian ministers. We have pastors, preachers, church choir singers, Sunday school teachers, you name it. Skip a whole lot of things and there I am reading the Bible thinking, "I think I'm atheist." Of course, I didn't want to admit it. I tried to hold on to faith. I was mostly scared of going to hell, losing my family, and being hated by the church.
One day my brother came out and told me he was atheist. I started crying and he thought I was going to pray for him (or throw out demons lol). When I finally caught my breath I told him I was atheist, too. Ever since then that's all we can talk about (just between him and me). We talk about how we missed out on so much as kids and young adults. We talk about how we want to raise our kids differently. We talk about how it pisses us off that church controlled us the way it did. We even talk about what we think it was really when we thought we felt the presence of God. We are discovering so many new things and we feel like we were sick and now we are cured.
I came out to my parents thinking they would get a heart attack. They didn't. They cried and began to read all kinds of things to "help us". They ended up disregarding the Bible as the word of God.
As to the extended family... here's the tricky part. My mother did not want us to say anything in order to not offend the family. The thing is that our whole family is made up of debater types. We always had these reunions where doctrines were shared and argued over, we would sit for hours talking about Pentecostal beliefs and all the derivatives we could find. We questioned every preacher and always ended up finding ways in which he was wrong or right and then debates would happen. This was always. So here we are now sitting in the same reunions having nothing to say. I mean, we could fake it, but we don't want to. So people began asking questions. They don't mind being offensive. We noticed this now, since we are not wearing "spiritual lenses". We notice how arrogant they were while questioning our "cold status". I love my mom, but my thoughts scream at me when I bite my tongue. So, I decided to let them kind of figure it out. I was ready to come out as an atheist. One day I said all of this on a Dawkins page and it went public on my FB (duh, that was naive of me), and tadaaaaaaaaaaa! Everyone knows. What was so scary after all? They think I'm wrong, yes. They worry, not really. Mostly they feel superior. Who cares? I stopped caring. I live in transparency. I don't feel they need to know every detail, but knowing that I no longer believe is enough for now. I'm free from chains. I'm cured from a mental sickness.
lol when you asked for stories I don't think you thought you'd get this chapter, but hey, I don't get to share it enough.
One day my brother came out and told me he was atheist. I started crying and he thought I was going to pray for him (or throw out demons lol). When I finally caught my breath I told him I was atheist, too. Ever since then that's all we can talk about (just between him and me). We talk about how we missed out on so much as kids and young adults. We talk about how we want to raise our kids differently. We talk about how it pisses us off that church controlled us the way it did. We even talk about what we think it was really when we thought we felt the presence of God. We are discovering so many new things and we feel like we were sick and now we are cured.
I came out to my parents thinking they would get a heart attack. They didn't. They cried and began to read all kinds of things to "help us". They ended up disregarding the Bible as the word of God.
As to the extended family... here's the tricky part. My mother did not want us to say anything in order to not offend the family. The thing is that our whole family is made up of debater types. We always had these reunions where doctrines were shared and argued over, we would sit for hours talking about Pentecostal beliefs and all the derivatives we could find. We questioned every preacher and always ended up finding ways in which he was wrong or right and then debates would happen. This was always. So here we are now sitting in the same reunions having nothing to say. I mean, we could fake it, but we don't want to. So people began asking questions. They don't mind being offensive. We noticed this now, since we are not wearing "spiritual lenses". We notice how arrogant they were while questioning our "cold status". I love my mom, but my thoughts scream at me when I bite my tongue. So, I decided to let them kind of figure it out. I was ready to come out as an atheist. One day I said all of this on a Dawkins page and it went public on my FB (duh, that was naive of me), and tadaaaaaaaaaaa! Everyone knows. What was so scary after all? They think I'm wrong, yes. They worry, not really. Mostly they feel superior. Who cares? I stopped caring. I live in transparency. I don't feel they need to know every detail, but knowing that I no longer believe is enough for now. I'm free from chains. I'm cured from a mental sickness.
lol when you asked for stories I don't think you thought you'd get this chapter, but hey, I don't get to share it enough.
Pointing around: "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you're cool, fuck you, I'm out!"
Half Baked
"Let the atheists come to me, and stop keeping them away, because the kingdom of heathens belongs to people like these." -Saint Bacon
Half Baked
"Let the atheists come to me, and stop keeping them away, because the kingdom of heathens belongs to people like these." -Saint Bacon
