Confessions of a Professional Mega-Church Drummer (long, sorry)

[robvalue]

Hello Pearl, welcome to the forums. Nice to meet you, and thanks for sharing your story with us.

You are taking a very brave first step here, and it sounds to me like you have your head straight about all of this. I'm with you, I can't pretend to be something I'm not with the people I care about.

I understand the guilt you are feeling, but from my perspective you are being too hard on yourself. When you are indoctrinated as a child, your parents are filling your head with falsehoods, presented as facts. (I assume this is what happened, it's normal). It is only natural to accept the wisdom of your parents, we are all generally programmed that way as humans. We learn from those who have lived longer than us, especially our care givers. So it is not your fault you were lied to, nor theirs exactly, because they were probably indoctrinated too.

All the time you really believed in god, or at least thought it credible enough to support, you were not lying to anyone. If you believed what you were saying, it was not deceit. We all say what we believe at the time. We may come to later realize we were wrong, but that doesn't make us liars. I accept that you may have continued to pretend even after your belief waned. That again is very understandable, it's not an easy thing to just come out with, especially when you know the impact such a revelation is going to have. Sometimes you have to keep up the pretense until such time that you are ready to lay it all out. It has to be done right.

So please don't be too hard on yourself. You have gone on a long journey, you were placed at the wrong end of the board and you've slowly moved to the right end. That wasn't your fault. My advice would be to make it very clear that it is your personal beliefs that have changed, not you as a person. And that you don't feel differently about them either, you have come to disagree with them about their beliefs, but you think no less of them as a person. A lot of people get their religion tightly wound around their identity, so it's important to distinguish between them. I relentlessly slag off religion on this forum, but I don't slag off the people who hold those beliefs.

The other thing is, you can't even apologize for losing your faith, because it's not under your control. We don't decide what our beliefs are, they are states of mind. If we are convinced of something, given the information we have, then we believe it. We can't choose not to. And if we're not convinced, we can't decide that we suddenly are convinced. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of anyone who says, "Why are you an atheist? Why don't you believe?" They are really asking, "Why don't you choose to believe?" which is nonsensical.

I hope it goes well for you, and that they understand. It's great that you have such a close relationship with your father, and if he loves you, he should understand. You are only using the brain "god" gave you, from his point of view, to your best ability. People who really care about you will stick by you. And anyone who doesn't, well... it's their problem and their loss. If they expect you to pretend something just to keep them happy, then their feelings for you are obvious very conditional.

Anyhow, I look forward to reading more from you, and please let us know how you get on.