Did your former religion ever make you feel broken?

[Spooky]

They sang "Amazing Grace" a lot. Not the greatest esteem building song.

[abaris]

They sang "Amazing Grace" a lot.  Not the greatest esteem building song.

Well, it's not that popular where I grew up, but we would have made "Amazing ass, how sweet the sound" out of it.

[Spooky]

They sang "Amazing Grace" a lot.  Not the greatest esteem building song.

Well, it's not that popular where I grew up, but we would have made "Amazing ass, how sweet the sound" out of it.

Heh, lol fair enough.

My wife calls lutherans "watered down catholics" so I suppose you could say there was a little bit of guilt to go around.

Oh well, I'm free of imaginary friends now.

[brewer]

Sympathies to all of you that had a bad/horrible experience. I might be more outspoken about religion if I had a similar experience.

For me, not broken. Just a feeble attempt to brainwash and dumb down rational thought. Pretty easy to shake off, especially in the 70's.

[Cinjin]

I was never so miserable as when I truly believed in Jehovah.  I was truly broken under the "sweet protection" of the overlord Christ Jesus.
I got "saved" at least a dozen times and by the age of six I was constantly worried about dying and going to hell.

There is no "peace that passeth all understanding" as the Bible purports.  This is plainly evident for one reason:  NO ONE would ever leave Christianity if you were given peace that transcends anything you've ever known.  It wouldn't happen.  It couldn't happen.  No person on the planet would give away such a thing.  (Insert No True Scotsman argument here)

It's a filthy lie.  The greatest thing I ever did in my life was free myself from those chains.

[ForsakenHeretic]

I literally would break down crying and screaming because I thought all the bad things that were happening in my life was God punishing me. I eventually became convinced that God was either pure evil or didn't exist, that's what made me critically think about my beliefs and led me to not believe in God anymore.

[Foxaèr]

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Did your former religion ever make you feel broken?  I mean truly broken.  Like there was something wrong with you, when now you know there wasn't?   I know that Christianity is predicated on the idea that we're all broken, but did anyone else actually feel broken? 

I know that I did.  In my early teens when I first started touching myself sexually... my earliest sexual fantasies were about other girls.  I already felt wrong for masturbating, but doubly so because I was attracted to girls.  I was attracted to boys too, but other girls turned me on more than boys did.  So I was convinced that there was something wrong with me.  That I wasn't born right or something.   I had the feeling again later when I started taking birth control pills.  I didn't feel any guilt about it, but I knew it was against the teachings of the church.  Which made me feel like there was something wrong with me because I didn't feel guilty about it.   Sometimes I would skip the pill, telling myself that I should quit because the church says so (this is how I ended up pregnant the first time).   Religion just made me so confused about who I was and what I was doing.  

It's not even just about 'sin'.  It can be about all the terrible things that happen to you, and you wonder why god wouldn't help you.  A good friend of mine was molested by her father when she was a child, and she confided in me that she felt so broken because god wouldn't help her.  Like he had turned away from her because there was something wrong with her so she 'deserved' it.  She's now open about what happened to her, and speaks with people who've been abused.

Religion makes you feel broken so it can fix you.  It creates the problem, then sells you the solution.  Atheists tend to see it for the snake oil salesman that it is.  Which is why I'm wondering if anyone else ever felt broken because of their religion?  I know now that I wasn't broken.  There was nothing wrong with me.  I was normal.  Were you able to avoid the feeling of being broken, or did you have to break free of that feeling?  I know I was able to break free after reading the bible, and realizing that so much of it is a bunch of nonsense.  It's like looking in the closet for the monster, and finding that it's just a couple of clothes piled in a funny shape.  You realize that you aren't broken, and that you never were.  You realize the monster wasn't there, and it was a ridiculous idea from the start.

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I think it is especially harder for us gay people, but it is becoming easier for younger generations now to no longer suffer unnecessarily.

[lisah]

Did your former religion ever make you feel broken?  I mean truly broken.  Like there was something wrong with you, when now you know there wasn't?   I know that Christianity is predicated on the idea that we're all broken, but did anyone else actually feel broken?  

I never really thought about it. I don't think so. However, I used to punish myself when I did things I knew I should not have done. Milder punishments, in hope that I would not be punished more harshly by my parents if they were ever to find out. Even so, no fear of punishment ever deterred me from doing anything.

[Reforged]

Life breaks the living.
Religion just lowers the threshold.

[abaris]

I got "saved" at least a dozen times and by the age of six I was constantly worried about dying and going to hell.

As I said, for me it was rather a boost to become an atheist. The line of reasoning was, they're contradicting themselves. Either that god of theirs is a total monster or he's not as the describe him at all. You can't have benevolent and at the same time threatening to punish your loved ones for your transgressions.

That's why I started to question everything they said.