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Yes. I tried to be. Interacted with lots of people who “felt” and “spoke with” God and never personally heard or felt anything despite begging and pleading. I was led to think something was wrong with me because I couldn’t.
Read about 6 versions of the Bible including a very early hand-made one in Saudi Arabia that was recovered from one of the churches that were destroyed during the Crusades. It still had reincarnation in it for normal people and not just Jesus.
Read the Gnostic Bible, other removed texts, and dead sea scrolls once they were translated.
Interacted with many other religions while I travelled finding they all believed just as or more strongly than everyone back home and also “felt” and were “spoken to” by God and wouldn’t you know it, God told each and every of them that they were right. Funny how God does that.
Became completely non-religious, but very interested in the study of it and how people interacted with it.
During this time, my mother became a pastor. I came home and had one talk with her and she broke down in tears and asked me to never speak about religion with her again because I knew more than her and had nearly destroyed her faith in about 20 minutes. She told me that if she ever lost it, she’s kill herself. Afterwards, she chose God over her kids every time.
I didn’t speak to her much for about 22 years. She died of cancer last year, but it was religion that took my mother from me long before that.
If you don’t mind sharing, how did your mom “choose God over her kids”? Just spent all her time in church and never talked to them or something worse than that? Also, asking someone not to talk about such a topic seems like a very reasonable ask, everyone has their triggers and limits.
There’s a lot of very private stuff for me and my brothers bundled into that question, but some of it involves:
- We were informed that we were going to be religious because she was because that’s what the bible said would happen. If we disagreed, she would deny it and simply say “Yes, you will.” If we persisted, we were grounded.
- We would ask our mother for permission to do something and she’d change her mind based on what my stepfather wanted because since finding God, she became very subservient. For example, it was my chore to mow the lawn. I was ill and asked if I could pay my brother to do it. She said yes because the chore still got done and everyone would be happy. My stepfather got home and had a meltdown and she completely rolled over even after verifying to him that she told me I could. I was then grounded and had to dismantle my personal computer that I paid for with my own money and reassemble parts into the family computer to “prove that I still cared about the family.” Things like this happened constantly.
- They raided our college funds to pay for church events to the point where there was nothing left. When asking for any help to go to college when the time came, my Mother and Stepfather got actively angry and said they had no money. They did and continued to tithe 30% to the church and pay for church events. I paid for college with loans and working myself.
- In my first year of college, I wound up getting my girlfriend (later wife) pregnant. They kicked me out of the house and I lived in my car for a good while until a friend took me in. Mom and my Stepfather didn’t speak to me for ten years because an unmarried pregnancy didn’t look good in front of their church friends. She didn’t meet either of her grandchildren until the week before she died.
- After I was kicked out, they left our family dog to die in agony in the dark in their garage for 6 months because “it would be a sin to put her down.” She was sick and old and they barely ever interacted with her or even cleaned up her poop once I left. She died in filth with her kidneys exploding. It was cruel and sickening.
- At these church gatherings, they would all talk judgmentally about all their “friends” and the children thereof, and there were church events or gatherings nearly every day of the week. Every time any of their kids asked to spend time with them, they refused. They were busy. There was no bonding time and they were just… gone nearly 3/4 of most days.
There’s scads more, but this is frankly kind of depressing.
Yeah, I’m actually sorry I asked, this is depressing. Idk how anyone can justify this with “this is what God wants” but they did justify the Crusades so what do I know. I’m glad you’re out of that environment and I understand how this entire situation made you hate religion/God. 😔
Yeah. My family were street preachers, and we travelled and preached throughout my childhood. They told me I was a prophet. Good times.
Edit: am now an atheist
That’s an intense childhood, would you mind if I asked you questions about it?
Go for it.
Thanks mate. You say they said you were a prophet, were you treated differently because of that? How did the upbringing effect you long term? Was it a cult?
They didn’t treat me that much differently. I was eight and nine at the time, so it only really came up a couple of times. I only had one prophecy, and it was true, but it was true because my parents made it true. It took me a long time to realize that. Or rather, I realized it immediately, but I didn’t think much of it at the time.
I was homeschooled from kindergarten through high school graduation, so I never got any experience being in classrooms, and I didn’t have any friends that weren’t family or other preacher families. The main way it affected me is that I learned how to teach myself things, so I went into college with almost no knowledge of a lot of topics that conflicted with my religious background, and then learned everything on the fly, basically.
I wouldn’t consider my family a cult, except in the casual sense that all religions are cults. We did live with a cult in West Texas for a while. Although it was debatable whether their leader was charismatic lol they had a compound and guns, and they were prepared for the government to try to take them away. My dad ended up disagreeing with them on religious grounds, and we eventually left. But I seem to remember that they were listed as official cult on some sort of watch list at one point.
I don’t want to hit you with a 5,000 word essay, so if you would like me to elaborate on any particular point let me know.
That’s really interesting and I appreciate you going through that with me. Could you tell me more about the cult you lived with?
They had a scattering of buildings and bunk rooms, and a central rec room. They raised horses and a few other animals. Everyone was carrying guns all the time because there was a wild dog/wolf problem in the area. Some guy a few miles away had been raising them, and then his girlfriend and her side guy killed him and let them out. So it wasn’t safe to be out by yourself after dark.
There were maybe 10 or 15 people living there while I was there. The land was cheap because there was no good water (The aquifer under that part of West Texas is brackish) so a lot of weirdos move out into the desert and become hermits. Both the weirdos and the cult were constantly planning for when the government came to take their guns and put them in camps. Which, in retrospect, is hilarious.
The cult had some weird religious beliefs about pre-adamic races. They thought that humanity was actually a second try, and that the first Adam was originally married to Lilith. I don’t remember most of the details. They really wanted more people to live out there with them, so they were pretty intense about trying to get myself or my siblings to marry into the cult. I went through there years later, and the original leader had died, but his wife and daughter was still out there trying to convince people to come live with them. They offered me some land to stay.
I’m using text to speech, so if you see any weird typos that’s why.
Thanks, I’m a DV outreach worker so this is really useful for my work. That sounds pretty scary from the outside. Was there much abuse of members? And how controlling where they?
I was growing up. I really thought I believed, but never heard a response while praying like others did. Felt unworthy or that something was wrong with me. Later I was held down and had a demon exorcized out of me and that really started the break with my faith. I eventually couldn’t deal with the awfulness of the world and how my own life developed despite my faith. Now I suffer from cptsd with strong links to my religious upbringing.
A tough one to answer.
I was brought up as a Jehovah’s witness, but I remember as far back as being 6 years old and thinking ‘this isn’t for me, I’ll leave when I’m old enough’; which is exactly what I did, so I don’t think so?That must have been a tricky upbringing
I don’t begrudge it.
As a cis white male my upbringing has helped me understand the plight of trans people. I was told I was something that I wasn’t, and any mere mention that I might not be what they’d decided I should be, would result in conversations about what’s wrong with me, and visits with elders who would help me pray the sin away, how to spot the devil at work, all that stuff.
Whilst what trans people go through is far more severe; it was a slight yet valuable insight for my otherwise privileged existence as to what oppression looks and feels like.
So if I had to miss out on a few Christmas’ and birthdays to avoid ending up the other side a lot of cis whites tend to end up (which seems to be straight up fascism for some fucking reason), then I’m happy to have gone through it.
I get that
No, but my parents insisted on visiting church when I was little. I barfed at a priest after eucharist (it was very hot and their shitty wine just didn’t sit well with me), after that incident I never returned there.
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I mean, I cannot remember how past me has felt about it, but as a child I always went to church ( Christian family ) because my parents made me. Was more of a tradition than anything else, to me. Never had any bad experiences in any church I ever attended, but never felt a spark, as far as I can remember. No connection to any higher being other than man itself.
Same.
Similar to others. Later I realized I don’t really care for the theatrical aspects of it and didn’t need that baggage to be a good person. Ironically learning about being good to others is part of why I left and why leaving the church is one of the most Christian things to do.
Eh … no. Raised lightly Catholic. We went to church on Sundays, none of it made any sense to me, and my parents never talked about it. I never really bought it. I skipped a grade early on, so when all the other kids were seven and I was six, and the class was doing all sorts of magical “getting ready for First Communion” shit, the teacher (an old Sister), made sure to point out every day that I wouldn’t be participating.
Six year old me had a real strong sense of justice, and I knew that was wholly unfair, not to mention unkind, calling me out as “different” every single day. The contradiction between that and an “all-loving god” was obvious.
Once because of the local culture. Then I said to myself “why do my parents force me to believe when they don’t believe themselves?” And later I said “why are christians right and everyone else is wrong?” Fuck culture, make your own, it will be better.
We went to an Anglican church. I was 6-7 and asked where is the god person. I was told you have to believe. I said I will believe when I see it. Never went back. Parents stopped then too, my dad was only an obligatory follower. My mom I found out later was to say the least not impressed with religion. I remain the same over 50 years later.
Early in life. Pulled in by parents, I was forced to attend church but my favorite part about it was eating breakfast after.
Around 15 years old. It was all bullshit and has been ever since. Religion is straight cancer and the biggest grift in history.
It’s difficult to say what was just conforming or if there was at any point genuine belief in the child form of me.
I remember that as a small child I was already confused. I kept asking question like how genesis and the big bang fit together, and how we could know god was listening to any prayers, how it could be true that someone dead was not dead afterwards etc. My parents are religious in a passive European way, but they are okay with playing god of the gaps, so they never lied about the world to me for the benefit of religion.
I did have my first communion event at the age of 8 or 9. I don’t think there was any choice by me involved. The ceremony was terribly and embarrassing as hell. But it was just something that we did.
Then came the religious classes that happened after normal classes in secondary school (starting grade 7, age 12) once a week. I remember we had to fill out a worksheet on the topic of the period between the protagonist rising from the dead and ascending and how he visited people in between. One question at the end asked if we believed in this account. I wrote something with a childlike sense of diplomacy. Something like I believed in god but not that a dead person can come back to life as reported here. Nobody ever said anything about that to me though.
Not too long after my mother allowed me to withdraw from the rest of those classes, recognising they were fairly pointless, and not even well done for their goal. A few years later, I think when I was 14 or so, we were invited to begin the “road to our confirmation”, which meant attending church a certain number of times and maybe helping out with church activities. I never participated, it was clear to me at this time that I simply wasn’t buying any of it.
Around 16 or so I started calling myself an atheist, having become aware of that term. Only at the age of 20 did I finally do the paperwork for formally leaving the catholic church so those child fuckers and their defenders wouldn’t get any taxes from me.
Overall I’m leaning to “no”
Damn almost of you seem non-religious. I’d be curious to see lemmy-verse wide census numbers.
I was surprised initially when I saw Lemmy is in general not religious, or actively against them
I had the perfect environment for indoctrination with a monoculture conservative town before the internet, a mother who co-founded her own Baptist church attended every sunday, summer bible camps, voluntold extras like feeding homeless via Mustard Seed, or doing bottle drives for youth groups which I also attended on some weekends.
Never believed at any point. Did keep an open mind to Abrahamic faiths until I was 16 years old when I stopped hiding my atheism and had learned enough to reject any lingering fears of being mistaken. I never learned anything that swayed me towards theism at any point. I’m one of those troublemakers who read the bible on my own with a critical eye and took my notes to the libraries and the internet once it was more accessible especially once I had my own computer and early cable internet in 2004 from paper route money.
Key things in my opinion:
Despite their active faith, my parents weren’t helicopter generally besides a few hang-ups. Small town I was out and about on my own with my bicycle most days outside of school to roam the town and river valley entirely unsupervised. I loved building (snow)forts in the woods…and going to the library by myself as a child.
I’m naturally reclusive so I didn’t feel social pressures to conform as strongly. I hung out and still do hang out with social outcasts who usually made efforts to befriend me first.
Didn’t believe adults at face value even single digit years old, not even my parents.
Natural born critical thinking ability that only sharpened over time.
Parents didn’t monitor my personal computer once I bought my own.
A fun memory from when I was 8 years old: Public school assembly first of the new school year. Principal leads a Christian prayer and then everyone sings the national anthem. My new class has a girl who doesn’t stand up for prayer. Every single other person in the school assembly of hundreds is standing. I decide to sit down next to her and she smiles at me. The adults don’t react outwardly (and never snitched to my parents clearly) so I stay seated from then on. The new girl decides to draw on my back with her fingers and we become friends briefly until she moves away next year :(
