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Ramona Grigg's avatar

Oh, I can so relate! I was baptized, confirmed, and married in a Lutheran church. I went to Lutheran school. My two oldest children were baptized Lutheran. I remember those moments as a child when I prayed to God for guidance, often for silly things, but sometimes in earnest to save someone's life or to make someone happy.

The mysteries of God. the virgin Mary, the Holy Trinity, the parting of the sea, the sudden appearance of loaves and fishes, did gnaw at me. Even at a young age the idea of any of those things seemed, well...ludicrous. Still, I loved the trappings of the church. The music, the stained glass windows, the rituals at the altar. But not always the people.

I think it was the people who finally turned me off of religion. The catty, petty women making fun of a poor woman's Sunday clothes, the sniffy way they judged everyone, the need for the church men to make arbitrary rules, negating the rules they'd made before. I didn't see anything there that might have seemed god-like.

I called myself an agnostic for a long time, not daring to give up on my religion completely, and then one day I called myself an atheist. I had to laugh at how freeing it was. I could finally admit I didn't believe in a god. I could finally look back and see I'd never believed in a god. Whatever church meant to me when it seemed to mean something was outside of any real faith in a god. It was simply a community I'd clung to long after it meant anything.

You've written about your own experience beautifully here. I'm grateful to have read it, and didn't mean to go on this long. You struck a nerve. You brought up old feelings. I like who I am now.

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Carolita Johnson's avatar

I was a born again for a few months, until I realized I was only bring “good” to angle for entry into heaven, where I’d get my chance to interview god on questions of infinity and the Big Bang. Then I realized I was going straight to hell for having that agenda and came up with my own rational reasons for being good after examining the ten commandments and consolidating them into one: don’t steal. Don’t steal things, people, faith, peace of mind, life, etc. and the reason? Not to go to Heaven but to make the world less shitty. God didn’t even need to exist for that to be true. So I said goodbye and good luck to god if god existed (because if he did he must be really depressed and falling down in the job, the way I saw it), promised never to ask for help winning the lotto again, and went on with my life feeling that living my life and doing things with love (as in Gibran saying to do everything as if you were doing it for your beloved), and that was that. And then I studied medieval anthropology in college and that really put the last nail in the coffin for Christianity-- the more you know, the more you don’t want to know.

Anyway! If god exists he certainly wouldn’t need so many deeply flawed and misguided murderous henchmen/women doing such awful things in his/her/their name. I’ll just keep doing my best as a simple human. I don’t feel hollow. I’d like to go back in time and yell at that kid for saying that to you! NB I continued going to born again summer camp even after I left their ranks spiritually because it was cheap and I needed a vacation from my parents. My brothers also went, and reported that the “whole camp is praying for you,” but I was fine with their pestering me if I’d “found Jesus” -- I just kept saying, why? Is he lost?

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