Thanks a lot, Church. You Fucked Me Forever.

[McClain]

I've never gone in to much detail analyzing my spiritual beliefs. I've either found it interesting or not interesting. At the moment I don't find Christianity very interesting. It's somewhere below video games and above making salsa on my List of Interests. However, it once played an integral part in my life. I'm sure a lot of you who were raised in the church will be able to relate to some of these thoughts I've had.

Remember those dorks in youth group who didn't act or sing, but they did sign language to hokey Christian songs? It seemed like every performance was to The Champion by Carmen. Yeah yeah. Jesus comes back in an ass-whooping crescendo and you guys translate in to sign language. They'd wear black turtlenecks and white gloves. Remember how painful it was to watch? Who are they signing for? Jesus? Does anyone really know that the motions they're making are correct? Can we bring in a deaf guy to authenticate?

In retrospect that's how I view my church experience. I was a spiritual sign language-er. Merely miming what someone else told me to mime. I could have been doing hand jives or making the motions of feeding crackers to ducks; it didn't matter. None of it made sense to me, I just did it. And it made Mom & Dad really proud. And the church members always praised us and told us how talented we were. I loved it because I knew that outside of church I was marginal at best. But in church - HOLY SHIT! I'M A JUNIOR SUPERSTAR! I'm in church choir! I do the annual church musicals! I feign interest in religious matters! I can find 1st Corinthians before you can! I sing "This little light of mine! I'm gonna' let it shine," at church camp but I'm thinking up ways to hold hands with Molly McButter over there during prayer. THIS IS THE LIFE! I can't remember that elder guy’s name to save my life, but he knows me! Come on Sundays and Wednesday afternoons, you never get here fast enough!

I've often considered where I'd be spiritually had I been raised agnostic. I’m a 25-year-old non-believer and the mantra of “Christ = Salvation” is still a part of my subconscious. I can’t just erase 14 years of spoon-fed theology. And I’m scared. Because "what if"? What if I’m going to burn in hell for eternity? That’s not fair. I'd rather be ignorant.

Can't I just be dead when I die? You know, like... die and be buried without all the transcending. Why does there have to be more? I don't want to live forever. The thought of eternity, even in heaven, scares the shit out of me. The bible tells us that we'll spend 24/7 in heaven praising our lord and it will be blissful.

Me: "But what if I want to eat Dilly bars and play basketball in heaven?"
Elder: "You won't want to do those things in heaven son. You'll want to praise our Lord God."
Me: "But I want heaven to be like a roller rink, with a Double Dragon arcade and a 100-foot licorice rope around my neck. And when the D.J. calls for the reverse skate and everyone changes directions, I'll be able to turn to my right really good instead of shuffling my feet so that I don't slam in to the wall!"
Elder: "Haha! You silly billy! Trust me - you'd rather praise God for eternity. You'll sing his praises with the angels! You'll wash God's feet and feed God grapes. Forever. And ever. It never ends. Your simple little mind can't even conceive the happiness you'll feel while kneeling at the altar of our Father in Heaven. No more ailments! No more cancer! JUST YOU AND A BAJILLIION OTHER SOULS SINGING HALLELU HOSANNA HALLELUJAH TO THE TRINITY OVER AND OVER AGAIN FOR EVER!"
Me: "Heaven sounds shitty."

No matter how hard I try I can’t shake this interminable feeling that there are only two choices after death and there’s only one way to go up. Practical judgment drives me away but guilt and fear bring me back. I don't currently practice any faith per se, but I cling on to a sliver of a sliver that what I was taught in church just might be right. And I do this for the sake of my soul.

The truth is I'm so far removed from Christianity I sometimes feel like I'm crawling up Satan's ass. But I've got one foot hanging out, just in case. You know... I'm keeping my options open. Can't let that anus slam shut! Never close a door!

I have a "Christian" imprint on my soul and even if I wanted it to it will never go away. I could end up being a Shaolin Monk in a state of nirvana and still have that deep-rooted feeling of guilt by association. "Oh shit! Jesus is watching! I just imagined a naked boobie! Dear God please forgive me for my evil impulses!"
I don’t know whether to thank Mom and Dad for raising me in an institution with values or to curse them for using permanent spiritual marker on my clean slate.

So now I not only have the burden of figuring this out for myself, but I need to know what to pass on to my daughter. I take my siblings as an example. We're three reasonably successful stories. We're not destitute. We're not homo's. We're not felons. But still, none of us ended up the way mom & dad preferred. If they had it their way, we'd do prayer circles and family conference calls that would end in "amen" and "yes father, my spiritual life is thriving. Thanks for asking!" But they didn't get any of that. Isn't it their fault? They're the ones who introduced us to Jehovah! One by one we stared falling from grace.

I don't mean to criticize my parents because now that I am one, not a day goes by when I don't realize the sacrifices they've made. And they really did a great job. I mean, I'm a great person. And I'm good looking, too.

These are hard choices.

I try not to let fear impair my judgement, but when it's so deep rooted, regardless of whether I believe it or not, it's still there. Whispering to me. Passing judgement. "Jesus wouldn't have urinated on that cat! Jesus wouldn't have called that elderly lady a whore!"

Christianity is based on FEAR! "Do not do these things OR YOU WILL BURN IN HELL!" I stopped being scared of things I can't see a long time ago. Those monsters under my bed? Yeah, they're gone now. What about Jesus? I can't see him, but he kinda' scares me.

I've come to a conclusion with my beliefs and they certainly don't go hand in hand with Christianity. And now every time I watch an R-rated movie or say the words shit or ass, I have this programmed mental response of GUILT and WWJD?

Well damnit, I'm tired of this. There's no more room for these convictions. They take up valuable brain space which could be used for other things like harboring ill-feelings toward vegans and more discontent toward ravers.

THANKS J.C.! THANKS CHURCH! THANKS A LOT GOD!

[glowbelly]

you're the worst writer in the world and we hate you

go back to where you came from with your boring church stories you stupid silly fucko.

:memories

[ziggytrix]

My parents didn't go to Church, but my dad's parents did. They picked me up and took me every Sunday. I don't really know how the tradition got started, but by the time I turned 16 it was such a part of me that the first place I drove solo was the Church.

By that time though, I'd already become aware of the possibility that it was all a load of horseshit. In world history we learned that there were all the other people in the world, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, even athiests, and they were ALL going to HELL. Oh right - I should mention that I went to a Church school from kindergarten thru the 10th grade. So anyway I was a little disconcerted that were all these doomed people who, like me, pretty much just grew up believing the same thing as the people around them. In fact if my guys were wrong and one of theirs was right, then I was the doomed one! Oh God! I asked our Youth Minister about it, and he pretty much assured me that nice people like Ghandi and Mother Theresa were hellbound for not believing in Jesus, or for believing, but believing incorrectly. Well shit, that wasn't what I wanted to hear at all!

After that it was pretty hard to keep going to Church. Taking the communion crackers and grape juice just seemed like blasphemy, since I no longer believed in what they represented. But not going, and upsetting my grandparents was also pretty horrible. Shortly though I had half as much to worry about there when cancer took my grandmother. My grandfather moved back to OKC for some reason, and I went off to college where I got to hang out with neopagans, hedonists, atheists, and all sorts of bad sorts. In the long run things have worked out OK I guess. I don't resent anyone who had me go to Church, since in their belief they were doing the right thing for me.

I wonder what your wife and inlaws think about religion. Maybe you should raise your daughter with the freedom to choose, but let your parents tell her about Jesus, and let your in-laws tell her what they want to as well? In the end, the decision will be your little girl's regardless of what you decide now. Good luck with that all the same.

Originally Posted by Thomas Henry Huxley

"When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until at last I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last... So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic". It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant..."

[sspadowsky]

I think the above stories do well to explain why humanity as a whole is a fucked-up, twisted mass of prozac zombies.

I've tried to let go of my bitterness toward religion, and can't quite seem to do it. When I really break it down, I wonder how any parent counld conceivably, on purpose, tell their kids that there's a boogeyman who tempts you to do bad things, and if you don't believe in the invisible man in the sky, then you will go down to a lake of fire, where the boogeyman will poke you with a pitchfork as you burn, forever and ever.

I went to a Baptist church for twelve years of my life, and this is the shit that was pounded into my head from the time I was four until I was sixteen. I'm angry over the years I wasted on it. No fun of any kind. If you're enjoying yourself, you're sinning.

Doug Stanhope once said that "that's why they have to pound it into your head when you've got a soft spot, and you're still Santa Claus-eligible." If you'd never heard of Christianity or the Bible until you were 18 or 21, and someone came to you with that shit, you'd laugh in their face.

And I held onto it. I really, really tried to believe. But the more I looked around, the more I realized all that shit that was hammered into me just didn't jibe with the way the real world worked. So I let it go about 9 years ago. I haven't been back to a church except for weddings and funerals.

I was going to try to make this more coherent, and even a little funny, but talking about it just gets me too pissed.

[MEATMAN]

My turn!

Regarding any actual sermons or whatever the hell they're called, I haven't set foot in a church since 1993. My mother just gave up because I made every attempt to not listen to what the senile old man up at the podium was trying to say. I smuggled books and Game Boys in my church jacket, I fell asleep during services, and I spared no opportunity to question everything the so-called 'Sunday school teacher' said.

You know, what George Carlin said was true: religion really IS uncomfortable when you try to introduce logic into the system. That fat bastard who led the 'class' kept trying to steer the subject away from anything that required rational thought.

I can see religion's effects in some of my neighbors: the mother of three kids, the oldest of which is 13, is very preachy and overprotective of anything and everything that threatens her ingrained mindset, including subjects regarding Harry Potter and those of violent games. The youngest, who is ten, has confided to me that he really does not like going to church, but his mother basically forces him to. It's not even limited to Sunday; on the week before Easter they went every night.

It's a sad world when you can't enjoy your childhood, even given the state of everything.

[LegoLars]

ojkl,.

[Guitar Woman]

I lost my mom to church.

[Emu]

This is my favorite thread.

I wish I had fun experiences to share, but the only one I do is how disgusted I was with the way the preacher tried to appeal to the children at the bible camp I briefly attended. His message was always that the reason you should be a Good Christian is because you'll be rewarded in Heaven with whatever you want, whenever you want. You could eat donuts all day and never get fat, you could get all the video games you wanted, etc. He didn't tell us why we wouldn't need all that in Heaven or why we shouldn't want material goods or anything; in fact, we should view God as a source for material goods! I remember being obsessed with owning a motorcycle when I was younger and I asked the preacher if I could get one if I prayed enough. He said "yes, of course you can."

[kellychaos]

Originally Posted by Ralph Waldow Emerson

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, -- under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And, of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that, with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, -- the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved, but moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable sensation.

[MEATMAN]

Can I buy some pot from you?

[Cosmo Electrolux]

I went to the Curch of Christ...got just enough of it to fuck me up for the rest of my life. McClain hit the nail on the head when he wrote about having a Christian imprint...I went through a long period of "what if they're right" type paranoia and almost went to get baptised "just to be safe". I came to my senses, and realized that Jesus needed me for his salvation, not the other way around. Everyone kept telling me that I needed "god", I couldn't survive without "god", but in reality, "god" can't survive without us. If we all stopped believing in fairy tales, god would go away forever and allow us to beging the process of healing....

Thomas Jefferson was correct when he likened Christianity to a disease, or was it a fungus.....

[kellychaos]

Then it's kind of like the ending to It?

[Dole]

I was raised by Godless Communists. Thank fuck, I avoided all this shit. Any future child of mine is going to be a godless heretic as well, if I have anything to do with it. Fuck that ludicrous, infantile, fairy-tale crap.

[Cosmo Electrolux]

You rock, Dole

Unfortunatly, my Bible thumping idiot wife got a hold on my kids and turned them into good little Baptists...I will hate her for that for the rest of my life.

[kellychaos]

Still, it would be cool if mountains and snakes talked.

[Immortal Goat]

Well, as long as we are sharing...

I was raised in a pretty lax family when it comes to religion. I got fucked over, however, because of my Catholic schooling. Not that I regret it, however, because being a live sheep in a Catholic school is better than a dead kid in the terrible public school near me. Anywho...

I grew up a good little Christian. I prayed nightly, had a Rosary (if you don't know what it is, it is a string of beads that looks remarkably like a necklace, but wearing it as such is sinful, and you don't see boobies when you hand them out), and even had fantasies of being a priest and eventually canonized. Then things started to turn to shit.

Through the years, I attended three Catholic schools. Two grade schools, and one High school. Each one spouting the same rhetoric as the others. I believe it was around the sixth grade that I started to have my doubts. Aside form school services, I hadn't attended (nor have I since) church since the fifth grade, and I was starting to feel guilty. Then I thought "Wait a second. I'm a good person, right? Why would I be condemned to burn in hell just because I am not praying to Jesus?" And that is when it hit me. The church is willing to forgive child molestors/killers (I have a very strong hatred of anyone who would commit such acts, and always have) so long as they repent on their death bed. However, a good Jewish/Buddhist/Agnostic etc. is condemned to hell simply for believing what they are taught, just as I did (Ziggy hit that point on the head earlier).

Since then, I have come up with my own spiritual beliefs. My mom is disappointed in me because of this, I can't tell my girlfriend's parents (strict Catholics ), and some of my friends are continually trying to convert me. Why is it that, in a country founded on freedom of religion, do I feel like I am being marginalized? Everywhere I go, I see Christianity rear it's ugly head. From entertainment to government, I feel like the minority.

And in addition to all of that, as McClain so aptly put it,

I have a "Christian" imprint on my soul and even if I wanted it to it will never go away.

[Protoclown]

Well fucking said, McClain! I'm glad I stumbled onto this thread, even a month late. I too have the Christian "imprint" but have since come up with my own belief system that makes sense for me. I believe in God, but not the silly, hateful, spiteful one in the Bible.

How could Hell exist when I myself am compassionate enough that I wouldn't sentence ANYONE to an eternity of suffering for ANY crime, let alone a belief? Wouldn't that make me more compassionate than God, thus GREATER than God in something?

But I too still feel the slight pangs of guilt at times, and I wasn't even raised in a particularly religious home. I didn't go to church except when visiting my grandparents, but I guess I had all that shit drilled into me at such a young age that it's going to be in there to some extent forever.

I've often wondered if I ever have children how I should raise them with regard to religion. I don't want to force ANYTHING down their throat, but I don't even know if simply saying "here's what I believe, and you don't have to believe the same thing" would be too much.

[Skulhedface]

Well, since there's new activity in this thread, why not?

My family wasn't quite religiously lax, but we went to church if, say, all of us woke up on time. I can remember having to go to church, but not every Sunday. My parents did believe in Jesus and the like, and did force us to go to church if they themselves were awake in time to go.

The seeds of my discontent were planted. Church never made me feel like I wanted to be saved, in fact church inspired my first nightmares. Most people were sitting there, some IN TEARS, praising the glory of God, while I and I imagine some other children sat petrified because, as it turns out, being into looking at boobies was going to send us to a boiling pit of fire, suffering, and bad reruns, and that there was no escape. What boob-liking you did in (an average of) 70 years was good enough to put your ass into a spiritual frying pit for forever!

It wasn't love of God that made me want to live sin-free, it was fear of boiling in some imaginary netherworld that did it to me. For years I would pray at night but not because I loved God's glory, but because I simply didn't want to fry for eternity.

The thing that cemented this for me was a Sunday school lecture I'd gotten one morning, where the teacher had told us in no uncertain terms that no matter how good a person you were, without faith you're going straight to hell. He gave us a mini-sermon about a hypothetical man, who gave all his money to the homeless. Read for the community children. Did good deeds all his life, and actually reached death without committing a single sin.

And his reward? He went straight to hell. Because he didn't pray and get 'saved'.

As a kid this was a pretty frightening aspect, as I prayed not for salvation but as a way to ensure I wasn't going to hell. According to the church, this isn't the right reason! I'm praying for nothing! I'm going to hell anyway!

The final straw came about when I was 13. I started thinking things through logically and was punished for asking the pastor "If God made everything, who made God? Where did he come from?"

A simple, sort-of-innocent question, and I was punished for it. Not even a made-up, "pacify the child's curiosity" kind of answer.

Maybe we're all wrong, and there is a God, but the way to him isn't through organized religion. They don't have all the answers themselves.

[Emu]

I remember the exact moment I decided I could never be a Christian again. I was at my cousin's wedding in a large chuch building looking up at a very uncomfortable statue of Jesus hanging on the cross suspended from the ceiling. The statue was rendered in gruesome detail; He was covered in cuts and bruises and blood. I got to thinking about how disgusting it seemed that people focused more on the selfish, disconnected-from-the-world aspect of Jesus' sacrifice (Now I won't have to go to Hell, no matter what I do, so long as I repent, lol!) as opposed to his teachings on how to live a good life and be just to others; only a few out of a thousand seem to give a shit about that.

[Chojin]

Fear is an incredible motivating force. I imagine this thread in is Readings so it doesn't get dicked up by the idiots that roam GB for brains.

My experiences with Christianity as a kid were through a handful of friends that went to church. My father being agnostic and my mother pagan, though, it didn't have a chance to get too ingrained in my head. All the same, through the beliefs of my friends and the under 10 times I attended a Christian church, I still find myself fighting back the urge to pray when I get on an airplane.

Growing up, my imagination was overactive to dangerous levels, to to point of where I would only get a few hours of sleep because I thought for sure something was going to kill me. I made my parents leave concerts early because I was certain someone was going to try to assassinate me. I needed a crutch but found the Christian god too unbelievable and mean-spirited so I made up my own. I don't remember his name, but he was this big faceless guy in medieval armor that would theoretically protect me. I wrote up a prayer for myself to say (it involved something about being good and nice to people and in return this guy would protect me) and suddenly after a week or so of trying to believe it I found it easier to sleep at night.

My point is that everyone finds something to believe in, because life is too fucking scary to handle without the buddy system. Athiests tend to attach themselves to their careers or a hobby, but everyone finds something to pay obsessive attention to in order to drown out the sensory overload that is life. I theorize the main cause of panic attacks are when a human brain doesn't narrow itself and takes in too much of its surroundings at once.

I usually enjoy life these days. I just cling to my preconceived assumptions of how the universe operates and I don't have a care in the world. But really, without proof all we have is our ignorance, so we might as well learn to embrace it.

[Rongi]

God scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. He sounded like a really short-tempered guy who would fuck you over if you didn’t follow his rules. I was constantly afraid of being struck down by this guy in the sky if I messed up, so I made a point of doing as little as possible and clammed up. I remember once I heard a group kids saying how much they liked to lie to their parents or something and I flipped out on them. "How dare you go against god!" I screamed. I think I might of even cried or something. I was afraid that if I didn’t try to save these boys god would kill me. That's how much the Catholic Church instilled fear on me.

It came to a point (I think it was around when I was 11) where I was tired of being afraid of this invisible man. I was tired of waking up early in the morning and going to some big scary place to stand up and sing some hymns to please this person I couldn’t even see. So I stopped going to church, and eventually stopped believing in him.

Every now and then I get really afraid that when I die it turns out that there is a god and I really fucked up by not believing in him.

[Emu]

Rongi, if you and I go to Hell, think of all the awesome bands we'll see there

[Helm]

I was brought up a scepticist. When I was 5 or so I remember asking my dad who God was, and he told me to 'remember that question', which at the time I thought was a pretty fucking rediculous answer. He didn't believe, but he never forced me either way. If I prayed, I can now tell he was somewhat dismayed, but he didn't tell me not to, and if I expressed and interest in exploring the utter absurdity that is blind faith, he encouraged the process but didn't socratize the truth out of me. I discovered the god farse on my own, really. Obviously, socially I was a Christian Orthodox as I grew up, and I have attended church with school, and have studied the new testament to an extent. I had to memorize the gist of retarded parables at school, and little religious hymns and I got graded on that. 'Ethical education' means 'becoming a good christian' in greek elementary school.

At fifth grade or so ( you're 9 at fifth grade I think?) I was drawing this neat pirate (a kid later asked me to do a copy for him and gave me two bits of caramel candy for it. I sold out on my artistic integrity that very day.) and he had a cutlass in one hand, and a disembodied bloody head on the other and he was grinning. My teacher saw it and she said it wasn't a nice thing to draw, and that, I quote "what would God think?". I told my school teacher that "God is irrelevant" and she got all upset and called my mom to tell her and ask where I picked that up. My mom laughed and didn't make a big deal of it, so my mom is cool.

Two years later, as a junior high freshman, I stopped praying along with the other kids at school. Do you guys get that? In greece we pray at school before the classes start, and after they end. I was doing it pretty mechanically up to then, but one day I decided that didn't have to. I guess I was right. My HS principal got all upset and he called my dad to tell him to come over at school because of a matter concerning his son. When my dad came to school, I saw him walking towards the principal's office and he gave me a stern look. Like dads do when you've potentially fucked up. My dad had long hair then and his eyes could get really harsh. Now he's emotional jell-o, but back then he could punch you with his eyes I swear. Anyway, my dad goes to the principal's office, expecting to hear something about my grades (I was a top student then, as my dad wanted his son to be #1 haha sorry dad, it'll take two years before your son finds that fixation of yours equally absurd and becomes an almost fail student) but instead the principal welcomes him in and tells him that his son is not praying as he well should. My principal was a 'Greece is #1 we invented thinking! And God is cool! And the only good Turkish people are dead Turkish people!' type of person. My dad was (and is) a godless marxist political journalist/cartoonist. So dad tells him to fuck right off and his son can make up his own mind about what he believes in. When he came out of the office, he found me and he hugged me ( gosh dad, not in public ) and told me to not take crap from anyone. So I didn't. And I still don't.

I find the notion of an all-powerful, omniescent god absurd. I find the notion that an objective morality exists, and should be enforced at fear of eternal damnation stupid and dangerous. Even If god exists, he can suck my hairy greek nuts.

[Emu]

So is nearly everybody on this board an atheist or what? ;<

[pjalne]

I don't think the majority is strictly atheist, but 'not member of a mainstream religion' should apply pretty well to most people here, I reckon.