I doubt anyone recognizes me since I never posted in here that often (and I disappeared for awhile due to school), but I would like to reveal some of my thoughts and experiences with my religion (Christianity). The long and short of it is that I have been losing my faith in Christianity lately. I've been depressed for a long time, like "I tell myself I deserve to die at least once a week" kind of depressed. I was never able to isolate the root cause until I began to question my religion. I was hesitant to publicly share some of my past here for my parents' sake, but now I feel I have a right to share my experiences for what they are. Keep in mind as you read the following that I was raised in a fundamentalist household.
You know those stories about rich kids that are forced to live in estates and never mingle with "commonfolk?" That's pretty much the household I was raised in, only we aren't rich. Basically, the idea is "The world has been hit by a Satanic fallout kids, hide here in our bunker and you'll be safe from contamination." Ironic, considering how dysfunctional we all are... Anyway, eventually I began posting on forums behind my parents' backs. For the first time, I heard about homosexuality. I realized it was strictly prohibited by my parents' doctrine, hence why I'd never heard of it. My initial disgust turned to tentative acceptance, and I heard about the science of "It's biological". Being the rebellious little teenager I was, I started to wonder "Is that me? Am I gay?" Of course, these questions were kept hidden from my family. Then I begin to develop "feelings" for a gay guy online. I'll never know if he was a catfisher or not (probably, in hindsight there were some red flags) but younger me didn't even think about that. I went along in my happy so called "relationship", deciding that God wouldn't be against it.
Then my mother found out.
That was one hell of a morning. I had imagined if my parents ever found out, I would argue with them. I would stand up for myself. Me, the perfect little untainted trophy on my parents' shelf, would burst free and develop his own beliefs. That died quickly. There was a lot of shouting on my mother's part, and I didn't say much. I won't deny I was shaking. When I asked her if she wanted to kill me, she told me (and I quote) "Of course I want to kill you." And as she said "If your father ever founds out, he WILL kill you." I believed her too. If you saw how angry my dad gets when he rants about the world, you would too. It's humiliating to look back and see how completely cowed by her I was. Heh. Anyway, I promised to stop being gay, and she made me cut ties with my online friends. She said God would forgive me for what I did, and I believed her. Or so I thought.
Apparently my subconscious didn't, because ever since then I've been pretty consistently depressed. Granted, I was depressed to a degree before that too, but this was worse. I struggled with the idea that I deserved death for my mistakes. In the past six months or so, I've told myself weekly that I was a blight on the world that brought no good. I felt as if God were hanging over me like a weight, that I had to explain my every action to him. That limited my social capabilities; when I was allowed to talk to my friends again, my bitter mental state made me act like a complete bitch towards them, and I broke away from them. I felt that no one cared about me, not even God. Why would he? I felt scared to make decisions and to be myself. Essentially, I was hardly my own person.
Then one day I heard about conversion therapy. You can imagine my shock. As fucked up as what I had lived through was, it wasn't even close to some of the bullshit that others have lived through. That was the day I lost my faith in Christianity. I don't feel that I can stand in support of something that (to some people) justifies such horrible things. Yet according to my parents, there is only one "true Christianity" (theirs) and everyone else has interpreted it wrong. In that case, count me out of it altogether. I can't hate homosexuals or transsexuals like they do. I've tried, damn it. And I've been told that God abhores hypocrites; by definition, calling myself a Christian while supporting ones of its most taboo things would be just what He hates. Nor can I stand by a doctrine that drives me into the ground everyday, telling me that I don't deserve to live. So I am NOT a Christian anymore, and I never can be.
What I find interesting is that I feel like I've always known deep down this would happen someday. I never actually doubted my religion before. Yet even as a little boy, I felt a bit uncomfortable with my parents' cynical world view. If I were a loyal Christian, why did I often feel uneasy when God was brought up among my family? Why did I feel that, if anyone in our family failed to be a Christian, it would be me? I feel almost as if this was always who I was, and denying that was what caused my pesky depression. Because yes, my depression has subsided (for the moment, at least). And yes, I realize that as a young adult, deviating from my family is normal and it may lead to nothing. But I know this; whatever religion I choose to follow, it won't be Christianity, and it will be one that I follow because I choose to, not because my parents threatened me with eternal damnation (which they have). For the first time, I realize that I have the freedom to develop my own thoughts, my own morals, and my own path through life, not the path dictated for me.
There was actually a lot more that I wanted to say on why I'm losing faith in Christianity, but this post is already long enough as it is. Besides, I suppose this is not an entirely appropriate place for that. Even this post may offend some, which isn't my intention. You follow the religion that makes YOU happy. Hasta la vista.