To the Atheists w/ a Religious Past : That Nostalgic Feeling

[ceez]

I'm still In the process of leaving religion but it's a little difficult, I was sort of forced to join a church a friend of the family started and most of my family is apart of it. To them anyone that walks away is "turning their backs on god" and damming their soul to hell for all eternity. I'm a little dense upstairs so it took me a while to realize how much damage religion was causing me, I knew I was gay in my early teens but my family would talk about how evil and perverted gays are, perverted is their favorite way to describe us. I spent so many years of my life trying to be good by suppressing who I am, trying to be celibate or attempting to pray myself straight. I finally woke up after reading a post on reddit about a gay guy that left his church, he said something like realizing he was in an abusive relationship with the church. After that I realized the majority of "good Christians" already fit the mold, they partied when they were young, slept around, had kids and are now ready to settle down so it's so easy for them, they are sacrificing nothing. Due to the pandemic and working nights I've been able to get away from it for the moment and I feel a thousand times better.

Something I thought was interesting, a lot of people that join Satanism are actually atheist. It's so many people that were hurt by those claiming to be Christian that they wanted to join a group to oppose them. There was a story of a woman that joined a church of Satan, in her interview she said she joined a church to try out Christianity because that's what most us Americans are told to do. At the same time her son came out to her, she accepted him although a little conflicted with her new religion. Later they were invited to dinner with one of the church families and once they found out about her son they began to do the usual Bible bashing and mocking him. Later that night her son committed suicide, she said if that's God then Satan must be good.