Ask Lemmy

It was a fucking struggle to leave, let me tell you.

I suddenly suffered from a crippling disease (made worse because I was 10 and generally healthy before that, so it was mind boggling at the time), and no one in the church gave a hoot. You'd think a community of people who believed in a loving god would care that such a god would randomly punish a kid... so when everyone just told me to accept it I understandably grew pissed. That then blossomed into asking questions about others with diseases, famine, war, death, bla bla bla, and every answer was just stupid.

Buuut, I was in a super religious family, and went to a religious school, and was a part of a very community focused church, so it took until I left at the age of majority to really leave religion behind. I argued with every single dumb christian I could find for my teenage years, because I wanted to find someone who actually had a good argument. Humorously enough, the best argument ever made to me was by someone who didn't even care about christianity except that he 'was' one by dint of other people being christians: maybe it was necessary for god to send people to hell and have a shitty life... except obviously that's a shitty god that I wouldn't care to worship, so finally in college I said good-fucking-bye to the entire mindset.

As for what happened, while I was still under the parents' control and the school's control, I was labeled as a troublemaker and generally ostracized. My mother would wail (reasonably) about the situation, but stopped making me go to church as I entered high school. The extended family that still cared about religion just chalked it up to attention seeking and ignored it, which was fine by both parties.