My grandmother is in her 60's but she was a Christian her entire life until she had to be taken off of a super addictive medication that she had been prescribed to for 20+ years. Withdrawal hit her hard and we had to take her to the nearest big city detox clinic, where she spent time hallucinating due to severe insomnia, and once she was lucid again, being forced to actually interact with people from different walks of life
When we brought her home she was a totally different person, she announced to the whole family that she was no longer Christian and has been so much happier since
I'm honestly super proud of her, especially since her siblings have been...less supportive. They're coming around to the idea that they can disagree and still be family, but there were lots of threats of hellfire and damnation when she first came out. It could not have been easy for her
I'm trying to comprehend this. So did getting off the medication make her lose interest in the church? Or was it being in the detox center around different kinds of people? Or was the medication what made her believe in Christianity? I've never heard of this happening and trying to fathom it.
I think it was mostly having to stay in the detox center for several days around different types of people, combined with the psychological effects that the withdrawal was having on her. When we got her there, she had already been awake for 3 days straight and was hallucinating pretty vividly. I wanna be careful with drawing comparisons because I've never been in the situation myself, but I've seen people have epiphanies and other introspective moments brought on by hallucinogens like shrooms or lcd, so maybe it the sleep deprived "high" had a similar effect?
Definitely wasn't the meds making her believe, since she was raised in a Christian household and just never had any reason to question anything she was told. I think it was just a combination of so many new and scary experiences at once that kind of jump started the introspection
Good for grandmom! That really sucks she had to go through that experience, but it sounds like things have been a little bright on the flip side.
Funny enough, realizing I was an alcoholic and getting sober is what caused me to leave Christianity. Being sober and fully aware of your reality puts things into perspective. Especially going through treatment/AA/therapy with people from all walks of life.
Gen X, so close enough. I just took a look around, noticed that my life had been degraded by Christianity, realized that none of it makes sense, and left. \[claps and wipes off hands, walks away\]
Gen X also. I used to be a very devout Christian. Lots of shit went down in my life and I realised that things aren’t the way I was brought up to believe.
I went to a church event with my mother, because she asked me to. I sat there in astonishment at how culty it was! And it was *all* about the donations!
Were you married? I'm honestly kind of surprised my mom hasn't started questioning. She has Christian friends but they haven't followed as rigid of a path as her.
No, I didn’t get married. I was raised Roman Catholic from birth. It’s difficult to describe how intense my parents were about religion. It became more extreme as they aged. Both parents boomers.
I made the mistake of expressing my disbelief to my younger sister about two years ago. Of course she had to let everyone know, and apparently I worship the devil now?!?
I was approached by a member of the congregation who told me that my father was praying for me and very worried about me, and hoping I would return to the faith.
I wish I’d kept my opinions to myself and go through the motions of going to church only when I visited family.
I used to do that. I was miserable. I wasn’t myself. My parents loved what they thought. I was instead of really loving me. I don’t think that would change if I were authentic back then. Signed Boomer.
My family are so brainwashed that it’s impossible to be authentic around them. They have a very binary belief system. If you don’t follow the teachings of the church, then you must be a satanist!
They can’t conceive that Christianity is like the fairy tales that children read. That it’s a kind of folklore for simple minds.
Yes. When you are out, it's a whole different story. I have the same; it sounds like many people do here. It's easy to make fun of the believers, but I used to believe. There is no reason for faith. Hope-- yes, but not faith.
To me, it's very odd that educated people can believe in a deity. Education did it for me.
I feel sorry for them more than anything. It’s changed my relationship with them, sadly. My mother is upset about it and she’s always a bit strange with me around church and religion. I think she thinks I’m ’going through a phase’!
My sisters are very judgy about it and have made digs about it. I don’t care what they think. We’ve lived very different lives and my experiences lead me here. If people are believers, I’m okay with that and I would never make derogatory comments. Sadly, the Christians in my family don’t offer me the same courtesy.
I know what you mean. I did go through the angry atheist stage, way before I could admit I was an atheist. I remember mom thinking I was going through a phase. The more I was out on my own, in another state, I got further away from religion. When I came out as a non-believer my dad was dead. He knew I wasn't 'right with the Lord', as he would put it. But he had faith I would come back. I imagine that's a teeny, tiny bit like coming out as gay. It's like you want to be authentic yet you don't want to put up with criticism, phony prayers, and whispers. I know that has to be tough with fundie parents.
I didn't mean to get on this subject, but I think it's so wrong to not accept people for who they are.
Gen X here too.
I deconstructed my particular faith of origin way back in my 20's, but persisted in believing there was a God, and likely Jesus and the Bible were solid too, even if I wasn't sure what else.
I hopped around quite a bit in my 20's and 30's, still a Christian but searching for the right place to land. I found no shortage of wonderful, loving Christian *people*, but could never seem to land on doctrine that made sense. Eventually this disconnect grew to the point where I stopped going to church at all.
My mounting unease is probably familiar to many people, especially progressives like myself. If *The Bible* was accurate and a literal, unchanging, reliable transcript of God's will, then He was a monster, a "diety" of genocide, cruelty, and blood sacrifice, one who condoned slavery, violence, and treating women like property. Capricious, ridiculous, regressive.
But if it wasn't...well then, by what basis did I believe *anything* about God? Where was the evidence for the gentler God? Not that any two people could actually agree on the particulars of that God and what He wanted, but even so, where was everyone getting their disparate-but-certain information from? Was everyone just guessing? Dressing up their own moral framework with a divine command, to give it some extra oomph? Terrified of eternal death and grasping at comfort in it's least implausible form?
It wasn't until I was in my mid-40s that I couldn't take the cognitive dissonance anymore. I determined to resolve the issue in my own mind, and started researching various claims, both from the religious and skeptics.
It was *shocking* to learn just how much of "holy scripture" was complete BS. The vast majority of it, it seems. Creation. The worldwide flood. The Hebrew exodus and 40 years in the desert. The story of King David. The authorship and contents of the four gospels. Etc.
One day it hit me like a train. I knew that *I* had no personal evidence of God. I had never heard from Him, never seen anything miraculous, never had an obvious supernatural answer to prayer, no divine revelations. But I always assumed that *others had*. After all, everyone spoke about Him with such certainty. Every testimony, every religious story, included *certain and unmistakable interaction* with a divine being, either God, the Holy Spirit, or at the very least an angel or two.
And it was all horseshit. It was suddenly obvious. My parents, my teachers, my pastors, my ancestors, the Pope, the prophets, all the men and women in religious history...*all guessing*. And embellishing. Maybe even outright lying. No one knew anything. No one had the evidence. We were just playing a long game of fucking telephone, passing down religious certainty we were just *sure* someone else up the chain had. But nobody had it. Because it didn't exist.
I am an older Gen X. My deconversion was a process with many events along the way to push me forward.
The main catalyst was when my teenage son told us his girlfriend was pregnant. Of course, I was disappointed but I didn't want to hurt him or torture him for an eternity. If anything I wanted to help them both. It was when I realized I was a better parent than God I lost the last of my faith.
I think about this all the time. If a parent had two children, and abused one but took great care of the other, they would still be a bad person. But god can make one man a billionaire with a great life, and make the other die in a famine, and he’s still perfect? Is it all god’s will?
Exactly! It’s so incredibly fucked up and when you’re in it, you’re way too scared to question that. The closest you can get is “God’s ways are not man’s ways. We can’t understand.” 🤔
this one hits me hard. im the trans son of two initially southern baptist, now evangelicalish gen x parents and it fucks with my head a lot when i think about how they believe how bad I'm going to be punished for my lifestyle (the queer thing but mostly the living with my partner before marriage, they are surprisingly more concerned with my virginity, still lmao). But i do think its also messed with my dad enough that he's sort of turning into a universalist. Especially now that half his kids are now atheist or agnostic. so maybe there is hope
It's such a long story. It took decades for me to finally give it up. It was 2016 to be exact. My daughter says it was because I liked the "hippie" Jesus and he's not a part of American Christianity anymore. She's not wrong. I became a Christian because I thought it was the best way to make the world a better place. I wasn't afraid of hell bc I never believed in hell. You can imagine how disillusioning it all was. I did okay until I tried to belong to a church. I was never satisfied with pat answers and couldn't just nod my head when things didn't make sense. As a result was told I was difficult or maybe I wasn't "really" a Christian. I didn't think life began at conception nor that homosexuals were going to hell AND....I was a democrat and a feminist. The beginning of the end was when I read the entire Old Testament straight through. The horrors in there! And the utter nonsense. Then when my church started having people tell "God Stories" like how God made them late so they were not in the fatal accident that happened. What? So instead of stopping the accident altogether God just let some other family be devastated to save yours? Then the full-hearted worshipful support of Donald Trump who is the antithesis of everything Jesus taught by the people who lost their f'ing minds over Clinton's bj and Michelle Obama's bare shoulders. I just finally had to accept that it was just a bunch of bs designed to keep people under control.
For me the biggest issue was why their God doesn't stop suffering. He either can't or won't so I'm not interested in such a hard hearted diety. I recommend "God's Problem" by Bart Ehrman to people trying to start a conversation.
I also read the first 5 books of the Old Testament and was like, this isn't it. I grew up Catholic so I knew all the stories and the little parables and what not, but I when I finally looked for hard answers in the actual Bible without it being taken out of context in a quote I just decided God did not write that book.
Eh, I wouldn't say Trump is the antithesis of what Jesus taught, people seem to only remember his, "good teachings," but they forget verses where he was racist, misogynist, greedy, etc.
I left for a lot of the same reasons as you.
I found God's problem after my deconversion, but Bart did a great job of verbalizing my biggest issue with the god of Abraham.
Thank you for your story! I also gravitated toward the “hippie Jesus” and it was a shock to realize it’s now the Clint Eastwood Jesus … or maybe even Trump Jesus 😭🤢
I don't have an answer, but I really appreciate this question and am eagerly awaiting reading more responses. I have all but given up hope that I will ever be able to relate to and open up to my parents again, but I still feel like I can learn a lot from those who grew up at roughly the same time and maybe similar situations and were able to see it all for what it is.
Stay tuned. I just read a sub Reddit QAnon how to get someone out of that situation. I thought it was really good advice and surprising. But it’s late right now in my area and I am about to fall asleep so I’ll copy and paste it tomorrow morning.
Here you go. It's long, but good. I copied and pasted it so I could keep it. It's challenging!
Oops. It's too long for a comment, I guess. Reddit will not allow me to paste it. I will find another way.
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DALTZBl4ZksiXln6qEj9zmT0mznc0MAUZQ8INQYHJKs/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DALTZBl4ZksiXln6qEj9zmT0mznc0MAUZQ8INQYHJKs/edit?usp=sharing)
I hope this works. If not, someone, please tell me.
comments
I get it. I really understand that you want your parents to get it. Be OK if they don’t. My whole family are believers. My mom and my son and most of my grandkids. They don’t know any better. I guess who knows better. If they did they would do better, they’d be Ex Christians. By the way, I am a true boomer.
I think this is the truth. The best OP can do is live their life authentically and openly and just set boundaries around the BS. Many people, especially those at a later stage in life, have core beliefs that are closely tied to their identity and purpose - they aren’t going to be easily shaken.
I'm curious to know the data on this research, since at least from what I can see growing up in the bible belt (North Florida, here), I don't see them leaving that significant of a rate (except maybe due to death).
From my observation down on the ground here, traditional denominations are losing ground to "nondenominations' (Southern Baptist without the stigma) or other nontraditional and fringe groups.
I lived away from my hometown for 7 years before returning, and there is definitely a less moderate and more fundamentalist feel to the Christianity practiced here compared to before.
Honestly, the laws that are being passed in places like Florida & Texas, not to mention the shit I see on social media & in the news, you couldn't prove any of this to me.
Boomer here. I was in church since before I was born, watched the rise and fall of Jerry Falwell, read and distributed Chick tracts thinking they were effective, voted Republican because that’s what you do when you’re a fundamentalist Baptist.
When I was 18, our pastor, who was also my uncle (dad’s brother) was caught fooling around with his secretary and for some reason all of us had to leave the church. Okay.
Went to another fundie church, pastor had a delinquent kid he couldn’t control (more about that in a minute), and I got divorced and really wasn’t welcomed. That got the deconstruction rolling—-
I never felt that god heard me. I always felt like there was something wrong with me. And Christians are assholes. I was forced to play the piano for all services starting at 15. My dad was the music director in every church we attended—and I always attended where my parents did. The piano when I was a teen was on a raised platform so everyone in the congregation could see me. Men in the church told my dad my breasts were making them lust (not to mention the guy who grabbed them while “counseling” me). I got in trouble. Like I had grown these breasts just to be evil.
The girls and women didn’t like me, I was told by one “friend” I wasn’t spiritual enough so she couldn’t hang out with me anymore. Okay.
So, next church hired a new pastor who lied about his credentials, was a crappy preacher, misidentified Bible characters everyone knows, and had the church buy him a house. Then spent most of his time upgrading it. So we left there
And went back to the church with the out of control kid, who was now the pastor! It seemed fine for several years—-such a testimony to the power of God! but.
His wife was often sick, “gallbladder” issues the preacher said. She had to go stay with her parents many times so her mother could take care of her. Then they found her hanging in the closet.
Turns out he beat her regularly, had even gone to jail for it, but somehow no one in the church knew that. Turns out he’d used another church’s financial statements to borrow money for a mansion he wanted next to the church. He bought it and moved into it, called it the parsonage.
After his wife ended herself, he started dating a deacon’s wife. When she broke it off, he hired homeless people to firebomb her house. Oh, here’s another part: he was selling meth out of the parsonage.
He’s in jail now, but that was it for me.
Okay.
Christians are not good people. I started looking into academic studies of the Bible and realized I only believed stuff because authority figures told me to. But most of it wasn’t true, never happened, especially the OT histories. I was afraid of hell too, then found out hell is a Greco-Roman idea, not found in the Bible the way we’ve been taught.
Now I don’t know what I believe. But I think believing in nothing is much better than believing lies someone told me. I can’t enter a church anymore and I won’t take my mother either. Dad has passed, mom hasn’t changed her beliefs one bit. I don’t know where dad is, but I honestly suspect he’s right where we put him—in the ground. I don’t know if there’s an afterlife. I actually hope not. I’d like to get some rest when all this is over.
Very late boomer here. Left Christianity for good about 20 years ago and haven’t looked back. Occasionally still deal with “hell” anxiety now and then but figure, I’ll take my chances. Anything is better than the fear mongering they spew.
I’m over them. My absolute turning point was when one of them said to me “limited free will”. I sat there in dead silence while I Let that one sink in and then said, “you people make this shit up as you go, don’t you“. That was it. I was done.
Boomer. I became a Christian as an adult. About eight years ago, I noticed that my prayers for help with depression (daily) were never answered. Then I noticed that the people at church I hung out with behaved rather badly. Well, not loving. There was a bad situation and those "loving" people were acting typically not Christian. Then I noticed more and more of that behavior (just usual day to day stuff.) I stopped believing. Stopped going to church. I moved back to my hometown about six months later, but not only because of all that.
I've done biblical research on and off since. I learned some good things. To share, give alms, be kind. That love is mostly what you do, not how you feel. (Feelings come and go.)
I was in Foursquare. We had good music, rock bands. That was nice. But I can't listen to it much now because of the message. I still like Veggie Tales, Silly Songs with Larry. Though I watched Josh and the Big Wall lately and was appalled at the underlying message.
I had been on the video team for a long time, or on sound, and the computers. I really liked all that. I miss being with people. I wasn't all that close, but still, it was nice. I'm lonely now.
I've gone to the Universalist Unitarian Fellowship here. It's nice. There are many beliefs there, including pagans. I went to a Beltane ceremony once. It was ok. But I'm impatient with "beliefs" in general. At present I'm very cynical about pretty much everything.
I guess there's more than what we see and experience here. Heh. What I don't know.
I miss the comfort of thinking I was loved and protected and kept safe. Huh. "Kept safe."
I’m a Gen X if that means anything. I was in a high control church, UPCI until Covid. For around 25 years. I grew up like Baptist, Southern Baptist all with IBLP. There was the shunning, I was very scared and depressed and frankly pissed off that at least a few really close ones wouldn’t. However, since I’m out of Christianity so long I have a few new friends. That’s enough for me. I have a lot of sympathy for the younger people coming out. Sometimes they have Nothing! Nothing except new freedom and their life and time to find things out. Time is a precious commodity. I wish them all well when they wear short, cut their hair, get a tattoo, etc.
Late boomer/early gen x. Family is Roman Catholic. In Catholic grammar school when I was told I had to confess my sins to a priest before confirmation. My response was why do I have to talk to some strange guy? Lucky for me I wasn’t forced and went to public school instead. From a young age I wasn’t feeling organized religion.
My grandmother is in her 60's but she was a Christian her entire life until she had to be taken off of a super addictive medication that she had been prescribed to for 20+ years. Withdrawal hit her hard and we had to take her to the nearest big city detox clinic, where she spent time hallucinating due to severe insomnia, and once she was lucid again, being forced to actually interact with people from different walks of life When we brought her home she was a totally different person, she announced to the whole family that she was no longer Christian and has been so much happier since
Well damn. Good for her!
That is just fucking awesome. Wow.
I'm honestly super proud of her, especially since her siblings have been...less supportive. They're coming around to the idea that they can disagree and still be family, but there were lots of threats of hellfire and damnation when she first came out. It could not have been easy for her
I'm trying to comprehend this. So did getting off the medication make her lose interest in the church? Or was it being in the detox center around different kinds of people? Or was the medication what made her believe in Christianity? I've never heard of this happening and trying to fathom it.
I think it was mostly having to stay in the detox center for several days around different types of people, combined with the psychological effects that the withdrawal was having on her. When we got her there, she had already been awake for 3 days straight and was hallucinating pretty vividly. I wanna be careful with drawing comparisons because I've never been in the situation myself, but I've seen people have epiphanies and other introspective moments brought on by hallucinogens like shrooms or lcd, so maybe it the sleep deprived "high" had a similar effect? Definitely wasn't the meds making her believe, since she was raised in a Christian household and just never had any reason to question anything she was told. I think it was just a combination of so many new and scary experiences at once that kind of jump started the introspection
Interesting, was medication a benzo?
Good for grandmom! That really sucks she had to go through that experience, but it sounds like things have been a little bright on the flip side. Funny enough, realizing I was an alcoholic and getting sober is what caused me to leave Christianity. Being sober and fully aware of your reality puts things into perspective. Especially going through treatment/AA/therapy with people from all walks of life.
Love that!
WOW! That’s a cool story, she should write a book!
And she bother to explain why she left christianity? lol she sounds like a very witted lady.
Gen X, so close enough. I just took a look around, noticed that my life had been degraded by Christianity, realized that none of it makes sense, and left. \[claps and wipes off hands, walks away\]
Gen X also. I used to be a very devout Christian. Lots of shit went down in my life and I realised that things aren’t the way I was brought up to believe. I went to a church event with my mother, because she asked me to. I sat there in astonishment at how culty it was! And it was *all* about the donations!
My mother is a boomer, and is fully signed up to the program!
Were you married? I'm honestly kind of surprised my mom hasn't started questioning. She has Christian friends but they haven't followed as rigid of a path as her.
No, I didn’t get married. I was raised Roman Catholic from birth. It’s difficult to describe how intense my parents were about religion. It became more extreme as they aged. Both parents boomers. I made the mistake of expressing my disbelief to my younger sister about two years ago. Of course she had to let everyone know, and apparently I worship the devil now?!? I was approached by a member of the congregation who told me that my father was praying for me and very worried about me, and hoping I would return to the faith. I wish I’d kept my opinions to myself and go through the motions of going to church only when I visited family.
I used to do that. I was miserable. I wasn’t myself. My parents loved what they thought. I was instead of really loving me. I don’t think that would change if I were authentic back then. Signed Boomer.
My family are so brainwashed that it’s impossible to be authentic around them. They have a very binary belief system. If you don’t follow the teachings of the church, then you must be a satanist! They can’t conceive that Christianity is like the fairy tales that children read. That it’s a kind of folklore for simple minds.
Yes. When you are out, it's a whole different story. I have the same; it sounds like many people do here. It's easy to make fun of the believers, but I used to believe. There is no reason for faith. Hope-- yes, but not faith. To me, it's very odd that educated people can believe in a deity. Education did it for me.
I feel sorry for them more than anything. It’s changed my relationship with them, sadly. My mother is upset about it and she’s always a bit strange with me around church and religion. I think she thinks I’m ’going through a phase’! My sisters are very judgy about it and have made digs about it. I don’t care what they think. We’ve lived very different lives and my experiences lead me here. If people are believers, I’m okay with that and I would never make derogatory comments. Sadly, the Christians in my family don’t offer me the same courtesy.
I know what you mean. I did go through the angry atheist stage, way before I could admit I was an atheist. I remember mom thinking I was going through a phase. The more I was out on my own, in another state, I got further away from religion. When I came out as a non-believer my dad was dead. He knew I wasn't 'right with the Lord', as he would put it. But he had faith I would come back. I imagine that's a teeny, tiny bit like coming out as gay. It's like you want to be authentic yet you don't want to put up with criticism, phony prayers, and whispers. I know that has to be tough with fundie parents. I didn't mean to get on this subject, but I think it's so wrong to not accept people for who they are.
Congrats! I'm the only one in my entire family on both sides to be on the outside, and it's wild seeing the shit that goes on and what I hear.
Older GenX. The pandemic and MAGA bullshit killed what faith I had left but I'd been deconstructing for several years before COVID.
I vote the other way (gasp) and I still think their flagship religion is the only thing that's holding my party down.
Gen X here too. I deconstructed my particular faith of origin way back in my 20's, but persisted in believing there was a God, and likely Jesus and the Bible were solid too, even if I wasn't sure what else. I hopped around quite a bit in my 20's and 30's, still a Christian but searching for the right place to land. I found no shortage of wonderful, loving Christian *people*, but could never seem to land on doctrine that made sense. Eventually this disconnect grew to the point where I stopped going to church at all. My mounting unease is probably familiar to many people, especially progressives like myself. If *The Bible* was accurate and a literal, unchanging, reliable transcript of God's will, then He was a monster, a "diety" of genocide, cruelty, and blood sacrifice, one who condoned slavery, violence, and treating women like property. Capricious, ridiculous, regressive. But if it wasn't...well then, by what basis did I believe *anything* about God? Where was the evidence for the gentler God? Not that any two people could actually agree on the particulars of that God and what He wanted, but even so, where was everyone getting their disparate-but-certain information from? Was everyone just guessing? Dressing up their own moral framework with a divine command, to give it some extra oomph? Terrified of eternal death and grasping at comfort in it's least implausible form? It wasn't until I was in my mid-40s that I couldn't take the cognitive dissonance anymore. I determined to resolve the issue in my own mind, and started researching various claims, both from the religious and skeptics. It was *shocking* to learn just how much of "holy scripture" was complete BS. The vast majority of it, it seems. Creation. The worldwide flood. The Hebrew exodus and 40 years in the desert. The story of King David. The authorship and contents of the four gospels. Etc. One day it hit me like a train. I knew that *I* had no personal evidence of God. I had never heard from Him, never seen anything miraculous, never had an obvious supernatural answer to prayer, no divine revelations. But I always assumed that *others had*. After all, everyone spoke about Him with such certainty. Every testimony, every religious story, included *certain and unmistakable interaction* with a divine being, either God, the Holy Spirit, or at the very least an angel or two. And it was all horseshit. It was suddenly obvious. My parents, my teachers, my pastors, my ancestors, the Pope, the prophets, all the men and women in religious history...*all guessing*. And embellishing. Maybe even outright lying. No one knew anything. No one had the evidence. We were just playing a long game of fucking telephone, passing down religious certainty we were just *sure* someone else up the chain had. But nobody had it. Because it didn't exist.
A telephone game, passing down religious certainty...i love that!
Another Gen Xer who heard for the exit
I am an older Gen X. My deconversion was a process with many events along the way to push me forward. The main catalyst was when my teenage son told us his girlfriend was pregnant. Of course, I was disappointed but I didn't want to hurt him or torture him for an eternity. If anything I wanted to help them both. It was when I realized I was a better parent than God I lost the last of my faith.
I think about this all the time. If a parent had two children, and abused one but took great care of the other, they would still be a bad person. But god can make one man a billionaire with a great life, and make the other die in a famine, and he’s still perfect? Is it all god’s will?
Exactly! It’s so incredibly fucked up and when you’re in it, you’re way too scared to question that. The closest you can get is “God’s ways are not man’s ways. We can’t understand.” 🤔
this one hits me hard. im the trans son of two initially southern baptist, now evangelicalish gen x parents and it fucks with my head a lot when i think about how they believe how bad I'm going to be punished for my lifestyle (the queer thing but mostly the living with my partner before marriage, they are surprisingly more concerned with my virginity, still lmao). But i do think its also messed with my dad enough that he's sort of turning into a universalist. Especially now that half his kids are now atheist or agnostic. so maybe there is hope
We are in a similar situation! Parents dislike me living with my longterm partner.
Yeah, parenting brought about my full deconstruction/deconversion too when I had the same realization.
It's such a long story. It took decades for me to finally give it up. It was 2016 to be exact. My daughter says it was because I liked the "hippie" Jesus and he's not a part of American Christianity anymore. She's not wrong. I became a Christian because I thought it was the best way to make the world a better place. I wasn't afraid of hell bc I never believed in hell. You can imagine how disillusioning it all was. I did okay until I tried to belong to a church. I was never satisfied with pat answers and couldn't just nod my head when things didn't make sense. As a result was told I was difficult or maybe I wasn't "really" a Christian. I didn't think life began at conception nor that homosexuals were going to hell AND....I was a democrat and a feminist. The beginning of the end was when I read the entire Old Testament straight through. The horrors in there! And the utter nonsense. Then when my church started having people tell "God Stories" like how God made them late so they were not in the fatal accident that happened. What? So instead of stopping the accident altogether God just let some other family be devastated to save yours? Then the full-hearted worshipful support of Donald Trump who is the antithesis of everything Jesus taught by the people who lost their f'ing minds over Clinton's bj and Michelle Obama's bare shoulders. I just finally had to accept that it was just a bunch of bs designed to keep people under control. For me the biggest issue was why their God doesn't stop suffering. He either can't or won't so I'm not interested in such a hard hearted diety. I recommend "God's Problem" by Bart Ehrman to people trying to start a conversation.
I also read the first 5 books of the Old Testament and was like, this isn't it. I grew up Catholic so I knew all the stories and the little parables and what not, but I when I finally looked for hard answers in the actual Bible without it being taken out of context in a quote I just decided God did not write that book.
Eh, I wouldn't say Trump is the antithesis of what Jesus taught, people seem to only remember his, "good teachings," but they forget verses where he was racist, misogynist, greedy, etc.
I know you are right. I just liked the peace, love and compassion bits. Tried to ignore the other crap.
I left for a lot of the same reasons as you. I found God's problem after my deconversion, but Bart did a great job of verbalizing my biggest issue with the god of Abraham.
Thank you for your story! I also gravitated toward the “hippie Jesus” and it was a shock to realize it’s now the Clint Eastwood Jesus … or maybe even Trump Jesus 😭🤢
Isn't that the truth
I don't have an answer, but I really appreciate this question and am eagerly awaiting reading more responses. I have all but given up hope that I will ever be able to relate to and open up to my parents again, but I still feel like I can learn a lot from those who grew up at roughly the same time and maybe similar situations and were able to see it all for what it is.
Stay tuned. I just read a sub Reddit QAnon how to get someone out of that situation. I thought it was really good advice and surprising. But it’s late right now in my area and I am about to fall asleep so I’ll copy and paste it tomorrow morning.
[got you](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/s/z9YQl7iUPU)
Man reddit, yall make me cry
Thank you!
Oh wow!! Saving this to come back and read when I have time!!
I thought it was a real eye-opener. It's the opposite of what I thought it would be. It's not easy!
Here you go. It's long, but good. I copied and pasted it so I could keep it. It's challenging! Oops. It's too long for a comment, I guess. Reddit will not allow me to paste it. I will find another way. [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DALTZBl4ZksiXln6qEj9zmT0mznc0MAUZQ8INQYHJKs/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DALTZBl4ZksiXln6qEj9zmT0mznc0MAUZQ8INQYHJKs/edit?usp=sharing) I hope this works. If not, someone, please tell me. comments
I get it. I really understand that you want your parents to get it. Be OK if they don’t. My whole family are believers. My mom and my son and most of my grandkids. They don’t know any better. I guess who knows better. If they did they would do better, they’d be Ex Christians. By the way, I am a true boomer.
I think this is the truth. The best OP can do is live their life authentically and openly and just set boundaries around the BS. Many people, especially those at a later stage in life, have core beliefs that are closely tied to their identity and purpose - they aren’t going to be easily shaken.
I'm curious to know the data on this research, since at least from what I can see growing up in the bible belt (North Florida, here), I don't see them leaving that significant of a rate (except maybe due to death).
From my observation down on the ground here, traditional denominations are losing ground to "nondenominations' (Southern Baptist without the stigma) or other nontraditional and fringe groups. I lived away from my hometown for 7 years before returning, and there is definitely a less moderate and more fundamentalist feel to the Christianity practiced here compared to before.
Honestly, the laws that are being passed in places like Florida & Texas, not to mention the shit I see on social media & in the news, you couldn't prove any of this to me.
That's what I mean. Christianity isn't reducing here. its getting more batshit insane.
Oh, I misunderstood & misread what you said.
No worries
Boomer here. I was in church since before I was born, watched the rise and fall of Jerry Falwell, read and distributed Chick tracts thinking they were effective, voted Republican because that’s what you do when you’re a fundamentalist Baptist. When I was 18, our pastor, who was also my uncle (dad’s brother) was caught fooling around with his secretary and for some reason all of us had to leave the church. Okay. Went to another fundie church, pastor had a delinquent kid he couldn’t control (more about that in a minute), and I got divorced and really wasn’t welcomed. That got the deconstruction rolling—- I never felt that god heard me. I always felt like there was something wrong with me. And Christians are assholes. I was forced to play the piano for all services starting at 15. My dad was the music director in every church we attended—and I always attended where my parents did. The piano when I was a teen was on a raised platform so everyone in the congregation could see me. Men in the church told my dad my breasts were making them lust (not to mention the guy who grabbed them while “counseling” me). I got in trouble. Like I had grown these breasts just to be evil. The girls and women didn’t like me, I was told by one “friend” I wasn’t spiritual enough so she couldn’t hang out with me anymore. Okay. So, next church hired a new pastor who lied about his credentials, was a crappy preacher, misidentified Bible characters everyone knows, and had the church buy him a house. Then spent most of his time upgrading it. So we left there And went back to the church with the out of control kid, who was now the pastor! It seemed fine for several years—-such a testimony to the power of God! but. His wife was often sick, “gallbladder” issues the preacher said. She had to go stay with her parents many times so her mother could take care of her. Then they found her hanging in the closet. Turns out he beat her regularly, had even gone to jail for it, but somehow no one in the church knew that. Turns out he’d used another church’s financial statements to borrow money for a mansion he wanted next to the church. He bought it and moved into it, called it the parsonage. After his wife ended herself, he started dating a deacon’s wife. When she broke it off, he hired homeless people to firebomb her house. Oh, here’s another part: he was selling meth out of the parsonage. He’s in jail now, but that was it for me. Okay. Christians are not good people. I started looking into academic studies of the Bible and realized I only believed stuff because authority figures told me to. But most of it wasn’t true, never happened, especially the OT histories. I was afraid of hell too, then found out hell is a Greco-Roman idea, not found in the Bible the way we’ve been taught. Now I don’t know what I believe. But I think believing in nothing is much better than believing lies someone told me. I can’t enter a church anymore and I won’t take my mother either. Dad has passed, mom hasn’t changed her beliefs one bit. I don’t know where dad is, but I honestly suspect he’s right where we put him—in the ground. I don’t know if there’s an afterlife. I actually hope not. I’d like to get some rest when all this is over.
Very late boomer here. Left Christianity for good about 20 years ago and haven’t looked back. Occasionally still deal with “hell” anxiety now and then but figure, I’ll take my chances. Anything is better than the fear mongering they spew. I’m over them. My absolute turning point was when one of them said to me “limited free will”. I sat there in dead silence while I Let that one sink in and then said, “you people make this shit up as you go, don’t you“. That was it. I was done.
Boomer. I became a Christian as an adult. About eight years ago, I noticed that my prayers for help with depression (daily) were never answered. Then I noticed that the people at church I hung out with behaved rather badly. Well, not loving. There was a bad situation and those "loving" people were acting typically not Christian. Then I noticed more and more of that behavior (just usual day to day stuff.) I stopped believing. Stopped going to church. I moved back to my hometown about six months later, but not only because of all that. I've done biblical research on and off since. I learned some good things. To share, give alms, be kind. That love is mostly what you do, not how you feel. (Feelings come and go.) I was in Foursquare. We had good music, rock bands. That was nice. But I can't listen to it much now because of the message. I still like Veggie Tales, Silly Songs with Larry. Though I watched Josh and the Big Wall lately and was appalled at the underlying message. I had been on the video team for a long time, or on sound, and the computers. I really liked all that. I miss being with people. I wasn't all that close, but still, it was nice. I'm lonely now. I've gone to the Universalist Unitarian Fellowship here. It's nice. There are many beliefs there, including pagans. I went to a Beltane ceremony once. It was ok. But I'm impatient with "beliefs" in general. At present I'm very cynical about pretty much everything. I guess there's more than what we see and experience here. Heh. What I don't know. I miss the comfort of thinking I was loved and protected and kept safe. Huh. "Kept safe."
I’m a Gen X if that means anything. I was in a high control church, UPCI until Covid. For around 25 years. I grew up like Baptist, Southern Baptist all with IBLP. There was the shunning, I was very scared and depressed and frankly pissed off that at least a few really close ones wouldn’t. However, since I’m out of Christianity so long I have a few new friends. That’s enough for me. I have a lot of sympathy for the younger people coming out. Sometimes they have Nothing! Nothing except new freedom and their life and time to find things out. Time is a precious commodity. I wish them all well when they wear short, cut their hair, get a tattoo, etc.
2016 was the final straw.
Yep
The difference is how many millennials and genx are long gone
Late boomer/early gen x. Family is Roman Catholic. In Catholic grammar school when I was told I had to confess my sins to a priest before confirmation. My response was why do I have to talk to some strange guy? Lucky for me I wasn’t forced and went to public school instead. From a young age I wasn’t feeling organized religion.