I know the Title of this thread might be controversial to some but to me it's a serious matter. This isn't for people to have a debate about religion it's so i can share my story so if someone is going through something similar they might not feel alone. Maybe this will help someone break through a depression. If that happens i'll be very happy!
I was raised in an evangelical Christian household. When i was in 7th grade i transferred to a christian private school and attended until i graduated. I went to church twice on sunday mornings and sunday night. Youth band practice on monday nights, service on wednesday nights and youth group stuff on friday nights. Also went on many church and youth retreats. I had christian school five times a week, religion class every day and a church service at school once a week. I had to memorize a bible verse every day for my parents and recite it at the dinner table. I know more about the bible than most christians i know. With all that said, at the age of 23 i attempted suicide...
This isn't easy for me to talk about because i don't share this with many people but I feel like i'm slowly getting to know some of you and like i said i think this might be important for someone to hear. Also maybe writing about it might be good for me as well.
What led up to the attempt was basically a lot of confusion. I never met my real father and had at that time a poor relationship with my father (The man who raised me, i don't call him a step father.) From a small child i felt abandoned and had a low self esteem stemming from these missing father issues. I never felt like i was good enough for my biological father or my father (one who raised me.) Then when i got out of high school, i wanted to live the musicians life a little bit. i was in a band. The band at one point had a record deal, we were showcasing for deals etc... I didn't go to college because of this. The band split up but while being in the industry i met a lot of cool people and realized, not everyone thought the way i did or my family did. People did drugs, had sex all the time, smoked pot, got drunk and had fun! Truthfully i never did any of that. Never even smoked a cigarette but the whole experience was eye opening.
As i got into my twenties i started contemplating my mortality a bit more. I started to slowly question everything i'd been taught my entire life. I think this is natural and instead of going back to church, which is what my parents wanted me to do, I went to barnes and nobles. That's right, BnN. Every day after work i would go and read books upon books about stuff that i thought i knew about but really didn't. I studied every major religion from Islam to Judaism, Mormonism, Buddhism, Satanism, and even Scientology. I even studied Ramtha! Then i started to read about evolution. I wasn't really taught evolution in school, basically i was taught that it was bad and false, etc. What I slowly started to realize was that almost every single thing that i had been taught about each religion and subject was a lie. I realized i had been brainwashed.
This realization threw me in an emotional tailspin because i felt like my whole life was a lie. Who was I? Was God real at all? What's the point of all of this!?!? I started seeing a christian counselor a few times a week. He tried his best but what happened was he started to bring up all this repressed stuff about my father and to put that on top of everything else i was going through, i couldn't deal with it. I became extremely depressed. Over the summer of 2003 i lost 30 pounds. I looked thin but felt terrible. Tormented every day about these questions I started praying but nothing was changing. Eventually i came to the realization (at the time.) that life was meaningless and had no point. To live another day was the same as not living another day. I had such a low self esteem i truly believed my family would be happier without me. So at the end of October i tried killing myself. I failed obviously but at the time i didn't care either way. I was put in basically a mental ward and lied my way out of it. I was not emotionally stable but i only spent 3 days in the hospital.
But something hit me. A true awakening. One of the questions i was dealing with came up again though a film I was watching at the time. That film was The Matrix Reloaded. Now i know some people don't like it all that much but that's neither here nor there. There is a scene where the merovingian talks about choice. The quote from the film is.. "Choice is an illusion between those with power and those without." Now this can apply to many things but at that moment it felt like a light bulb went on over my head. I thought..."Choice is an ILLUSION! That's it!" If God is all know and omnipresent and doesn't see time like we do then he MUST know everything that's going to happen before it happens. (There are many verses i could quote but i'm not here to get into a debate. This is just what happened to me. ) Therefore he would have to know BEFORE he creates whether or not I am going to go to hell when i do. So if he has this knowledge and still creates me then really there is no choice because God cannot be wrong. Then i thought, wait if I had the knowledge before having a kid that my kid would suffer for all eternity if i could created him, i CERTAINLY would not create him/her. That would make me evil. So it hit me. Either God is not all powerful and all knowing like the Bible says (which makes parts of the bible untrue.) or He does know everything and is more evil than any being known to man. Either way, FUCK THAT. I wanted to part of it anymore.
So i went back to Barnes and Nobles and started picking up some history books. What i started to realize was all of this stuff that i had been taught was man made. It was all bullshit. It's the biggest scam pulled in the history of the world. Then i actually read the bible AGAIN and reading it with this new knowledge was mind blowing. I started seeing all the contradictions. Page after page of contradictions and fairy tales about Giant man eating whales and angel raping. Then the more i read the more i started realizing that the most likely Jesus not ever existed. At least not the one in the Bible. At that point i gave it up. It was like a Giant boulder lifted off of me. I was no longer confused. I didn't know what i really believed in anymore but i knew what i DIDN'T believe in and for once that was enough. I liked the fact that i didn't think i knew all the answers to life questions because how could I? Nobody does! Once i did this i was free. I felt truly free to be the person i wanted to be. I got involved politically, tried to help people as much as I could and eventually met the love of my life who is my wife right now. I haven't stepped foot in a church in a decade and i'm much happier for it.
For a while my parents didn't know any of this. Well they knew about the suicide but not why or how i was feeling afterward. For a few years they kept trying to preach to me, get me to go to church. Every time i would see them they would keep on with it, the whole time i had to hide my true feelings in. Then one day i snapped. I told them how i really felt and that everything they told me was a lie and Jesus wasn't real and they were wasting their lives on pointless fairy tales. I called it "All Bullshit." I never cursed in front of my parents until that night. Man it was liberating!
Currently my parents are starting their own church, i will be a pastor's kid soon. I think it's pretty ironic but I never try to argue with them because it's pointless. Their whole life is wrapped up in that religion and even if deep down some of what i said made sense they would never admit it. It would change their entire lives. So if religion makes them happy then i say good for them. They don't need to think like i do. But for me, i can't live a lie like that. I have to try to be true to myself.
Basically what i'm saying is if this relates to you at all then be yourself. Don't worry about what your parents think because it's not worth your happiness. Study, read, learn and make your own decisions in life. Don't be afraid to give up your religion because of fear. At one point the ONLY reason i was afraid of giving it up was because of the fear of hell. I mean really? Once i realized that the very idea of it was preposterous i gave that up too. No more suicidal thoughts, no more counselors, just my wife, college, work and DTF!
Don't be afraid to let go of god.
Topic: Atheism Saved My Life (Read 23046 times)
