Dear Religion

By Jacob

(The words god and jesus are intentionally not capitalized)

This is my rant of empathy for those who never had the chance to choose. This is for those who were told about a burning place of eternal torment as soon as they were able to carry out a competent conversation as a child. Most of all, this a message of hope, a message that says-You are not alone.

Image by [u:ur] [gylεr] via Flickr

I was born a preacher's son. From an early age I was told to sacrifice my most important things to god, so that he could bless me abundantly. Being a naive and humble child, like most, I did as I was told and threw my most treasured toy away in a form of sacrifice at the ripe age of six years old. This god my parents told me of seemed awfully greedy, I thought. A few days later I went on a rescue mission and retrieved my toy. I was incredibly disappointed that that god had royally screwed me over with no results -- not blessed me like my parents had promised.

I remember sitting in church as a child watching people close their eyes and talk to god aloud. I thought to myself of how strange it was. It was almost like they were talking to themselves. (After all, children are born atheists.) Now I know that they were just talking to themselves.

Of course it was taboo not to get "saved" during a highly packed emotional service at our church. I soon followed suit with all my friends and accepted this man/god who killed himself as my savior. I became very active in the community and high school because I knew for sure that jesus was coming any time. We were told to "defy all authority, for the time was at hand and we must save the lost." Me and my compadres would spread christian tracts in bathrooms, classrooms, and anywhere we could lay a piece of paper. If there was a non-believer at the school we would find him and tell him about hell and try to convince him to believe like us. Since we were christians, we had a free ticket to heaven, so the older we got the more we slipped into immature rambunctious behavior without feeling any guilt... except when we asked god to erase it.

I'm not going to really elaborate much on how I broke free. Most of you posses the intellect to already know that it is through pure reason that a man can break the shackles on and infidelity to his rational mind. I was committing adultery with my mind and reason -- religion was the whore. After looking into the fallibility of the bible, everything fell apart from there.

If only words could describe the pain, heartbreak, and family problems religion brought into my life! I cant even find the proper words to express the outrage to what religion does to naive child. I cannot blame my parents for it; it would be unjust to do so. They, like me, were victims of the system, and being biological animals they mimicked what they were taught. I was lucky enough to break free.

Now I have to hear the sobs and crying of my parents weekly begging me to come back to god before god kills me and I go to hell. Now I have to choose whether to keep my friendships stable by agreeing with their biased ideals, or just give them up altogether.

So, as a recent de-convert for two months I have a statement to make.

Dear Religion,

Screw you.

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