My experience and thoughts on Religion (so far!)

Okay I've heard it all before. I know a lot of us hate religion, I get it, me too! However, you can't just say the same regurgitated shit when I know damn well many of you didn't experience much within any churches. So, let's dig a little deeper. 

Now something I find interesting is that a lot of non-believers were actually once Christian. This is something I can relate to, as before two years ago, I was quite deep in my faith. I'm sure we've all heard of religious psychosis, right? Well yours truly has experienced that, and that experience is part of the reason why I don't believe in Our Father Almighty anymore. To help you understand my situation a bit more I shall go on to say how both my mother and father were Christian (my mother Catholic, my father Anglican?), and so naturally I was brought up to believe in God. I remember I used to sit on my bedroom floor reading my bible when I was about 5 or 6 and I was oh so fond of it for whatever reason. Going into primary school I used to do scripture classes (from kindergarten to 3rd grade I learnt Catholicism, then Anglican studies for a year, and back to Catholicism). They taught the faith as if it was this dream, this beautiful story full of community and togetherness with love and reliability. Too bad it's just a story. 

Going into high school was.. quite a shift of course, except I was going into an all girls Catholic school. My faith grew stronger with my peers, I'd have a bible app to read my verses everyday, I'd have my lovely cross around my neck at all times, I'd pray on my hands and knees every night begging God to make things okay. Just the usual stuff, right? Well until the paranoia set in and I felt like I was always being watched. I believed that God, his son, all the angels, and the holy spirit were watching my every move. I'd feel the need to cover myself, even when showering, I'd be scared to explore my own sexuality, I was scared that if I had sexual thoughts I'd be punished, because not even my mind was safe from their eyes. This went on... I accumulated a lot of crucifixes, including jewellery and many to hang on my wall or have in my wardrobe. I even had some sort of a shrine for Jesus. My faith was so very strong until; I only had one friend at this time, my mother used to be kinda hippie and so she bought me cute little crystal bracelets. That one friend saw me wearing it to school and told me "Oh, you know you're going to hell if you wear those?" Naturally, I blew up at her, the first crack in my faith, "it's just a rock?" I'm sure you can imagine where the rest of this conversation went. 

I took a step back from Religion for a minute, I looked at myself begging and crying to God to forgive me for my sins, for the impure things I did to myself, how I begged him to make it better. Did anything get better? Fuck no. So I took my cross off. The most freeing feeling I had ever felt. It was this weight off my heart and soul, it was this breath of fresh air. After some time I found my own spirituality and slowly stepped out of the guilt of having a body, of being curious. That is a fucking good reason to not believe in God. No one should ever feel so trapped in their own mind like that, no one should feel that way. No God should make anyone feel that way either. 

NOW I'm not at all wanting to get across the message that Christians are bad and they're dumb for believing and they're this, and they're that... I want to know why exactly you don't believe, just as I want to know why they do believe. With this topic being so touchy and.. confronting, it's hard to have an open conversation with someone that is Religious. I try to talk to some girls at my school about their faith and what it is to them but they don't even want to open their eyes fully. I hate that they ignore all the bad things in it too... I see a big reason for atheists not believing is because of the corruption of the Church. I get where they're coming from (it's sort of where I come from too), it's awful and something that absolutely should not happen, yet it does. If we take that bit out though, will we look deeper into it? The bible is so structured and has quite a lot of depth, it is kind of a long and boring read. So my question is how many atheists have actually read the thing? I don't believe there's a lot. That's okay though, the apathy towards it is understandable. If I hadn't experienced what I have, maybe I would be more careless about it and let it settle instead of trying to make this fire bigger. 

-Sally.