The Greatest Abomination

Religion

(Note: This chapter may be offensive to religious readers.)

                Life after Jason included a little bit more partying, a little bit more messing around. It also included my mom becoming more of a pain in the ass about the whole religion thing. I love my mom. She's my rock, she's my everything. Words don't do her justice. We're not as distant as my dad and I, but I still keep a big part of my life hidden from her. It's pretty discouraging to have someone so religious so close. It makes you wonder how strong her devotion to her faith is versus the love for her son. I mean, I know she wouldn't hate me if she knew. But I know it's not something she'd applaud or want for me.

                Since my grandma died, my mom has become more involved in religion. She's a woman of strong faith and I think it's nice to have, I'm not judgmental on Christians. I do, however, think it's bullshit. Of course, I can't really go up to her and say that. But it's incredibly annoying to have her constantly shoving it down my throat. At this point I was older, around 16 years old and I guess that as I grew up my mom wanted me to grow in my spirituality and Christian morality or whatever. It just feels like fighting a losing battle, swimming against the tide.

                I don't remember when or how I lost my faith. It just sort of happened. I remember at some point I used to pray, I used to think there was a god out there. Maybe it's because I was born into it through tradition and having been exposed to it from a very young and impressionable age gave me the illusion that it was what I had to believe, that's how it had always been and that's how it had to be.

                There are many explanations as to why I may have lost my faith. It could've been that as I matured, I began to look at things from a scientific point of view and realized... none of this makes sense. I guess you could say that by having faith, the very definition of it implies the ability to be able to blindly believe in something without questioning it, but that's not enough for me. I want to know more. I want facts, reason, evidence, logic, things that make sense. When I finally began to look at things as a whole, and broke free from the tunnel vision I had for who knows how long, I was faced with reality. What about other religions? They can't all be right. It seems like you're fighting for who has the better imaginary friend. It certainly didn't help to have so much prejudice come from bigoted Christians quoting the bible at me, telling me I'm going to hell. So much hate from people that claim to have love in their hearts, what kind of god would allow that? Then there's all the inaccuracy in the Christian/Catholic religion itself such as contradictions in the Bible, and some of the ridiculous rules and regulations it sets.

                After much self-searching and my new found beliefs, I identified myself somewhere between Atheist and simply non-affiliated. Unfortunately for me, my mom seemed to identify herself as twenty times more determined to bring Jesus into my life. Like I said, I have no problem with Christianity or religion for that matter. I think it's nice that there's something out there that serves as something for a lot of people to lean on when life gets rough. The psychological belief that there's someone out there, listening to you, looking out for you and promising you a wonderful promise that he has this great plan mapped out for you. That's enough to make anything easier to deal with. And I'm not one to criticize a person for expressing themselves, I'm envious of it. I wish that those optimistic feelings were enough for me, but they aren't. I need them to be real. And I know that I need to be the one to change my life around, I can't just leave my troubles aside for some supreme being to take care of them.

                Throughout my adolescence, for a nonbeliever, I've had a lot of religious experiences. Mainly because of my mom pushing it, and I think that's another reason why I've grown a bit reluctant to religion and only been pulled further away from it. We would go to church way more often, doing “extra” little things like a prayer night on some random day of the week or some all-day spiritual renewal thing on a Saturday morning. It's really uncomfortable to be put in the position where you're in an environment where people are saying all these things you just don't believe in. Yes, I can respect other people's thoughts. But I guess my twisted sense of humor comes out and begins to disrespect it when too much of it is forced upon me, I'm not the least bit hesitant to post black humor jokes on Twitter to say the least.

                I'll never forget the weekend that my mom had to drag me, kicking and screaming, to a weekend-long retreat with my church's youth group. It made me sad that all I got from that experience was a stronger Atheist background. To hear the things they preach, it's so idiotic to me. The things they said made me stop feeling bad for thinking the way I do. For example, they encouraged you to shove Christianity down other people's throats. They let it be known that you have the potential to “save” someone from condemnation. It is your responsibility, as a Christian, to spread the word. Then there were all the limitations that they're so overly obsessed with when they should just mind their own business and keep out of other people's lives. For example, abortion. It seems that they literally made it their life mission to stop women from aborting. To stick themselves in the lives of others, and tell them that what they're doing is wrong and it shouldn't be done. I'm not going to go on a full blown feminist, pro-choice vs pro-life, equality rant here but I do feel like if you don't agree on something, and it isn't personally affecting you, keep it to yourself. Which is what leads me to the next thing they preach: anti-gay attitude! Yes, we can all cheer and clap for Pope Francis talking about how gay people who seek the Lord shouldn't be judged, but that doesn't excuse the Church's stance on gay marriage and it never will, that's just something that's too imbedded in history to change. It does however anger me that people will go out of their way to try to “cure” you because if not, you're forever sinning as a homosexual with a love life. I know that I can't expect anyone to share my beliefs and my mindset on everything, and I acknowledge that. There's something that can't be said on behalf of Christianity belief, based on my experience on the retreat that weekend.

                The closer my mom got to Jesus, the deeper I hid my secret. I know that this is something she holds close, and she reads the bible like all the time. To know that they teach anti-gay attitudes, and to know my mom believes in that, makes it pretty difficult to tell her. I want to let her in, I want to share that part of my life with her. I want to be able to tell her if there's someone giving me butterflies in my stomach or if I need comforting after a heartbreak. But with Jesus one step ahead of me, telling her didn't seem like an option, ever, at all.

          Little did I know that, pretty soon, if some type of god was out there, he was conspiring against me to give me the surprise of a lifetime.