How to NOT tell your family that you are an atheist.
As far as I am aware, I have been a very incredulous person. I still remember once I was in the car with my mom, I was not even 10 years old and my mom asks me to pray together so that my grandfather protects us on the way.
My mother had already talked to me about God, that almighty and omnipotent being who created us and loves us. At that moment I remembered that explanation she had given me and I asked her:
"Mom, was Grandpa a bad person?"
Which she answered:
"No son, why do you ask that?"
"Then, God let the grandfather die because he didn't love him?" -savage af
I still remember the surprise face of my mother, she did not know how to respond immediately and simply told me that when I grew up I would understand, that grandfather simply went to a better life.
This was one of the many doubts I had from childhood to my adolescence. If God loves us so much and is so powerful, why do so many bad things happen in the world?
I do not remember exactly how old I was when my mother had enrolled me in the communion service of the nearest church. I was always responsible for my studies, well, as responsible as a child can be.
My family was very surprised when I told them one day that I no longer wanted to attend church.
HA! You surely thought that I would make a fart joke. Well, you guessed wrong.
Already at this age, I imagine what could have happened through the heads of my parents when the first explanation they heard from me was that "I don't like the priest". I told them that I did not understand what they taught me there. I told them that many things did not match what they told me at school and I did not like that.
I thought that the father was telling us the story of a superhero rather than the foundations of the world's largest religion. Besides that, the priest was very annoyed about the fact that I interrupted him to question his "tale". I know, I wasn't a very amiable child.
After much discussion, my dad decided to get me out of there. His reason was that he didn't want to create me a trauma by taking me to a place I did not want to go. Although now that I think about it, I think he cared more about the rumors of catholic priests.
Time went on, my family was not extremely religious so there were no problems until my adolescent "rebel" phase arrived. I'm sure that all of us who went through that, understood how stupid we were to want to contradict anything about our parents, but our hormones are more powerful than our common sense.
In one of our discussions, I told my mother something I had long thought: "Whatever, God does not even exist!", which was accompanied by a slap so fast that it did not appear to come from the arm of an ordinary woman.
100% accurate.
It's been a few years since that day. I have talked to my mother many times about all the scientific facts that make it harder and harder to believe in God and what more's horrific: that God exists and only sees, how the beings he created in his likeness and that he loves, suffer injustices every day.
I still have not managed to have a healthy and calm discussion with my mom about this. But that does not prevent me from getting up every morning and asking for her blessing or telling her how much I love her. Neither will our family be separated for a reason as stupid as it is to have different beliefs.
The reason I did this post was not to tell all steemians, who read me, that being religious is bad or something, nor do I want to start a discussion about whether God exists or not. I just want to clarify that everyone has their ideals and their beliefs, you can not simply impose your mentality on other people. One thing I admit about religion is that, although it is not fulfilled to the letter, it teaches you to love and respect your neighbor. And I feel that this world needs more of that -and Oreos-.
Sources: Pixabay.
P.S. Long af post, I know. But thanks if you read this far. I won't say something so hypocritical as "I don't care about the money" but I do really appreciate the people that truly read my posts.