Hi guys! Long time no see. So, last time I tried explain some of my hatred for christianity, I got a little carried away. This time, I want to get away from ranting and raving like a lunatic. I also want to get away from insulting anyone for their beliefs, because realistically, that's one of the reasons I fell away from Christianity to begin with. Also, some of this stuff is quite personal, so I apologise in advance for that. Anyway, here we go.
My mother had me when she was 16. My father was 22, and neither really wanted me at that stage in my life, not out of love, but because they believed they couldn't raise me with their current lifestyles. Mum's was obvious as she was still a teenager, but Dad was more because he was quite heavily into drugs, dealing, and stuff like that. So I got left with my grandparents. Honestly, I feel like this was the best move, as my grandmother is about mothering age, and she's probably the only normal one in my family. So I grew up fairly normally. Our family wasn't perfect, as my grandfather was an alcoholic, my uncle was always high, and one of my brothers (who also got left with my grandmother) has both bipolar and aspergers. Yeah, that's not a great combination. He could get very angry and would often break things, act physically violent towards people, and so on. Mum tried to step in and take him, but that didn't last long.
If you've seen this episode, imagine a less extreme version of this kid. That's my brother.
Anyway, when I was around 6, my father found Jesus, and promptly thought everyone else in the world was an idiot and tried to convert me into his cult. As a six year old who knew every single line to Nirvana's MTV Live and Unplugged, and the Slim Shady LP, as well as liking pokemon, goosebumps, and creepy shit in general, this basically meant GIVE UP EVERYTHING YOU'VE EVER ENJOYED! Ha. I wasn't buying that shit.
At age 10, my father asked me to live with him. I said no. He used various methods of guilt tripping and saying “Oh, it's only a trial,” and “Don't you love your father?” and various other things. When my trial was up, I tried to move back with my grandmother. Nope. More emotional guilt tripping and blatant lies about my family in order to keep me there. So I stayed in a household where I wasn't allowed to take interest in anything I liked but got in trouble for not taking interest in things. Yay!
When I was a teenager, things really started sinking in. I actually started believing in what the Jehovah's Witnesses taught. I guess this is what happens when you go to church 3 times a week and have to study before you go there, giving you fuck all time to have fun. I wasn't allowed to hang out with people who weren't Jehovah's Witnesses outside of school, although fortunately I still went to my grandmothers every second weekend so I'd go to their places then, play the games I wanted and was normal twice a month. But yeah, I actually believed it, and to be honest, I liked what the religion taught.
My dad then got married to a woman who hated my guts. Her child had been ripped away from her, and me and her daughter were best friends which lead her to believe that I was replacing him. So she made my life a living hell for the next four years. Oh well, at least I had my step sister, who was my best friend. I had someone who lived with me who liked stuff I liked, and we'd watch doctor who together, we had the same friends, and yeah, she was my best friend.
I also made two other friends who made it all tolerable. They are mainly the reason I'm so geeky. They played games. They read comics. They played board games. They read geeky ass shit. And they didn't follow the bible as rigidly as my father. I spent 90% of my time with them, despite them being older than I was.
The exact moment I was snapped out of this belief was when I was told I couldn't hang around one of them because he had an emotional illness – i.e. depression. Now, as I said previously, my brother has bipolar. My mum has depression. I'd been diagnosed with depression as well, but now I had to hide it because it “makes you weird and anti-social.” Yeah, one of my best friends needed me, and he was the only one I related to, and I wasn't allowed to talk to him.
It was about that time when I noticed every single person in that religion was a fucking hypocrite. “Entertainment is up to your own conscience and no one can judge you for it.” If you owned a copy of Lord of the Rings, you had no friends.
“Do not let yourself be stumbled by the weak.” If you were weak, you had no friends. If people were stumbled by you, you were the one who was in trouble.
“Be all things to all men, so that you might save their souls.” If you didn't act in a certain way, you had no friends. If you were seen with “Wordly people” (which means people who aren't Jehovah's Witnesses, people who dressed like they weren't Jehovah's Witnesses, people who watched, read, listened to or associated with people or things that weren't jehovahs witnesses) goodbye mother fucker, no one loves you.
So, the more of this I saw, the less I believed in a God at all. This all came to a head on my 18th birthday when I said fuck it, and had a birthday party, despite the fact that birthdays, worldly people, and alcohol are strict no nos. I got extremely drunk, and did "things" that a Jehovah's Witness really shouldn't. Dad had a problem with this, and for the next half a year things were quite tense between us. I told him I didn't want to be a Jehovah's Witness, and he said if I wanted to leave, I had to read the bible and find fault with it.
At this stage, I still believed in god. I just didn't want to be a Jehovah's Witness. But fuck it, I was going to do my darndest to get the fuck out of there. I read through basically the entire bible, did research into the history of the bible, related to other religions and that was it. I didn't believe in a god anymore. I didn't understand why we worshipped the Jewish god when all other ancient gods were stupid. I didn't understand why we took so literally a book that has been retranslated a billion times, where half the meaning had been lost. So on. So forth.
I told this to dad. He said I was a liar and that I still couldn't leave. He also told me I couldn't go to college (I had to run away from home for him to let me finish high school, so I didn't think that was going to happen). This was when I'd had enough. I was fine biding my time until I could move out, but he was actively ruining my future. I told him I was leaving. I called my nan who was coming to pick me up. Me and Dad got in a massive fight, which involved him punching me, slamming me against walls, and even strangling me. I left and didn't talk to him for over a year.
So yeah. This is my experience with Christianity. Can you understand why I'm so goddamn bitter towards it? You can say it's because I was with a shitty cult, but from my observation it's pretty much the same everywhere.
The only things I knew about the religion was from the few friends I had growing up that were Jehovah's Witnesses. They didn't say they were Christians and they would mock God and Jesus or say they weren't real if you brought up religion. I assumed they did it because they weren't Christians, but now that I think about it, it could of been their way of going against their religion. They weren't the cheeriest people either. They seemed to be more happy at school than they were at home. I also remember that they never sweared too. 
Sorry, couldn't resist. 
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