My Struggle with Christianity
Imagine being born into a family that operates on the elusive politics of “what’s good” and “what’s bad”.
Your mother tells you as soon as you start developing a 3-dimensional brain that you have done something very bad, and that it would be nice of you if you live the rest of your life trying to wash yourself off of it. Imagine your father giving you difficult tasks to carry out everyday and telling you you should thank him in return, and that if you fail to carry them, it’s only because you are “somewhat” unreliable to him and that your very “nature” is not good.
Imagine growing up into early adolescence and seeing your mother randomly crying in every part of the house for no reason, and seeing your father’s pride slowly destroying him as he continues preaching, yelling around to no audience, and developing more fat around the belly, while there is a whole world moving on the other side, steadily marching towards self-care, self-development, ambition and the like. What do you do?
Imagine having experienced the “other side” of the world as well. Walking with the “sinners”, the “black sheep”, the “ambitious, deceitful and overly desirous” folks. Imagine yourself being just another number, walking with an army of millions — billions, who are each minding their own business, sometimes collaborating and mostly hoping for the best, without carrying the burden of being your parents’ “precious” gift. You occasionally get unsettled about what is the point of all this and where you are all heading and stop to ask the stranger walking next to you, and the stranger smiles with kind eyes for just a moment and says: “we’re all clueless”.
You live and you love and you fall and you fail and you succeed — you grow and you try to find meaning in everything that you do —life applaudes you in many respects, strangers offer you the purest of kindness, but the lifeless faces of your parents still haunt you in every step of the way. Until it starts creeping on to you.
You go to visit them, you don’t enjoy it, so you stop going.
You go to a party, you don’t enjoy it, so you stop going.
You go to work, to your loved ones, to charity, to sugar, to a hookup, to a record store, to fucking Ireland, you don’t enjoy it, so you stop going.
Do you see where I’m heading with this?
If you think about it, Christianity is the epitome of what a “toxic” relationship looks like in 2020. The kind of relationship that operates on pleasing your “handler”. The relationship that feeds on you never feeling good enough, and that is constantly telling you what to do. You carry so much guilt for just “existing” that it cripples your every move, and you are constantly asking yourself where did things go that blurry. Your handler knows it, you know it, he enjoys it, you don’t. After a few years and decades, you are so far away from enjoying anything because of the pagan guilt the blueprint of this culture has, but you still find it difficult to let go of the memory of your severely depressed mother, who can’t stop crying, and your lazy preacher father with belly fat. Some days you even still get home and look up and say: “I hope you’re proud”.
So yes, when someone asks me what my religious beliefs are, my answer will be, as it always was:
“I’m a recovering Christian.”
Ain’t nobody got Zoloft for that.
