Spirituality is important to me, but not in a way that everyone can relate to. I believe in a higher power, the universe, that guides us in a way that doesn’t always make sense. I believe that the Earth has a vibration to it that is part of the bigger universe and when you get out of vibration with the Earth, you will feel it.
I was raised in a religious household. I had questions right from the beginning. How do big animals fit on Noah’s ark? Why don’t the lions eat the animals that are smaller? How do the people not get eaten by the big animals? Did they bring dinosaurs too? If God loves us, why would he flood the earth and kill all of us? Why did no one stand up for Jesus? Why would anyone have to sacrifice a person for salvation? Why is God so mean? How did Mary get a baby in her belly if you tell me that babies don’t magically appear in bellies? The answers never fully satisifed me either. “You don’t have to see something to believe it.” (HA! My parents always believed my brother when he said I hit him first. They didn’t see shit and definitely believed I always hit him first!)
After I was confirmed, I got a package from church. I didn’t get packages in the mail very often, so it was exciting. It was a stack of offering envelopes. I was offended. My parents informed me that I was now a “member” and one of the benefits of being a member was this nifty stack of free envelopes with my name actually printed on them. When I asked why I had to give the church money, weren’t the grownups doing enough of that? I was scolded for being upset about the envelopes and the expectation of giving them money. My grandmother gave me $10 a month. $5 was required to go in my savings account. And now my parents were telling me that I needed to give at least $1 a week to church. WHAT?! WHY?! What was the church going to do with my $4 a month? I was informed that it was the spirit of it and then everyone was giving 10% of their earnings. Being the math nerd that I was, I informed my parents that I would be giving 25 cents a week. Because 10% of my “earnings” was $1 and I will split that 4 ways. So as long as we attended that church, I put 25 cents in my envelope and sent it along each and every week. HA, I sure showed them.
But around that time, I started to see other things. Like the adults in church were weird. I noticed several men in the church services looking at teenage girls and talking to them creepily. The woman who was in charge of our youth group was 27 and weird but mostly ok. Her husband was like 67 and extremely creepy. I was creeped out by their marriage and why she would marry a really, really old dude like that. They were both into bird watching and wolves. But that seemed to be all they had in common and I figured out recently that they eventually got divorced back in the 1990s. Good. Because it was just weird.
We moved not too long after I started noticing these things and the next church was even worse about asking for money. The pastor drove a fancy, expensive car. His entire family wore the best name brand clothes. I am not saying that pastor’s families have to look like the FDLS, but I do think it’s a bad look to be getting rich from tithes. Especially when the members of your church don’t have much money to begin with. Although we were living in a middle class white suburban area, so maybe everyone had money to give.
As I went off to college, I started to feel like spiritualty and religion weren’t the same thing. Religion seemed to be the business enterprise of spirituality and it disgusted me. When I briefly returned to church in 2015, I found more of the same but worse. That pastor team was ultra conservative, which hadn’t been my experience with this same religion as a child, and they were living the high life onthe church’s dime. They sold their modest house in the country for a suepr fancy house in a ritzy area with more bedrooms than children and both of their children had moved out. Their sanctimonious bullshit about their perfect marriage was enough to annoy anyone and when I once saw them out in public, he was the same smiling cowboy but she looked like a raging bitch. She wouldn’t speak to anyone until someone recognized them and she had her “church smile” on when she turned around. But I watched her face go from super bitchy to happy smile in about 2 seconds. It’s all an act. Just a stupid act to collect money and prestige. It wasn’t about “the gospel” or her love of God. It was about clout. She liked being a celebrity in a small southern city.
I walked away from religion permanently in 2018 and I will not go back. I don’t believe indoctrinating the kids into religion either. They went briefly with me back during my final experience with religion, but they didn’t retain any of it. They are free to research and find something that suits them as they see fit. I have no desire to force something on them that has nothing to do with being a good person who is kind to others. You can be kind and good without religion and that’s what I want for them. Just be a good person.
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