Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

So I was raised in a baptist church. It seemed like the congregation hated me. There were 3 families that seemed to like me. The rest were either apathetic or they hated me. I get the feeling it was because I was raised by my grandparents. I can't think of anything else that set me apart from anyone else.

Seems like if I wasn't a mindless zombie I was a horrible sinner. Brothers yell at each other and fight and boys will be boys. I get into an argument with my sister and I need to stop being so obnoxious. Other kids don't do their homework well shame on them. I don't do my homework and I'm a horrible monster, people spent good money on my education and I'm throwing it back in their face and telling them to go to hell. Other kids don't clean their room and that's just kids being kids, but if I don't clean my room I'm a horrid monster. If I'm not as well behaved as Ned Flanders I am a horrible sinner. In fact Ned Flanders is a Simpsons reference so I'm an evil sinner for watching the Simpsons.

The sermons were even more of this "you're a bad person" garbage. I don't think the pastor had a single sermon where he doesn't say "how dare you ______" to shame us for doing stuff. A lot of Christians say that God loves you, but when the entire focus of your religion is on how you are a horrid person you just get tired of listening.

The final straw for me was the end of the school year. I went to a private school ran through the church. Because of low morale I just couldn't feel the need to do my work. As soon as the school year ended the pastor pulled me aside and just let loose with all this talk about how I'm just lazy and worthless. He started demanding I spend the summer doing the work I didn't do during the school year. His demands were reasonable, but the way he said it is what pissed me off so I left and never looked back. After that I enrolled in public school.

I've been out of the church for 6 years now. Surprisingly the school was still running. The first 5 years at that school the attendance ranged from about 30 to 50 students. There was some big incident and my last year there was only 13 students. This is where I laugh a LOT. I found the schools page on facebook, I found the church had a website, and a lot of people including the pastor had facebook accounts.

The year before I left the church the pastor was always complaining about how the internet is evil and nobody should use it. xd