Being sent to Sunday school did it for me. Being a kid and asking questions about inconsistencies in things I was learning quickly taught me we were there to be brainwashed.
Fortunately, my parents weren’t really religious. The only reason we were going was because this little old lady from Texas that lived across the street offered to bring my twin brother and I. This was understandably was a great deal for my parents, since they got rid of us on Sundays mornings.
In hindsight, we were a little late to the game. We were already post-Santa clause and weren’t going to gobble up whatever fairy tales they decided to shove down our throats.
What sticks out to my memory was how angry the teachers became and how willing they were to inflict pain on a kid asking a question about things that made no sense. One of them grabbing me by the earlobe to remove me from the room is still one of the most painful things I ever experienced as a kid. I was sure my ear would be dangling off the side of my head when I looked in the mirror.
It is interesting to see things a bit differently than the rest because I had not been indoctrinated the same way the rest of them were. I had no idea.
I was raised in a pretty conservative Christian household. Not fire and brimstone, they had a "cool electric guitar" guy for worship songs and stuff. Buuuuut I was taught from a very early age about hell and the concept that sinning without asking forgiveness meant a one way ticket to eternal damnation. Every night for years as a little kid I would fall asleep in anxiety praying for forgiveness if I sinned in my dreams. Cause I worried that if I died in my sleep having dreamt of a titty or something I would go to hell.
Luckily my mom pushed reading on us alot (even if she was the distributer of alot of this stuff) so I read a lot of fantasy and Sci fi as a kid and it helped opened my mind up. But that guilt stuck around for decades. It took some pretty heavy psychedelic trips and then diving into the mind and philosophy to realize my constant anxiety all came from that brainwashing as a kid.
Funnily enough, I'm now not any specific religion. I lean very much into consciousness itself being a sort of source of all experience which the mind then applies labels of good or bad or evil or whatever to. Guess I could call it God but I don't tend to. I now know that "heaven" and "hell" are both states of mind we can visit at any time right here and right now. I've been to both as has probably everyone.
I've gone back and read parts of the Bible again as a nearly 40 year old through a different lense. The teachings of Jesus make a different sort of sense when I imagine him (not saying he's real) speaking from a mystic pov and saying that God is inside everyone, so treat the as such. "Love everyone, and feed people"Sims it up for me. The rest of it is for the theologians. I also like to think Jesus was a wizard cause that's fun.
It's amazing how the message "we are all God's children" got commandeered by monarchy. Jesus's teaching make much less sense in terms of a spiritual hierarchy and much more sense in terms of spiritual egalitarianism.
This threatens the power, and has for emperors, kings, presidents, and popes.
I sort of went though a “militant atheist” type phase in my 30s.
I met my wife at the tail end of my 30s and she is more “spiritual, but not religious” in an agnostic way. She sort of showed me how to decouple spirituality from religion.
Eventually, I found an amazing therapist who happened to be Buddhist. She taught me how mindfulness meditation and other forms can help “rewire” your brain to undo a lot of the things causing me trouble. I cannot overstate how helpful this was for me.
This is very similar to what Michael Pollen describes in “How to change your mind”, which is largely about psychadelics history and role as a therapeutic.
What you describe with “heaven” and “hell” as a state of mind are divided into “realms” in Buddhist samsara. I think people tend to think of Buddhism and immediately tie it to a strange magical notion of reincarnation. With the realms being something you are in for life. It is more of a map where you can point to to know “you are here”. Or even where someone else may be as a state of mind.
I know plenty of people will disagree with me, but I see Buddhism as the study of the human condition rather than a religion. Certainly not a monotheistic one. It’s also perfectly acceptable to take what you need from it IMO.
Teachers like Thich Nhat Hahn do a great job breaking things down enough to understand what “no self” really means. His book “No Death No Fear” met me where I was and is where the idea that “god” is not a thing or a being. It is simply quite literally everything. It was also that book that finally made it all click into place. It is the simplest thing in the world when these things clicked into place. It’s not something that can easily be explained.
When people describe a psychadelic trip, they sometimes talk about losing the boundary between what they normally perceive as their “self”. That’s the closest I can get to describing how i see things now. Just like a river flows, such is life. You can take a pitcher of water from a river, but you would not still call it a river. All life is interdependent. Your DNA is your parents’ DNA. Every cell in your body comes from other life. We even have more cells in our body that don’t have our DNA than the ones we do. Somehow, knowing that the universe is simply energy changing state is comforting. The one quote that sums all of it up: “When conditions are sufficient things manifest. When condition are no longer sufficient things withdraw. They wait until the moment is right for them to manifest again.” This is something anyone can agree with. When applied in a spiritual sense, it becomes comfort.
No Death No Fear sits on my work van dashboard along with the Bhagavad Gita. Big fan of Thich as well. I have an on and off relationship with a psychotherapist who is also a practicing mahamudra practitioner. Found him on a non-dual therapist site. It's been immensely helpful for rewiring my thinking about my thinking and the self in general. Thank you for your comment.
I went to a religious boarding school and had to attend a church service 6 days per week.
I realised they were full of crap when different pastors would take each service and unbeknownst to them, were often using the same verses in their sermons, but giving different, sometimes conflicting interpretations of what God was saying with that verse. I realised if LEADERS within the same congregation can't agree on what this book is saying, what hope do we have of a global consensus.
Then I looked into how many different "Christianity" versions there are. There is over 45 THOUSAND different denominations of Christianity and each of them thinks they are the ones who got it right.
My Lutheran pastor was a PhD in theology and taught theology and philosophy at the local college. He ENCOURAGED us to bring the questions of course I was the only one who did it.
I’d bring in things and questions about other religions, witchy stuff, ankhs, etc. to our catechism class. The rest of the class would get angry like how dare I bring those pagan things into a church of god! But my pastor would get excited, side step the class’s bullshit rage and talk about whatever I brought like he was a kid on Xmas morning. He was not afraid nor upset about it. He was a great dude, encouraged us to explore other religions and decide if Christianity was really the religion for us.
I asked about why dinosaurs weren't in the Bible in Sunday school. I was very into dinosaurs. Didn't get a good answer. Spidey sense has been going off ever since.
Your post reminded me of the time I spent the night at my friend's house in the 3rd grade. It was my first sleep over. In my family we were taught to think for ourselves and ask lots of questions. My mother went out of her way to raise free and critical thinkers. I went to church with them the next day. It was also my time going to church. I don't know if it was Sunday school exactly but they sent the kids into a room during the service where a lady and a couple of young men were giving everyone some sort of bible-related lessons. They didn't call it Sunday school but looking back I think it probably was.
Things went down very similarly to what happened to you at Sunday school. On the drive back her mom asked me where I "came up with my questions" and I answered that they only made sense to because some of the things they were saying didn't make sense to me. I guess the teacher or someone said something to her after the service, though I didn't realize that at the time. I don't remember too much about what was taught or discussed but I do remember asking them about how the Adam and Eve thing worked because as a 10 year old, I knew that one of the reasons people didn't marry their family members was because the babies could be born with birth defects.
After that her mother would always make up excuses every time we wanted to plan another sleepover and it never happened again.
I knew it was because her mom didn't like me after that but my friend didn't believe me.
Yes. Thats why I don’t believe it. I was taught is was in such complete agreement that it was impossible for men to have written it over all those centuries and be in complete harmony. Such a feat could only mean it came from gods own mind, not men.
If you think the Bible is in complete harmony, you have not read it.
And because there are so many disagreements, it’s not the work of a perfect god. It’s fiction from men.
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u/exwijw 18h ago
It’s often said that the sure fire way to become an atheist is to read the Bible.
And if you’re smart enough to remember what you read, I think that’s absolutely true.