After growing up in a world where sins absolutely meant Hell and Jesus absolutely meant Heaven, I never want to use the word absolute again. Except to say that I was absolutely mistaken.

I was raised to believe that there was a god, one god, and that Jesus Christ was his son. I accepted him into my ‘heart’ and was baptized at an early age. Then I was taught that anyone who didn’t move forward with those two procedures was going to go to Hell; even if they were a good person. Oh, Hell. The fiery pit where bad people burn with the devil.

I once believed this place was real and I could quote scriptures from The Bible as my own little way of reassuring myself that I wasn’t gonna be one of those bad people going to that bad place. I prayed when things weren’t going my way and I prayed when things were going my way. Come to think of it, I spent more time chatting it up with God when I was young than I did my friends.

I knew nothing about earning money, but I knew you were a selfish person if you didn’t give at least 10% of your income to God and your church. I knew that Halloween was for Satan and witches, that Jewish people believed in the same God that I did but were still going to Hell, and that Pulp Fiction was a very, VERY demonic movie that I was never allowed to see.

When I entered adolescence, I started to embrace my Christianity in new ways. I listened to rock bands who screamed lyrics you couldn’t understand…but they were Christian, so it was okay. I wore punky clothes and was straight edge. A straight edge jerk, judging everyone I knew who did drugs or drank or — god forbid — had sex. Read More »

Remember Mr. Deceptive, the nice guy who turned out not to be so nice after all? Part 1 talked about what a supercilious jerk he was to other people, but this time we’re going to see how his better-than-thou attitude affected our relationship, too.

An old friend of ours (but a relatively new friend of mine), set the two of us up when I said I wanted to date a guy who was genuinely nice. On our first date, our conversation covered a lot of ground, and I made sure to mention that I am agnostic — a fact that I’ve found is often a deal-breaker in new relationships. I wanted to get it out into the open as soon as possible.

To my delight, Mr. Deceptive told me that he also was nonreligious, having become quite disillusioned with religion. I later learned that he had an obsessively religious mother and a family environment where, even at 24, he wasn’t allowed freedoms such as staying out past midnight or having a bank account without his parents’ names on it.

Sounds kind of creepy, doesn’t it? Maybe the fact that he blamed his mom for his break from religion, yet didn’t have the guts to refuse to get up at 5:30 every morning (!) and pray with the family, should have clued me in. Read More »