Grieving what religion stole from me

 

I’m sometimes infuriated, and sometimes saddened, by the many things that my religious upbringing stole from me.

It stole my peace of mind, even as it claimed to give me peace of mind. It made me fear imaginary things like demons and antichrists and Hell during the years that should have been as free of anxiety as possible.

It stole my fun. I couldn’t enjoy good music, couldn’t enjoy any movie or show or game that involved magic, couldn’t play with He-Man or Star Wars toys for fuck’s sake, and waited WAY longer than necessary to start having consenting and safe sex… all because my religion told me I was bad if I enjoyed those things (or even let my thoughts dwell on WANTING sex).

It stole my money. I mean, that goes without saying – any money I gave to a church was money stolen from all the ways I could have put it to better use for myself or for other people. But ALSO, it pushed me into a super expensive private Christian college to learn more Jesus stuff, so I ended up working overtime for 15 years to pay off my debt for a degree I could have paid for in just a few years at a state university. (This was the 1990s, so that was still halfway feasible for normal people).

But most of all, it stole my time. It stole the years of my life in which my developing brain was most primed for learning, and filled that brain with bullshit.

I’m not genius-level intelligent by any means. But by every measure the educational system had when I was young, I’m definitely well above average in intelligence. I might not have had the talent to become the person who cracked the problem of mRNA based vaccines… but I had the talent to maybe do medical school. I might not have had the talent to become a Supreme Court judge (assuming that a non-Republican president ever again gets to appoint a judge)… but I had the talent to maybe do law school. I might not have had the talent to become an international best-seller… but I had the talent to maybe become a published author. I might not have had the talent to become the kind of psychologist who gets their own show and book deals… but I could maybe have learned more about the things that actually drive maladaptive behavior if I hadn’t been told all my life that the answer was “sin nature”; or learned more about the things that actually change maladaptive behavior if I hadn’t been told all my life that the answer was “Jesus”. I might not have had the talent to become the very best in a field… but I’m generally acknowledged to be really good at what I do, and maybe could have gotten even better if I’d devoted less of my prime cerebral developmental time to thinking “How best can I please my invisible friend?” and more of it to actually thinking.

But instead, I spent most of my education reading the Bible, or reading books that tried and failed to make sense of the Bible. I spent weekends fasting and praying that would have been more productively spent working and learning, or even drinking and fucking (because then I would at least have been having FUN). Instead of wasting opportunities at college by partying like a normal person (which would at least have helped me develop the kind of normal social skills that grease the wheels of business), I wasted opportunities reading books on whether non-Christians could get into Heaven, being part of a praise band, participating in Bible studies, going to mandatory chapel every day.

What a waste. How much better prepared would I have been for the real world, and for a career, if religion hadn’t taken up all the space in my life that could have been more usefully taken up by literally ANYTHING real? How much more wealth and success might I have gained? How much better at my job might I now be? How many other jobs might I have been even better at, if I hadn’t let religion guilt me into choosing between “pastor” and “some other low-paid helping profession”? (Thankfully, I was just smart enough that, between those two options, I at least chose the one that ACTUALLY helps people).

For a worldview that maintains “Thou shalt not steal” among its top ten rules, religion sure stole a hell of a lot from me. And while I’m trying to claw it back, some of it is just gone forever, especially all that lost time.

For those of you who had a similar experience: It’s okay to grieve what was stolen from you.


And it's okay to be angry at the people and institutions that stole it.

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