For your reading pleasure!
"My Religious Autobiography"
"One of my earliest memories that had to do with religion happened in my second grade religion class. I just remember sitting there highlighting lines in my textbook thinking something along the lines of either, “Wow, this is pretty frightening,” or “Gee, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.” The idea of of an omniscient, omnipotent god gave me the heeby-jeebies.
As a small child, I, like the rest of my classmates, believed just about everything the adults told me. The first major doubts I had about their truthfulness came sometime around third or fourth grade. That was the time I realized that I had always doubted, to some extent, the existence of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. I knew, somewhere in the back of my 9-year old mind, that my mom was the only one putting gifts under my tree and hiding eggs in the back yard. This same thought process came to me again several years later, dealing with a much more serious matter.
Seventh grade was an important time in my life. It was at that time that I realized, “Hey, I am the one who decides what I believe, and what I believe doesn’t necessarily have to be the same as what they’re telling me to believe.” I spent a long, long time thinking about the topic of religion. I looked up the basic beliefs of many different religions, and none of them really called out to me. And one day I finally discovered why that was. Just like I had never really believed in Santa, deep down, I had never really believed in God. It was both a frightening and exhilarating discovery for me. I was finally free of all the things my teachers had been telling me, but with that freedom came questions. “What happens when I die?” “What will my friends think?” “What will my family think?” “Will they still love me?” I decided right away that I would wait until my grandmother died to tell anyone. I knew it would just break her heart and I loved her too much to do that to her.
Eighth grade, my school converged with two others, and I was one of the new kids. When some of the other children learned of my beliefs, they judged me. “You’re just mad at God because your grandma’s dead!” one particularly cruel girl yelled at me on the bus. Even though it wasn’t true, it really hurt me. My grandmother had passed over the summer, and tears came to my eyes as I stared out the bus window. I didn’t not believe in a god because I had just lost a loved one, or because I thought that there was just too much suffering in the world, or because there was no proof. I believed what I believed, I was content with it, and I just wanted other people to accept it and move on, not taunt me.
Luckily, high school has been a completely different world for me. I was one of a small few to go to Camden Catholic, so I left all the cruel people behind. The people I have met here have been so much more accepting, and for that I am so thankful. Recently I have started looking into Buddhism. I like the basic concepts of it, and belief in a supreme being is not a requirement for membership. I don’t quite know yet if it is for me, but I think it will help me work to improve myself, without the help of any church or god.
I classify myself as an atheist. Although it has been hard to always stand up for what I believe, I have never doubted it. I respect other people regardless of what their beliefs are, and all I ask is that they do the same for me. I feel sympathy for anyone who is persecuted because of what they believe, and I make it a point to never treat people how I was treated, because I know how horrible it feels to be on the receiving end of such judgement."
(Sorry for whacky spacing, blame Blogger!)
-Kate
