Losing your faith is not a sin—It's an adventure.
Allow me to explain that this is not an attack on any religion.
Anyone can practice any religion or belief system that they choose to follow, but this is my story:
Growing up as a child, my family was half-decently religious (at least my father was). We would go to church every Sunday, and my dad would make us go to a religious school monthly to learn about the Bible. At the time, I just went along with it. I thought it was the normal thing every kid my age was doing. I agreed with most of the morals that they were preaching, but there was always something weird about it that stuck out in the back of my mind.
They say that doubt is common with religious people, and that it's a challenge of "one's faith." For me, there was more than just doubt, most of it made absolutely no sense to me, like Noah's Ark, or this idea that someone can come back to life.
After asking a few people, it was explained to me that these "stories," in the Bible, are often taken as moral guidelines and not taken literally. That only confused me more because that made me think that God could not be taken seriously as well, but it felt like a step in the right direction.
Eventually, I accepted that God was not real.
It felt weird, when I reached this conclusion, but it also felt right to me. It was as if I realized something that I had been trying to deny myself my entire life. Suddenly, everything in the world began to make a lot more sense.
I had found my true self.
I lived with this burden for a few years without my family knowing (except my brother). I was afraid of what my dad would think or how he would react if he ever found out. On the other hand, I wanted to be honest with him so that I wouldn't have to lie so much. After so long I finally managed to tell him about my actual beliefs and he reacted as I expected. At first he was angry, then he went into denial. In fact, to this day, he still believes that there is something inside of me that wants to believe in his religion.
In my opinion, I think I was lacking that something inside of me my entire life.
Since rejecting my religion I have become a much happier and responsible person. I act out of kindness because that is how I believe I should act. I work to make the changes in my life without asking someone else to do it for me. I've come to realize that there is no true good or evil in this world.
My idea of the universe is that everything happens as the result of of every action leading up to the next event. Anything that has happened was always going to happen.
There is no changing the past.
I have become very content with my belief system and it constantly helps me from day-to-day to live the life they I want to live. There are thousands of people out there who feel and believe the same thing and they have yet to come out of the "religious closet." I believe that if you disagree with a religion that your family is part of, it is important that you openly admit to them how you feel.
I understand that one of the biggest fears someone in this situation would have is being rejected by your peers, and maybe even your family, but you have to understand that if someone can't accept you for who you really are, then you shouldn't want to be friends with that person anyway. If your family can't accept you then maybe you don't belong in that family. By being true about who you are, you find the friends who care enough about you to become your new family.
It's a tough world out there, that's why it's so important to find the people who love you for who you are. More importantly, you must love yourself no matter what anyone else tells you. This is the key to happiness because losing your religions is simply taking a step closer to finding out who you really are.
