A NEW CROP OF BIGOTS

A blog on this gay marriage thing coming soon.  This will tell the tale of where I stand for now

Born Unplugged Pt. 3

(Click here for PART 2)

Ever since my old man kicked off, the one thing that picks at my brain is the question of whether or not he was an atheist.  I doubt he knew what the word meant, but he was never one to prattle on about god or how great he was or how thankful we should be.  The main thing that leads me to think he was a non-believer was the fact that he never went to church when everyone else in the house was required to go.  Even at a young age I knew my dad hated church for almost the same reasons I did: It was a waste of a Sunday and furthermore, a waste of financial resources.  I always wondered why he got to stay home.  Because he worked and needed rest? But it was church; he had to go, right? In any case, that was one of my main issues about these Sunday outings.  Why was it ok for him to stay home? Why wasn’t it ok for me? Why was it that he and I were the only ones that understood how this was sucking away our money, our time together, and causing so much static in the home?

It wasn’t until sometime last year, while my father was bedridden with a stroke; he and my mom had a pretty heated argument where the exchange was something along the lines of my father saying he would go to heaven when he died and she said “you ain’t goin' ta heaven 'cause ya don’t believe!”  I could tell by the way he got quiet, that had hurt him.  But it struck a nerve in me as well.  Like all interactions that parents have in front of their children, this one left its mark. Even at the age of thirty their arguing was a cause of agonizing emotional stress and those words just burrowed into my brain and stayed there right up until he died.  At this juncture of my life where I’ve recently become open about my atheism, I have spent the past few months wondering who else in my family believes as I do.  How many are positive that all the screaming and shouting and sheer guilt that they have to listen to every week is 100% bullshit. How many of them are either too uneducated or too ashamed to admit that they don’t know what the answers are, but those answers aren’t in the big pretty building, the preacher, or the book?  Do I have the balls ask? Again, this is perhaps the one question I regret not asking my father. I’m just happy I was able to answer the question for myself.

--R. S.

Shock and Awe: A Former Christian Ponders the Cosmos (HD)