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Originally Posted by Rodney
Anyway, whatever religious organization she's part of may be giving her a structure she doesn't have in the rest of her life. A structure, and a sense of being loved.... But some people do snap out of it, especially young and intelligent people. Most Christian cults are inherently contradictory in many ways, and the intelligent mind may eventually find the contradictions too much to bear, no matter what the social pressure or price.
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This is precisely what happened to me. I was a nice, agnostic/pagan girl up until I was 14 years old. Then I started running with the goody-two-shoes crowd, and didn't stop until I was about 21 years old. I wasn't totally extreme, but I really honestly LOVED Christianity and what the church offered me, and I thought everyone should share that as well. I got both of my parents to convert, went to an evangelical Christian college, went on a mission trip, etc.
And, in the end, I'd like to think I was intelligent enough to see through the shit, once I analyzed away the need for structure and comfort in the form of a fundamentalist religion. My evangelical friends really respected me when I was explicit about my beliefs, but they have not been as close since I "drifted" away and started being more abstract about God. Believe it or not, I think even my parents "worried" about me, even though I was the one who converted them. Everyone thinks I'll eventually wander back to the fold. I doubt it. My sense of spirituality is too resilient now to be forced back to a rigid religiousity, but that's the devil's work to many evangelicals.
Anyway, some people change, and a whole lot MORE don't change. I only know a handful of people from my Christian university who let go of religion after graduation... the rest of them are still very folded into the fold. I think they are nice and good people, but they will never be my close friends again. I don't say anything about them, they don't say anything about me (though I assume they pray for me still). Hope it stays that way.