I grew up in the church and believed it all 100%. While kids my age were goofing around in church I was super into singing hymns, wanted to join the choir, and even wanted to be a minister. (Yes I was a little goodie two-shoes megadork.) I really loved bible stories -- the mythological aspects of miracles, creation, etc. really captured my imagination. I always had too many questions, though. First indication was I got booted out of my sunday school class into the older kid class because I kept having questions the teacher didn't like.

Then when I was about 13 and went thru confirmation (we were MS Lutheran, so the age this happens varies by denomination) I was going through a rebellious streak and really started asking too many questions. Pointing out the errors in logic of cause and effect, asking "why" too often, reasoning that damning someone to an eternity in hell for something like "using the lord's name in vain" was an incredibly disproportionate punishment that no just god could possibly deal out.

I could tell I was now the asshole kid the minister disliked. The cracks really started showing after that. What was a precocious curiosity when I was 6-10 was now viewed as dangerous to the other kids. I left the church permanently at 16. I saw too much hypocrisy in issues like discrimination against gays and gender inequality. And yeah, most of them are self-unaware hypocrites. They talk mad trash about their "neighbor" behind their backs while engaging in far worse, even commandment-breaking, behavior, all the while rationalizing it because they are "good christians". oy