I was brought up in the Brethren Assemblies, with a lot of influences from the Indian Brethren. My family read the Bible aloud and prayed together twice a day, in the morning and in the evening. We pray before we ate, and we had a weekly memory verse that the children would repeat during our prayer time. Every summer we went to Vacation Bible School (think Jesus Camp) and learned about Jesus, and how we were all inherently evil and He had died to save us from ourselves, but that we would never cease to be evil, only cease to desire to sin, and though we could never lose our salvation, we could continue to hurt Jesus.

Friends who were not Believers were seen as detrimental to my spiritual growth, and I was constantly reminded that all my friends were going to Hell unless they were brought to Christ, and that if I spent too much time with them, I would lead a worthless life before God: Saved, but unable to produce 'good fruit' because I was living 'in the World'.

When I was younger, I did believe in the things I was taught, or at least as much as a child could. I did think that God would hear my prayers and was answering them; when I felt calm after praying for safety or help for another person, I attributed the calmness to 'feeling the power of God working in my life' and considered this active intervention by God in my life.

As I grew older and became both more observant and more cynical, I became frustrated at many aspects of both my particular experience with Christianity, and Christians in general. I felt that the vast majority of Christians were hypocrites, picking and choosing what portions of the Bible to obey while condemning others who did the exact same thing for not picking the same portions as them to obey. Worst in my eyes was the fact that many people I knew who professed to be a Christian actually devoted time to reading and studying the Word.

Within the chapels were other kinds of problems that led me to question the Bible itself: Women were not allowed to speak in morning meetings, and had to cover their heads at all times. They were expected to raise the family and be completely submissive to their husbands. There was a family in the last chapel I attended where the husband loudly and proudly proclaimed that, because of the sin of Eve, women must go through childbirth without any painkillers in order to honor God's wishes. He also didn't believe in most medication, and both his toddler sons have numerous physical problems and one is developmentally delayed as well. The wife looks about twice her age.

My parents, whether because of the religion, or for other reasons were extremely controlling, and would use really creepy methods in order to figure out where I was, who I was with, and what I was doing at all times. As a result, I got damn good at lying.

I'm currently sort of straddling the fence, trying to find the best time and the best way to tell them I no longer believe in this. It'll mean basically being disowned, so I have to become completely financially independent first. Honestly, its somewhat stressful right now, just because I haven't yet cut the ties. It'll be a relief to no longer feel as though I'm living a lie, but I will be sad to be shut out of the network of people who were basically all I had growing up (since I wasn't allowed to have close friends outside of the chapel or family).

There's also a whole fun new set of questions that keep me up at night, like hey, so now that I don't believe in Heaven or Hell, what do I think happens after I die? which are in one sense no different from the questions we all struggle with, but in another somewhat different, just because I did once hold such strong convictions. It's hard to let go of a God I once heard speak to me--in some ways it feels like the death of a friend.