Any Ex-vangelicals?

[Tiger8]

40. When it's in your head as a child....

I grew up with an "End Times" religious fanatic mother, and heard preachers blaring on the radio all day long, and 5-10 mailers arriving daily.

We lived like paupers. The money saved from buying a new pair of jeans could be used to save souls - so how could I be so wretched as to want anything? "The Lord is my Shepard I SHALL NOT WANT!" I was so beaten down and shamed by the radio preachers, that I believed my soul was too far gone for salvation.

I was relentlessly bullied in school and the neighborhood, and yet, my mother beat it into me that I never fight back. My biggest fear was a call to my mother with a report of me "being bad" because mother would have beaten me to a pulp and then disowned me. If and when I complained about the bullies, she would read me scriptures about Jesus saying that if somebody slaps your cheek, to offer my other one too. They hammered nails into Jesus, so I just had to endure. She would tell me this is a sign that we are in the End Times. The world is evil.

I never allowed myself to think clearly about religion, so when I became an adult, of course I ended up in a right wing "Bible Believing" church. I felt so damn guilty and ashamed, I would have given anything to anybody promising to take away my torment.

It was a long, painful, costly road for me to get free. I would leave one right wing church, and revel in being bad. But then, something would happen, and I would end up right back at another right wing church. I'm also gay, so that complicated things to where I was straight, then gay, then Christian, then Republican then two of three, then all three, then none of the above. And then repeat it all over again.

What got me out of each cycle? I'm sure the rampant hypocrisy among fundamentalist churches, religions and their followers played a role...but it was reading Ayn Rand that began me down the path toward escape. She was adamant that it was impossible for God to exist, and went about proving it. She blew up the twin myths of religion and racism. And Ms. Rand did a remarkable job of providing me with the "virtue of selfishness" where the best path was to take care of myself first - something that was sorely missing from how I was parented.

I am not a follower of Ayn Rand, and can't stand people who blindly drone on about the virtues of Laissez Faire Capitalism. And I have a "Higher Power" Recovery from religious abuse....it is a life long journey, and taken from multiple sources, including Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families.