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My parents are Hindu, quite religiously. I was born into it (not born AS
one, I know), "baptized" as one, and was stuck having to pray before we ate
on Fridays. Aside from this, things weren't too tough or fanatical, but
again, I never questioned it. Then, about three years ago, my family began
to pull apart a bit and my mother started to go to temple every Sunday,
taking my sister and I with her. (My father is out of the country.) Again,
I accepted it, until my sister had a nervous breakdown from other things
and was sent to Malyasia to recooperate with my grandmother. In the next
nine months that she was gone, I think I visited hell, as did she. But
nine months later, when we met again, she had turned fanatically Hindu,
becoming a vegetarian, and praying day and night, literally. I had become
a "closet" atheist, mostly because I was a little scared of how friends and
family would react.
I think I came out after a couple of months, just because I couldn't stand the idiocy of it. You see, when friends started to hit bad times, I found that I didn't like the thought of them turning to an imaginary God to help them. I believed (and still do) that the strength lies within them (and everyone) to pull yourself through it. And as this became my advice to them, they began to realize that I didn't believe anymore. Thankfully they took it well. I only told my parents a couple of weeks ago, even though I've been an atheist for about four or five years now. I think that my mother is praying for me, and my father says that he's going to have a long talk with me when he comes back, and my sister still thinks that this is just a stage. This might be crazy, but I think that if atheism was shown to be just as charitable, good, pure, loving, etc., as Christianity, it would have the same appeal and effect. Maybe that's my calling in life: to prove that. |