How I Became a Humanist #3: A Brief Period of Atheism

At the same time that I was questioning Church of Christ doctrinal priorities, I was also questioning Christian behavior.  In church we were taught that Christians were loving, good and kind and that non-Christians were immoral.

I'd grown up poorer than most of my peers.  I was familiar with spam, government cheese, and government grapefruit juice.  I wore clothes from resale shops and hand-me-downs from people at church -  I sometimes got other kids clothes without them knowing that their parents had given them away.  This was incredibly embarrassing.

Me (front and center) with my adopted brothers and sisters.  We're standing on the deck outside the house.  The house siding is made of shingles.  The haircuts, glasses, clothes and even appearance of the house in the background are indications of poverty - though certainly not of desperation.  

On top of that, my family suffered a great deal when I was young.  My 4 year-old brother died when I was 7, less than 2 years after my parents' divorce.  After the divorce, my father almost never came around.  This was harder on me than he realized.  About a year after my brother's death, it looked like my grandmother would pass too.  She had breast cancer and a series of cardiac issues.  She was in and out of the hospital constantly even beyond the point when our house burned down, when I was 12.  From there I struggled a great deal with depression often to the point of being delusional.  The only other thing you need to know is that kids can be mean - this was true both at school and at church.

My brother's headstone

Around age 14, I started to grow out of my depression and actively fought my social awkwardness.  By 16, I was becoming well-liked at school.  The people at church, however, didn't change their behavior towards me.  The contrast between the two environments made me feel that Christians were more judgmental than non-Christians.  It wasn't only how they treated me, it was their attitudes towards others.  (I wonder if I would have noticed had they treated me well).

The truth is that I went to an odd high school.  Our class president was a young woman, and the vice president was a gay fellow.  Our school government had a Mexican woman, a black dude and a Muslim girl too.  This was in a predominately white school.  It was a school where I'd go to school activities like basketball games in black clothes and combat boots.  Admittedly, I was somewhat unique myself, but East Detroit High School was a place where anyone who wanted to get along with others pretty much could.

East Detroit High School

 The perception that Christians might be less moral than non-Christians followed me to Rochester College (a Church of Christ school).  My first year there was a social adjustment.  I was even poorer than most of the students there than I had been to my peers in high school, and my social upbringing didn't prepare me to get along with my classmates.  I was comparatively rough around the edges.  I felt ostracized and alone.  I deeply missed being in a non-Christian environment where who I was mattered more than what I could afford to wear.

I decided that if this was how Christians acted that I didn't want to be one.  By the end of my freshman year, I rarely attended church.  I was beginning to consider myself an atheist.  Then one night, I came home late to my mom pacing the floor.... (To be continued)