My momma had us kneel and pray every night before bed. I and my sisters were carted off to a Baptist church every Sunday. I always found it extremely boring and by the time I was 5 years old had already decided it was all fiction.
Years later, as an adult, I gave the Evangelical church a try. Again, I tried mightily to believe, to subscribe, to “practice”, even taking Bible classes. I had people “talking in tongues” over me, praying over me, forcing my head back as an indication that the Holy Spirit had entered my body. I was going through a deep depression and truly wanted to believe. I tried very hard, including making sizeable tithes every Sunday. The more I tried, the more I “read the Bible” and listened to the preachers preach, the more I felt like a failure; the more I realized I would never be “good enough” in God’s eyes to be a “Christian”; the more I realized I didn’t believe that God had such strict requirements (putting it plainly), if he really did love me unconditionally. None of it ever made sense to me.
When I questioned my pastor about my disbelief, his explanation was “The stories in the Bible are metaphors and not to be interpreted literally”. I decided at that moment that I’m too much of a literal thinking person to spend my life trying to believe something that made no sense to me; that the “Bible” was written not by Jesus, or God, but by a group of men who tried to think of every possible scenario to control the masses, and that the “Bible” is subject to convenient interpretation by those interpreting it.
Religion is a cult, plain and simple.
Well written, well explained. I had similar experiences.