It's so great to talk to friends who had a mix of both. Life without religious beliefs. Life with them.
We talk about one of the hardest things: how frustrating it is when you're going through a phase of doubt or struggle and you tell a churched older brother or sister and they give you some nice advice or tell you about some relevant bible passage or personal experience. You feel a little better. They nod sympathetically. "I know what you're going through."
And when you listen to them but you're still struggling a week later (sometimes longer, like a year), they just look at you like, "Why is it so damn hard for you to just have faith?" And you feel like the stupidest person in the world. Let me rephrase: the most lost person in their world. Because you are happy to be secular. You feel liberated without all these annoying religious obligations sometimes. You are pro-choice and you support the LGBTQ community. So people look at you like you are crazy. They stare at you and you know they're thinking, That person desperately need God! Mmm...yeah, you must really know what we're going through, don't you?
Then everyone wants to pray for you. Everyone [secretly] pities the fact that you've "fallen away," that you're struggling just because you have lost life's only key to meaning in this universe and you have transitioned back into satan's happy little world. You have been deceived. You are too proud.
Even if this is not really how everyone thinks, that is how they act. So sometimes, I only climb back out because I can't take the pity anymore.
