Posts » De-christianization
A week ago I completed my quest to leave church. It’s a good feeling to have the quest behind me, and I wish everyone who want to do a similar thing should be able to do it easily.
Since I was baptized in a protestant church, I had an easier task than most people in Poland. Leaving catholic church is no easy task here, and when trying to do so many people face scrutiny by their relatives. I think the strongest opponents to my move would have been my mother’s parents, but they passed away a couple years ago, and not having them around anymore helped me. To be honest, if they were still around it may have not been so easy, probably given the fact I was postponing it for years because of them.
What does it leave me with? I’m an atheist just like I was before being baptized 40 years ago and for the last 25 years. I soaked some moral sense from church teachings, but I’m glad I didn’t end up as someone who just blindly follows. And the older I get the more I see that churches, no matter which religion, are just ways of manipulating many for the gain of few. Be it money, power, or fear.
If you are religious then I’m OK with it. It’s a personal choice. But remember that you don’t need a church, someone in between you and a deity you believe in, to believe. After all, when religions were born, there were no intermediate structures, so why they should be needed at all?
I have one practice now: in all my actions I do my best to think of others first. Sometimes it’s hard to navigate so no one is hurt, sometimes I make mistakes, but being thoughtful of my actions has always felt much better and more natural to me, than blindly following some rules.