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The Scriptures Begin For Me: Let the Mind Fuck Begin

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Christian or Atheist Teen?

April 1, 2012 Mind and Soul

In 1986, I started high school as a year 7 kid. I kept some of my old friends and gained some new ones. One friend I seemed to spend more time with was a Christian girl. I knew her from primary school, but we didn’t have much to do with each other back then. However, we’d been placed in all the same classes together, and out of those people, we had the most in common with each other.

In high school, I grew to really value her friendship. She was a good person, and smart, too. Scripture continued to be taught to us. In the early years, it wasn’t so bad, as the scripture classes were smaller, and the hecklers of the class prevented the teacher from getting any messages out to us. But there came a time when our entire grade was put together into one big scripture class in the school hall. Try heckling that, motherfuckers!

It seemed that the older we grew, the more brutal the ‘hell warnings’ became. By now, I had also started going to a youth group that my Christian friend invited us all to. Since she wasn’t allowed to do a whole lot in a social capacity, we would go to these youth group sessions, so we could do something fun with her. Also, youth group was fun. We’d go bowling, to the movies, to see (Christian) bands, all sorts of stuff. We got along well with most of the other people there, and some of us in the group became romantically interested in some of the males there.

At the end of each session, the youth group leaders would give a sermon. Those of us who weren’t there through the church and rather, were there to socialise, became fidgety and whisper to one another about something more interesting. This was discouraged. It became clear early on, that ‘we have given you these fun things to do, the least you could do is to give us a few minutes of your time and listen to what we have to say’. Oh-kay then…

So, on a Friday night after having some fun, we’d listen to talks about ‘eternal life’, ‘thinking about your future’ (ie, will you go to hell), and horribly, a lot of it sunk in. So I would lie in bed at night and start panicking about death all over again. I made a decision to do the bare minimum required to get away with avoiding hell, just in case it did exist. Not that I was entirely convinced. But there was always that ‘what if’.

Sometimes, we would go to ‘youth alive’ concerts in Sydney, and the trips were organised by youth group. I fucking hated these things, but they were usually on in the school holidays; the point where you were so bored you could blow your brains out. Youth alive concerts meant to me, that I could catch up with all my mates at once (as a group, we didn’t all see each other together often in the holidays), and have something to do.

These were huge concerts. I’m not sure if one was in the entertainment centre, but I do remember one was at the Hordern Pavillion. Just to give you an idea of the magnitude of these things. There were a lot of charismatics there, or ‘happy clappers’ if you want to be politically incorrect. People like the ads on telly I saw as a child, acting as though they were high on drugs, waving their hands around, picking up the ‘frequency’ of ‘god’. For fuck’s sake. I just wanted something to do.

Of course, I knew none of the songs they performed. That was cool. I just danced to some of it, anyway. I remember one time, I was sitting next to a man in our group, and he was standing up with both hands in the air. What he was doing I do not know. Trippin’ out, maybe? There ended up being a row of ‘em from our group, all standing up, hands in the air, hands clasped together. I was hunched down, trying to blend in with the chair. Moments like these made me feel so uncomfortable. Why did they have to carry on like this??

But it got even better. Oh, yes. He decided to tell me to stand up. Being the polite person I was, I did. He grabbed my hand high into the air. I let him, and looked down to the ground, my other hand over my forehead. Then, he looked at my friend next to me (who, like me, was here for the ‘something to do’ factor and didn’t want a bar of the religious element) and motioned to me to grab her hand. I had been internally pleading that he wouldn’t do this to me. Christians who go out of their way to make a non Christian feel uncomfortable to make a point, shit me to tears. Not all Christians are like this. To those who are not, thank you. I tried to get my friend’s attention. The music was so loud, I couldn’t say to her, ‘sorry, but he’s making me grab your hand’. So uncool. Us mates never held hands.

She didn’t look (clever thing) so I grabbed it and thought, ‘fuck!’ She looked at me like, ‘what the fuck?’ My Christian friend on the other side of this friend would later recount this story in tears of laughter at how miserable I looked, and how our other friend’s hand just flew up into the air all of a sudden. My friend that was smarter and possibly more ballsy than I, pulled her hand down, and for the rest of the song I was standing there, with one arm attached sky high to the other people tuning into ‘god’ through the air. Or whatever. I’m sure I looked as miserable and humiliated as a wet cat.

I remember another time at one of these ‘youth alive’ concerts, another friend of mine (atheist or agnostic, but decidely not interested in this) and I had been rolling our eyes for the duration of this concert far too long. The Christians in the entire stadium were now worked up to fever pitch. There was a guy on the microphone talking in his compassionate, ‘ask Jesus into your heart’ voice, and there was uplifting, slow music playing in the background. My mate and I knew what was comin’ and we weren’t sticking around for it. Shit was about to get full on.

We both decided to head outside for some fresh air and some peace and quiet. You know things are dire when a pair of teens start seeking that. Before we made it to our aisle, the man on the mike said, ‘and anyone who wants to ask Jesus into their hearts, I want you to come down here, right up the front, to the front of the stage, to show that you’re ready to give yourselves to Jesus!’ In horror, my mate and I gave each other the look: ‘fark!‘ and we bolted down the aisle.

No one else had gone down the front yet to give themselves to Jesus. So the man on the mike was extremely excited to see us run down the aisle. ‘Look! We have our first people coming down to the front!’ This was a nightmare. Everybody cheered us, and a blinding spotlight was shone upon us. Now, I know I said I was a polite kid, but it had dawned on me by now what a liability my people-pleasing was becoming. My mate and I both agreed to just piss off out the door. Still, no one had walked up to the front of the stage. Awkward.

Anyway, not our problem. Besides, when we poked our heads in later, there were loads of people crowded around the stage. I think by the time I had these two high-pressure incidents, I just stopped going to Youth Alive concerts anymore. I’d rather sit at home with nothing to do.

I also got myself a boyfriend at Youth Group. I was 16, he was 21. I could only manage this relationship for two weeks, one, because he started talking to me about ‘asking Jesus into my heart’ and wanting me to take Mike Warnky tapes home to listen to (yeah, I can see my parents being thrilled with that) two, because he actually wanted to meet my parents. His reasoning was that once my parents learned of his new found love for Jesus Christ, that would put their minds at ease. Oh really. You just have no idea buddy.

I remember when he first started asking me about where I stood on Christianity and I said, ‘yeah, I want to, but I don’t really know how’. Which was a blatant lie. I didn’t want to start an arguement and I was still going through my, ‘what if hell is real?’ thing. You don’t get a Christian’s hopes up like that. I can see where I made my mistake. The situation made me realise though, that I was of two minds about the whole thing. I didn’t want a nasty afterlife, but I also didn’t see why I had to live a life I didn’t believe in now, particularly since it clearly was going to involve acting ‘high’ when I wasn’t and making a fool of myself.

A few months after I left school, I decided it was time to make a choice one way or the other. Was it gonna be my way or the avoiding hell way? I wasn’t going to these events so much now that I was old enough to go to pubs, and was only putting in an appearance once every few months so I could spend some time with my Christian friend. There were a few friends I’d made there that I was happy to see (including what would be my future sister in law) but the rest of them? I really had nothing in common with them anymore, and wasn’t particularly invested in spending time with them. Some were highly alert to the fact that my friends and I weren’t ever going to take on their religion. I’d see their eyes widen and their hackles go up as we approached.

I think by the time I left school, my Christian friend was asked to pass on the message that we were too old to go to youth group. This was as we neared closer to the age of 18. Then we were invited to ‘young adults’ functions, which my mates and I only did once or twice, because many of the Christians would sit in one group and we’d sit in the other. Of course, my future sister in law was always brilliant towards us.

I ended up deciding to discard ‘god’. I wanted to live my life as a good person, and to do certain things that ‘god’ deemed a ‘sin’, that I didn’t. Premarital sex, drinking, blaspheming. It’s very hard when you’ve been raised in a home that feeds you on a healthy diet of Jesus Christ, God etc as curse words. I didn’t see the point of giving that up. With enough time and space away from any sermons, I began to realise that no, I don’t believe in the Christian god, or in heaven or hell. Once again, being a good person, making mistakes along the way, was more than enough for me.

I miss my Christian friend. In high school, she’d invite us to youth group, youth alive, and later, young adults. She’d bring me these god magazines to take home, and made me promise to ask her if I had any questions. I always took them politely and read them from cover to cover. All I felt when I read them was deeply sad. There were teens writing in, torn up because they were masturbating or gay, and being chastised for it. That if they didn’t want to burn in the eternal fires of hell, they’d need to pray and put a stop to the ‘behaviour’ they were engaging in.

I kept an open mind the whole time through high school with that friend. She wasn’t my best friend, but she was right up there. She was one of my best friends. I spent many years learning her way of life, and seriously considering it. Then I chose my way. I chose happiness. My Christian friend and I made small attempts, efforts at catching up. It became clear very quickly that she didn’t want a bar of the real me. She didn’t approve, and she couldn’t save me. I still respected her beliefs, but the time came where she could deliver no more god mags to me, there were no more events I would go to. I’d had enough. And in time, she had enough of my ‘lifestyle’. My partying, my premarital sex, my drinking. In all fairness, there were many times I could be self destructive, but when she gave up on me in the end, I wasn’t told it’d happened and I didn’t know why.

It wasn’t an official thing, either. She wasn’t there one minute, gone the next. She drifted away slowly until I realised that too much time had passed and she was no longer there. I was gutted. I rejected ‘god’ and lost a friend. A good one, I thought.

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The Scriptures Begin For Me: Let the Mind Fuck Begin

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The Scriptures Begin For Me: Let the Mind Fuck Begin

March 31, 2012 Mind and Soul

I‘ve been writing my story about my experiences with religion thus far, and let me just say that we’re at the part of the story where the mind fuck begins. Remember how I talked about how simple life was before religion came into it? This next step in the journey ensured that I would never go back to being that pure child, untarnished from things that didn’t, shouldn’t matter to me, ever again.

I’ve mentioned before that I was interested in learning about why people believed in Christianity. Now, I had tried asking my parents, but it was a taboo subject when I was in primary school. It was acceptable to say ‘that rubbish! Don’t you even worry about that, love,’ and that was all. I didn’t know what people got out of it or how it was possible to believe in it in the first place. I think I had very good reasons for not asking my peers who did believe in it at school. Certainly, I hadn’t acquired the mature skill of tact yet either, so it was probably best I didn’t.

As a child with an atheist upbringing, what I needed was someone willing to sit down and talk with me about it and just answer my questions. Simple questions, such as what do Christians actually believe? How do they even take it seriously? What’s the point of the whole set-up and how do they benefit from these beliefs?

So, on the one hand, I had the adults at home telling me ‘it’s just stupid!‘ and nothing else, and the only other adults would be, for starters anyway, the ‘teachers’ at scripture at school. Not really what I would’ve preferred, but hey, when you’re a curious child, you take what you can get.

It was either in second or third grade that I began attending scripture classes. My parents were cool with it, but then, we’re not talking about catholic scripture classes, we’re talking about Church of England classes, which is where they plonk any ‘doubtfuls’ or ‘doesn’t really come from anywhere’s. I can’t remember if I’d asked if I could go, or if it was their choice. I don’t think my parents remember either, but I have since asked, and they both had agreed I was at an age they felt was suitable for me to go so I could make my own mind up.

I also went on in later primary school to go to a Bible Club after school once a week, but I won’t go into detail here because the experience was much the same as scripture and it’ll just bore you. The only thing I’ll mention about Bible Club is that if my maternal grandmother was staying at our house, my mother would make me take the bible I was given in a brown paper bag. Odd. I thought Grandma would be happy to see that? Looking back, I realise it may’ve drawn attention to the fact that I was never Christened, and therefore not something my mum wanted to spoil a lovely visit from her mother with.

It was a bloody awful lot to take in, can I just say that? I found it very hard to keep up with. I was taught about Adam and Eve and the talking snake. My reaction to this was pretty much, ‘bugger me, a talking snake!’ as the joke goes. I still didn’t get how people believed this, but it sure was juicy enough for me to keep listening and have some questions answered. In hindsight, it may have raised more questions than answers by the time we were through.

I found ‘god’s’ ‘logic’ very strange. To punish humans for all time because some chick ate a damn forbidden fruit. I didn’t have a clue ’til years later that it was an apple, because the teacher never said what it was. It used to make me wonder if Christians are still supposed to eat apples now or not? What if I eat an apple? I didn’t understand the point of the story where Adam and Eve, after eating the apple were like, ‘ZOMG!! I’m nakies!’ I listened intently to the part where ‘god’ made Adam out of a speck of dust. ‘Hmm, cool magic trick,’ I thought to myself. I still wasn’t getting why people believed any of it yet. That the ‘teachers’ would actually say all of this with a straight face. Seriously. I couldn’t come up with this shit if I tried.

We learned that we are all born sinners. We all did bad things at some stage. ‘Yeah, no shit,’ I thought. ‘So what? We live and learn.’ I’d never heard the word ‘sin’ before this day. At some stage, it was also casually thrown in that ‘if you don’t believe that xmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus, then you don’t deserve to celebrate xmas’. This is something that stayed with me all these years, and I’ll talk more about that another time.

Over time, I learned a lot about hell and how it’s a place ‘you don’t want to end up in’ with much finger-wagging. Never heard much about heaven. Funny that. When I did hear about it though, I used to wonder why doing the right thing because it was, well, right, wasn’t enough. Why did we need to be motivated by reward and punishment? I was already a mostly ‘good’ person really. Yes, we’d established we’d all done ‘bad’ things, but I knew at that age that that’s life.

Then I began to worry, ‘what if it is true and I go to hell?’ Over time, this became my fear. At first, I thought, ‘well, I’m mostly a good person, so it shouldn’t matter, surely? If hell does exist, I don’t think I’d deserve to go there..’ Until after a while when I discovered that you had to believe in ‘god’, to ‘ask Jesus into your heart’ (what the flying fuck does that even mean??) to avoid hell. I was never overly concerned about getting into heaven. Only avoiding hell, if it existed.

So, if I wanted to avoid hell, I had to believe, just in case. Only trouble was, I still thought this religion was a load of crap. I didn’t believe there was a god, I didn’t believe the tales. Yet, I knew nothing about death and became scared of what happens to us when we die. Which is funny when you think that before this exposure I’d never thought much about death or let it worry me too much. I was taught that ‘god’ can hear our every thought. This was when I became paranoid. ‘If he is real, he’s gonna be so pissed at me’, was my thought. Then, in my mind, I’d throw in the thought, just in case hell was real, ‘I do believe in you!’. It’s as though my mind was no longer my own. I potentially had my own little peeping Tom.

I didn’t want anyone in my head, spying on my thoughts. Making me second-guess every little thought I was thinking. I already had someone in my head, and that was me and my ol’ conscience. A buddy who’d always served me well and never failed me. It was no longer enough to be a good person.

It was at this stage of my life that I developed insomnia. For hours, every night. I became acutely afraid of dying. In time, I became afraid of dying in my sleep. I would lie in bed, alone in my room, picturing hell, thinking about how it would be if it existed. Of course, there was that other inconvenient issue that any kid with atheist parents who is being exposed to Christianity goes through; ‘if hell exists, my parents will go there! That’s not fair! They’re good people and I’ll never be able to convince them.’ So excellent to burden a child with that baggage. Thanks so fucking much, scripture. All I wanted was a few answers. I also never took these fears to my parents. They’d think I was insane. I think I was insane at the time.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was getting the answers, alright. This was what it took to make me consider ‘believing’ or trying to pretend to believe in my mind that I believed, in case I was wrong and ‘god’ was listening. The ultimate mind-fuck.

I don’t have these worries now of course, but the insomnia was a special little bonus I got to keep right up until this present day.

No matter how fucked up my head was getting from all of this, I still chose to do the right thing in my day-to-day life. Well, as much as any normal, primary school kid is capable of. I didn’t do it in case ‘god’ was watching; I did it because it was right and that was reason enough to do right. I chose to do the right thing, and took some twisted satisfaction knowing that ‘god’ had nothing to do with it.

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The Day I Found Out I Was a Freak

March 30, 2012 Mind and Soul

You’re probably wondering why on earth I’m sitting here with a Spongebob Squarepants beach towel wrapped around me, huh? Sh! I’m channelling a memory here…

I was in Infants’ School, which was our local public school for kids in Kindergarten through to second grade. My Mum had given me an old towel she didn’t want anymore to play with. I think I was using it to wrap my dolls up with, or whatever place my play would take me. For some reason, I took it to school with my other toys.

We were sitting down at the benches to eat lunch, before we would go to ‘the flats’, which was a big oval across the road from our school and was right next to the sea; Black Beach. It was either Autumn or Spring, so the sun was very bright and the breeze was bitingly cold. In fact, as I write this post today, the weather is identical and serves me to channel this memory all the better. I rarely bothered to put a jumper on in this weather, instead wearing just my short sleeved uniform, which was the dress I mentioned before.

I remember being in a particularly arrogant, snappy mood this day. I don’t know why. Why are we ever in bad moods?

Because I was too lazy to bring my jumper, I was, surprise, surprise, feeling very cold. So, I wrapped my bath towel around my shoulders. I can’t remember who brought up God, whether it was me or someone else, but I do remember clearly declaring to the group of children around me, ‘I don’t believe in God. It’s rubbish; there’s no heaven and you die and that’s it.’

First, there was stunned silence around me. Then anger. ‘Well, I believe in God!’ the other girls declared, one by one. I wish I could remember how the following argument ensued, but I will tell you that I was the only one on my ‘side’. Sitting alone, arguing with a group of kids that ‘God is a load of bullcrap’ with a bath towel wrapped around me.

It was at that point that I realised I was very different from my peers, back then. And that I looked like a freak in a bath towel. In fact, there’s a good chance that it was pointed out that that’s what I looked like. I couldn’t understand this divide. I mean, I’m sure on any other day, I’d probably mentioned that ‘I don’t like Coke, it tastes like rubbish’ (if only I felt that way now, I wouldn’t have this caffeine habit going on) and no one gave a damn. But bring God into it? Big mistake.

All these years, I’d felt that my beliefs and of course, my families’ were normal. I thought most other people felt this way. It was only logical to me. I pulled that bath towel tighter and tighter around my shoulders, feeling colder and colder, shielding their shrieks of, ‘you’re going to hell!’ away from me.

So, I worked out that at school, I was the freak. My older brother wasn’t at this school, and he felt more strongly about this than I did. I was pretty sure that at this school, I was the only one. The Freak Who Didn’t Believe in God. Which confused me greatly, because all those years I’d watched the Christian ads on telly, with the ‘happy clappers’, I was so sure they were the freaks.

I went through a phase where I didn’t bother talking about it anymore, because I felt it wasn’t worth the arguments that would follow it. I didn’t like being made to feel like a freak for my beliefs, but it hadn’t yet occurred to me that Christians probably didn’t either. You have to remember it was the late 70′s to early 80′s and respect for others’ beliefs was not in vogue just yet. It never occurred to me that others around me didn’t feel the same way or certainly, that they would feel so upset or angry about it. Those early years of my life never prepared me for this.

One thing was obvious though: over time, it became clear that others were part of something that I wasn’t. It felt like a club that I was left out of, and didn’t know anything about. I wished I could just learn enough about it to understand why people believe what sounded to me like fantasy. Why do so many people in this world believe all these outlandish stories about someone they couldn’t even see?

In the next part of my life, I was about to find out…

Other Reading:

The Scriptures Begin For Me: Let the Mind Fuck Begin

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You’re Not Listening to That God Bull

March 30, 2012 Mind and Soul

In 1979, I started going to school. It was the sparkly, exciting adventure I was promised it would be. I loved learning everything; reading, writing, maths, painting, singing, you name it. I loved frolicking in the playground with all my new friends. I was five. My blue eyes were permanently wide with wonder and joy. I proudly wore my crisp, new school dress with my golden curls tied up in fat, bright blue ribbons and always made sure my white socks were pulled high up to my knees.

I also was put into a scripture class. Loved that too. You can be sure that in kindergarten (the first year of school in New South Wales), that if it happened at school, I’d love it. Because school was the be all and end all in my mind. The teachers were like movie stars and I was sure they knew everything. In scripture class, I was given a big work book, chock-a-block with brightly coloured pictures. I was thrilled about this, since all our other school workbooks were in black and white.

I didn’t understand the pictures at all. They seemed to have the same sorts of pictures I’d seen at my maternal grandmother’s house: the creepy bearded man, the creepy, smug woman, both in robes. In one picture the bearded man was standing on a bright green mountain.

‘I wonder what this story is about?’ my young, enquiring mind mused. ‘I wonder what that man is doing on that mountain? What’s going to happen in this story?’ I think the class had two ‘teachers’, obviously not our usual ones. There was talk about how we would all have to prepare for this ‘thing’ we had to do. I didn’t understand it then, and I don’t remember now the words they used as they were foreign to me at the time, but in hindsight, I think they were talking about preparing us for our communion or something?

I don’t remember God or Jesus being mentioned in this class that day, but they probably were. I had the attention span of a gnat and only remember admiring the pictures. I do remember though, being made to do this thing with our hands; ‘in the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit, amen’. I think we pointed at different parts of our body, I still to this day don’t know what the hell it was. I’ve been told, and can’t remember, but it’s some catholic thing. Will that do?

We were also told to take our books home (really? We get to keep this? And take it home? Wow!) and to take home the note which told our parents how much the book cost so they could pay for it. Ok! I trotted merrily through the rest of my school day and home again. When I remembered to, I excitedly showed my Mum and Dad, ‘look what I got!’ and I gave them the note so they could pay for it. My parents were always excited to see what I’d brought home from school everyday…

They were excited this time, too. Not in the usual, ‘that’s lovely, sweety! What a lucky girl you are’ way. This was different. Bad different.

‘Jesus Christ!! What the hell did they give you this bullcrap for??’ My Dad was enraged, furious, livid. Hopping around the house like someone’d just set fire to his St George football jumper. Oh, I realised! No wonder I didn’t understand any of it. They were teaching me bullcrap, just like the ads on the telly. Now I get it..I think. ‘I will not have any child of mine going to this crap! And they want us to pay for it! I’m not paying them a damn cent! How did you get your hands on this garbage?? They put you where? They want you to do what??‘ In an effort to calm my father down and explain the situation, I told them about the ‘father, son and holy spirit’ thing they made me do. ‘What does it mean, Dad?’

It didn’t have the desired effect at all. Fair to say it pissed him off even more, because now this was, in his mind, not just a scripture class on Christianity which would’ve been bad enough, it was a catholic class! Bloody catholics! Rah, rah, rah….

I was too young to have a clue at the time, but of course, now I know that I was sent to that particular class because my mother once upon a time, was a catholic. She was raised a catholic and sent to catholic schools. Got beaten by the nuns and all. It was a sensitive issue for her and my father, and they were determined that their kids weren’t going to have a bar of the catholic life.

I remember my Dad talking to me about it: ‘you haven’t done anything wrong love, but you can’t go to those classes. You’re not listening to that God bull.’ Fair enough, I thought.

It was confusing and worrying for five year old me, though. I loved my family and I loved my school. My parents liked the school and I was pretty sure the school liked them. Yet, here the two had a brutal smash. My two worlds never matched up again. I was surprised at the school as well. I thought at school they’d be too smart to teach bullcrap, as was basically how I understood the subject matter.

Next time scripture was on, I was sent to the headmistress’s office to read on my own, as I was the only child who didn’t go to scripture. I would be instructed to read to a certain page, then the headmistress would come back to check on how I was going. I could already read very well before I started school, so I loved showing off what I could do. I loved reading more than the teacher had asked me to so I could see her look of surprise when she came back.

It was fabulous. School was school again, and home was home.

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The Scriptures Begin For Me: Let the Mind Fuck Begin

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A Small Child, Free From Religion

March 28, 2012 Mind and Soul

There was very little religion in my life when I was a small child. By ‘small’ I’m referring to the most blissful stage of my life: between birth and when I began to go to school. My father was and is a hard-core atheist.

My mother was raised as a catholic until she was ‘saved’ by my father and became a born-again atheist. Many have baulked when I’ve shared that information with them. ‘Born again’ atheist? Does such a thing even exist? Is it even possible? Why?

That’s not my story to tell. I’ll only say that the concept is perfectly logical to me and whilst others may wonder how such a thing could happen, my feeling is, how could it not?

Over the years, I’ve heard some Christians claim that babies, children, are born with an in-built, intrinsic love for Jesus Christ in their hearts. I call bollocks on that. Babies and kids have no idea about the notion of religion or especially Jesus Christ, unless it is taught to them. The only knowledge I had about religion before I started school was from TV. I was born in 1973 and started school in ’79.

There used to be ‘community service’ ads about God and Jesus. I had no idea what they were talking about and had zero interest in finding out. It was obvious to me that these messages, thoughts and beliefs were foreign to me and were intended for ‘other’ people. Who? I had no clue. But I felt sorry for them, whoever they were. I also pitied the people in the ads. They didn’t seem very smart to me and I used to wonder why they got such a kick out of making such fools of themselves?

My dad used to call these ads ‘rubbish’ and ‘bullcrap’. I agreed. But I did fleetingly wonder why they would want to participate in bullcrap. My only other brush with religion at this time, was that my maternal grandmother had catholic statues and pictures in her home. I didn’t know who the hell they were meant to be, all I knew was that they creeped the hell out of me. Come to think of it, those things still have that affect on me.

I remember one other thing from around that time. I was either three or four years old. I was with my older brother, and I don’t know whether I brought the subject up or he did, but I remember him telling me that ‘there’s no god, there’s no heaven, you die and that’s it’. I remember thinking, ‘well, that makes sense!’ and going about my merry little way.

I was a whole, happy child, born and raised without a ‘love of Jesus’ in my heart. It was brilliant, and I wouldn’t swap it for the world. I didn’t think about God or Jesus that at that age, I thought about riding bikes, playing dolls, singing songs, drawing and how poop was the most hilarious thing ever; that, and….bottom! Hee, hee, hee, hee, hee…

My only regret of this time in my life is that I couldn’t remain this free from religion for the rest of my life.

What are your earliest memories of religion?

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The Scriptures Begin For Me: Let the Mind Fuck Begin