Anyone who knows me knows I’m a loudmouth. I’m also a feminist. An ‘oddball’. I speak loudly and until recently wore my hair, like my political convictions, mostly blue. Some of the things I ‘am’, though, aren’t so obvious, and one of those things is that I’m an atheist.
Why does the ‘A’ word stir up such strong reactions? You can love cats and not automatically be labeled as ACANINE, you can hate to ice skate and never be accused of taking rights away from Kristi Yamaguchi. I remember being afraid of the A word, what it meant and anyone who invoked it when I was a Christian. A-anything – NO – has such negativity stitched into it that a negative reaction is understandable to a certain extent. And if Christians are good people, anyone who isn’t… isn’t, right? If I get my morals and values from God, then where do atheists get theirs? What DO they believe in? Aren’t they afraid of what will happen when they die?
In 5th grade, I asked my parents if we could go back to church. Everyone in my tiny hometown was religious, after all, and I loved the idea of it; the music, the fellowship, the energy in a sunny morning spent in the sanctuary surrounded by like-minded people with smiles on their faces and love in their hearts. Once back in the flock, I adored the feeling of hitting the Sunday ‘reset’ button and walking out into the world recharged and refreshed. After all, I’d always cherished my Children’s Bible Stories that I’d picked out at a flea market when I was a wee one. I’d read it over and over, touching the pictures of angels with beautiful faces, tumbling blonde curls, and gold-tipped wings, in awe of the magic of it all. The Bible didn’t feel any different to me, at first.
A handful of years into my return to religion I began dating my first serious boyfriend, a sweet, similarly devoted Christian, and we shared the not-at-all-rare understanding of what was expected of us as young religious people in modern society when it came to sex.
People of my generation know this idea well (the ‘poophole loophole’ as it’s jokingly called, because good God-fearing girls save their ‘true virginity’ for marriage) limited to me performing acts for him, not receiving much of anything but a kiss on the cheek. I tried not to enjoy anything too much, since my purity, innocence, and virginity were, above all, my prize as a woman, and losing those would have brought so much shame to me and my family.
On the other hand, though, a girl in my world had to keep her guy ‘happy’ to keep him around (much more the culture than the words of my, again, very kind boyfriend). In the era of Britney and Christina, at the dawn of reality television and the blossoming of my womanhood, I’d been a ‘loser’ for so long, so I was desperate for acceptance. I did what I felt I had to do, and then prayed for the memories of Saturday night to go away on Sunday morning, cheeks wet with tears of confusion and anger with myself for always, always, always falling short of being able to be the Christian I wanted to be, the girlfriend I wanted to be, the ‘cool girl’, the ‘good girl’, anything positive at all. I didn’t fit in anywhere, always fell short, and wasn’t worthy of anything. I couldn’t mend the hole being torn in me, creating a world in which I was stuck between two ideals, constantly striving for and failing at reaching either one, and searching for forgiveness for things I wasn’t sure I even wanted or needed forgiveness for.
The beginning of the end for me as a Christian was in college, when a sermon was given by a member of Exodus International, a group committed to conversion therapy for gay people. I felt ill as I walked out of the sanctuary, a pamphlet from Exodus in my hand and congregants around me buzzing with excitement about what we’d just heard. Since I was young, I’d been in the theater, filled to the brim with LGBTQ people who didn’t seem to need or want change like that. How could anyone, let alone a good person, think something like this could be anything but wrong?
Fear of rejection from my religious friends and family kept me going along for years afterward, searching for increasingly liberal churches to find the truly ‘open and affirming’ one of my dreams, but since I’d begun to see some of the harsh truths I’d been ignoring, all was different. ‘Open and affirming’ still meant ‘love the sin and hate the sinner’, no matter what, and I couldn’t be okay with that. So many of the ‘taboos’ I was encountering as a young woman, things that to most are part of normal college age life, were laden with gut wrenching guilt and deep, depression-aggravating frustration. The odd disconnected feeling I felt creeping up each Christmas Eve & Easter, as we retold those stories I knew so well but that increasingly didn’t make sense – each book’s version of things was totally different, the ‘facts’ given filled with impossibilities, incongruities, and intolerance – grew stronger. The disturbing mistrust and fear of other religions, as if they were any different from us? I was dumbfounded that anyone could look at a Jewish or Muslim person and think, “I’M right. They simply need to be saved”, when that person looked back and thought the same things. What I know now is that what looked like faithfulness and devotion was actually fear. Fear that I’d go to hell if I didn’t believe or even if I didn’t believe hard enough – and, of course, I never seemed to be able to believe hard enough. Until I finally gave up believing entirely.
For me, in the end, it all comes down to empathy. There are all kinds of different ways to ‘be’ in this world, and some may make me uncomfortable at first. It’s human nature to want to identify with others and to be afraid of the unknown – but the next step after that initial feeling of “I don’t understand” must be “I WANT to understand”. There’s no shame in opening up to learning about other peoples’ experiences, the shame is in staying ignorant to something once it’s brought to your attention. If you don’t know someone, before you judge them by their look or their labels, learn their story, share yours, learn the value of ‘agree to disagree’ in some situations, and walk this world with open eyes and an empathetic ear.
For the record, ‘atheism’ is not a belief system or a religion, it is not taking anything away from or attacking anyone else, it’s simply a lack of belief in god(s) and supernatural beings. A (no) theist (religion). That’s it. Being ‘humanist’, ‘secular’, or just plain old ‘atheist’ doesn’t make me bad or evil. It doesn’t affect my sense of right or wrong, or my grasp on the concept of truth. I’m still me. Always will be.
Author: Tara Teschke
Email: [email protected]
Author Bio: I’m Tara, a self-diagnosed jack of all trades. Musician, manicurist, feminist, writer, and haver of opinions with a near-compulsive need to cover everything around me in rhinestones, studs, and glitter, because I’ve always believed that individuality is everything.
Link to social media or website: http://www.allsparklyandshit.com
