Introduction

I am a former child of Christian Indoctrination.  If you think there is no hope for those deeply rooted in fundamental Christianity, it's quite understandable; but take heart, there is in fact hope.

This is an attempt to lay it all out and to help me understand my own deconversion, as well as show evidence that the whole "you faked being a christian" spiel is a load of crap.  So screw you, Ray Comfort.

My Upbringing:
My parents were baby Christians when I was born, but my mother quickly became involved, volunteering for AWANA and summer VBS.  We attended a non-denominational church, AWANA, and I was sent to a private Christian school.  My parents divorced when I was 6 and my mother stopped attending church and stopped taking me to AWANA.  I continued my education at the Christian school and went to a Reformed church with friends from school the weekends I was with my mother, and my home church when I was with my father.

Around 4th grade I started attending a group called the Calvinettes, and participated for a few years (not really sure what grade it went up to), and after that a junior high youth group.  Starting in 7th grade I begged my mother to let me go to a public school, but she refused.  She was so adamant that we go to a Christian school, despite being so poor that we had to do janitorial work for the school to help pay for tuition.  I might add here that she had shed any signs of being a Christian after my Dad left her, and to this day I am rather convinced her motive for sending us (my brother, sister, and me) was primarily a control factor...but I digress.

High School, yes, finally some freedom!  The time had finally come for me to enter into the public education realm.  I will spare the details of being ill-equipped to meet new people and make friends thanks to being in a bubble my whole life.  But I did okay.  Mother and her husband were moving to Montana, so about halfway through my freshman year I moved in with my Dad, his wife and my two half sisters.  My Dad had decided that at the start of the next school year I would have to attend youth group.  I wasn't very happy about the idea of entering a likely tight-knit group of people and not knowing anyone, but I dragged a friend and went.  I quickly became fond of the youth pastor and his wife, and felt connected in the group.  I also started attending AWANA once again, with the other kids in youth group.  There's a lot of personal information here that I will leave out, but I will say that my faith at this point had become a huge emotional/spiritual attachment.  It was at this point in my life that I had developed a deep sense of who I was as a Christian.

That is it in a nutshell, but a lot of personal details left out; which I may get to at a later time.  I learned nothing of evolution until high school, and even then I discarded it as wrong; and although I hate to admit it, I didn't even want to know because I was told it was contrary to the bible.  I had never heard the term atheist until maybe late in high school.  As far as I knew, atheists were not just people who didn't believe in God, but people who violently rejected him and hated Christians. (so sue me)