Monique (South Africa)

My father became an atheist on my eighth birthday. I remember my mother telling me one Sunday on our way to church that he didn’t believe in God anymore, and I don’t think I believed her, because I also remember asking him myself while we were waiting in line at a fast-food place. I suppose to my eight-year-old brain, the idea of not believing in God at all was very strange, and in fact, I was very upset by my father’s atheism. It felt almost like a betrayal.

Before this, both my parents had been very religious, and the stories and ideas of Christianity were an integral part of my childhood. Sundays were pretty much ear-marked for church, with my father leading worship, followed by a delicious Sunday lunch at my Grandmother’s house. My dad becoming an atheist changed all this. Not only did he not go to church anymore, but my parent’s marriage became increasingly strained, until eventually they got divorced.

Perhaps in response to my father’s atheism, my mother became a radical Christian. A friend introduced her to charismatic Christianity, a huge change from the far gentler, more conservative Baptist church we were used to. In those days, my mother would force both my brother and I to go to church with her, and although I initially was a bit freaked out by all these strange people doing strange things like ‘praying in tongues’ and ‘being washed in the Spirit’, I soon became used to it.

A few years later after my parents were divorced, my mother’s first boyfriend was this big Greek guy, named Mike. Mike was just as crazy as the rest of the happy-clappies, if not more so. I still remember hearing this crazy commotion coming from the kitchen one evening while I was watching T.V. and when I went to investigate, I found my mother lying on the kitchen floor, and Mike ‘casting demons out of her’, by praying in tongues at the top of his lungs, and commanding these so-called demons to leave my mother’s body. A disturbing experience for an 11 year-old, and to this day, I don’t know exactly what it was that my mother did to cause this douche-bag to assume that she was possessed.

What I do know, is that it was Mike who initiated in my mother a longing to rid her house of all evil, and she started with her children. She confiscated hundreds of some of my favorite books, and burnt them, because she thought they were evil, and she raided my brother’s room for all his favorite toys, which she also burnt. My father was of course upset about all this; he was the one who would console us on the phone after my mother had reduced us to tears, which happened frequently.

I realize now, that she only did this because she thought she was doing the right thing for her children, but at the time, I was extremely angry. Not as much as my younger brother. It was after one of my mother’s psychotic raids that my brother declared that he too was an atheist, like my father. The rest of our family and my mother especially, freaked out. She assumed that my father had influenced my brother, and blamed him for my brother’s announcement.

Despite all this, after an American Evangelical team came to our church, I ‘gave my heart to the Lord’. Much to my mother’s delight, I became increasingly involved in the church. Along with my equally religious cousins, I began to help out with the Toddler’s Ministry at the Church, and became just as outspoken as my mother on all of Satan’s hidden evils, much to the chagrin of my poor classmates. (They must have thought I was absolutely bonkers, and in fact, one of my school friends still teases me about my lunacy.)

My father could not watch me go through all this without saying something, and although I know he tried to hold back, he would often make little comments, or ask me questions about Christianity, and I would just roll my eyes, and pretend to ignore him, but I suppose those comments and questions stuck somewhere, and I became increasingly disturbed by what I saw in Christianity.

At high-school, we had a designated period every Wednesday, known as chapel period, and usually a teacher would prepare a Bible lesson of some sorts for us, up until a well-meaning church heard about this, and asked the school if they could take over these chapel lessons. During my junior years at school, these lessons were fine; in fact they were often a lot more entertaining than listening to a teacher ramble on, but as my concerns grew with Christianity, so did my concerns with what we were being told by these Church people. One Wednesday, at a stage when I was all but convinced that Christianity was a fluke, the preacher told the school that Hell was in Norway.
Yip. Norway. And how did he know this exactly? Oh, there was a hole somewhere in Norway, and it was very hot in this hole, and if you listened carefully, you could even hear people’s screams coming from this hole. Oh please. Even at the age of fifteen, I knew that this guy was speaking a huge load of b.s.

My mother couldn’t answer my increasing amount of questions, and I suspected that those answers that she could give were probably not going to be true in any case. I decided to ask my father. I asked him for his answer to a story that one of those church people had told us, about a Bushman finding a watch, and knowing that it couldn't have just popped into existence conclude that someone had made it; a story that was meant to be a metaphor for creationism. My father in turn, asked me another question. “If the Bushman, in his ignorance, assumed that the Gods had made it, would he be correct?”

After thinking for a while, and asking my dad probably hundreds more questions, I realized that he was right, and that I was, in fact, an atheist, and probably had been for some time. Perhaps in some kind of weird poetic justice, I had this realization on what also happened to be my mother’s birthday. I remember distinctly going outside and looking up at the stars, and feeling exceptionally vulnerable, and yet at the same time, far more amazed by the magnificence of the Universe than ever before.

I have lost many friends because of my atheism, friends who I never thought I would lose, but I have never once regretted my decision. Living with integrity is to me more important than having a large social life, and I know that the friends I have now, are friends with me because of me and not because of my religious beliefs, or lack thereof.