Kelly of the Phoenix

I was born into Christianity, being a Southern gal in the Bible Belt. My father was agnostic or an atheist and my mother was raised Southern Baptist. I was baptized Methodist (my mother got angry with the Southern Baptist preacher saying my father was evil or whatever ... ironic thing is that he was ultimately right). I felt Jesus was real and was my friend (this was helped by my father and mother including letters from both Santa and Jesus every Christmas ... until they learned from my elementary school I was telling everyone the letters were real). I considered my parents to be moral authorities, but as I grew older, I started to realize they were at best hypocritical. My mother is mentally ill and my father is a sociopath. It was severely damaging to realize that no one, not one adult, truly believed what I had had drilled into me since childhood. I feel that God helped me realize it wasn't the moral lessons that were the problem, but the failings of the people giving the lessons. I started to read more about Christianity and other things (I'm a science geek, even since I was a child and tried to read Grey's Anatomy before elementary school) and realized just how far and how vast reached the lies and hypocrisies. For a long time, I tried to keep up the faith, especially since it was of supreme importance to my maternal grandparents, who took us in after my parents divorced. However, now that both grandparents are dead (my grandfather died in Oct 2014), I no longer feel the need to "fake it." I still believe in the morals (in general) that Christianity taught me, but because I see that the hypocrisy started even with Jesus ("Don't make public spectacles ... let me teach you this in a public spectacle"), I can no longer fake emotional support for Jesus or his followers. I think he meant well, but frankly I consider Buddhism and the Mahabharata in Hinduism to be far superior in fleshing out compassion and morality. So, for the sake of it, I no longer consider myself or label myself Christian even though really it's just in protest of how it was implemented.