The Next Closet that People will Slowly come out of is…
Posted: December 12, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: atheist, christian, coming out of the closet, God 10 CommentsI have found a new group of people that I dearly love. I’m talking about you self proclaimed heathens, hellions, agnostics, and atheists. Just over one month ago I began reading books, blogs, and tweets from the unbelievers. And I found a group of people that had passion for their belief in unbelief. And I also began to feel sorry for them, and not because they didn’t know Jeeeeesus. It was because of how many of them admitted they are in the closet. They are atheist, but they can’t let their family know because they would be ostracized.
Think about that for a moment. Seriously, if you are a Christian let that flow through your purified mind. As a group, Christians are so judgmental or dogmatic that people in our own families run into their closet of doubt, because they fear anger or rejection.
And if you will notice, yours truly is anonymous! Yes, I don’t have my name on my Twitter account (@religionsuckz) or this blog. Why? Because I am fairly well known in certain areas of this wonderful land of the FREE, and I’m afraid of what people will say or do if they know the real me. The real me that still loves the teachings of Jesus, but wonders if He ever truly rose from the dead. The real me that loves the fact that my gay friends can get hitched. The real me that believes the only hell that exists is here on earth. The real me that knows the bible, that I love, is full of metaphors and yes…contradictions.
So I want to encourage all of us to come out of our closets of doubt when the time is right. We need to release ourselves from our secrets, because it is our secrets that will lead us toward anxiety and depression. In order to live life to the fullest we have to be authentic…we have to be ourselves. And there will be those that reject us, but do we really need those people in our life? Set yourself free, and I will join you!
religionsuckz.wordpress.com 
I loved your post. I have paid the price dearly for coming out of the closet so please approach with caution. In the last 2 years I’ve lost 3 jobs because my employers found out I was a nonbeliever. They were clever though. They didn’t fire me. They let me go using the typical excuse that they were laying people off. Well, interesting how other people who were working the same job I had, and even had lower work evaluation scores, were not laid off. In one such incident, my car was in the shop so I borrowed another person’s car for the week. They were atheist. Their car tag read “In Reason We Trust” rather than “In God We Trust”. Within a week, i was laid off. With another job they had bible studies every Wednesday for their employees. It was not a requirement to attend, so I didn’t.
No surprise that I was laid off there, too. With the 3rd job, I was in a conversation with some employees and one of them, who’d been working with the company for over 15 years, and was tight with the boss asked me what church I went to. I told her I didn’t go to church. She then asked me why? I told her I was a nonbeliever. The following day I received a call from my employer. It was my day off. I just happened to be in the area when he called, so I stopped by and that’s when I was notified that he was laying me off. Said it had nothing to do with work performance but rather the economy and he needed to ‘trim the fat’. The following week I called to check on my paycheck. A new employee answered the phone.
I live in the South, U.S. Word has gotten around, and I’ve yet to find a job. Nice Christian love, there. Here’s an extensive study showing that nonbelievers are not accepted in our culture.
Abstract:
Click to access atheistAsOther.pdf
@Victoria, I know that you know that it’s been proven statistically that Americans are more accepting of gays and Muslims than what they are of agnostics/atheists. And we all know how those two groups of are barely tolerated.
“groups of people are barely tolerated” that is.
Indeed.
Easier said than done. I live in west Tennessee in a town of about ten thousand people and my husband works for a religious (as most are) network of hospitals. We also have young children who attend a public school near our home. The first couple of years we lived here we had tried out (up to our deconversion) nine different Churches in the area. We attended three of those churches for two different periods (a few weeks to a few months) of time at each one. For us to fully come out, my husband might lose his job and my little ones could be tormented in school the rest of their lives. We are already considered outsiders because we moved here from southern California for my husband’s last post in the military. It’s not about following God or a god here in Tennessee, it’s about being a disciple for Jesus. I already know how horribly locals treat Jews and Muslims, I can’t begin to imagine what they’d do to non believers.
Now, I have come out to a hair dresser who’s a fairly liberal, young woman, an atheist appliance installer at my house and a family friend who was once agnostic. These are the only people I have shared my secret with locally. My long distant Messianic Jewish friend didn’t take it too well at all when I came out to her in a phone call. I recently told one of my sisters and she was pretty cool about it.
Sorry, RS, I appreciate your sentiment, but it’s not a realistic option for some of your readers. It looks as though it’s not a reality for you since you continue to be anonymous in social media. We have to be very careful about who we share our unbelief with because our spouses, lovers and children may have to pay a horrible price if we come out. I agree, it makes me anxious to keep this secret from so many people, but I have to be wise as to who can and can not handle my ideas.
That is a great point!
For me, the only hell that exists is… the one that lives within our heart; its where everything starts. * smiles*
awesome!
“The real me that loves the fact that my gay friends can get hitched.”
I know you’re not comfortable telling people in your life what you really think about religion, but I would encourage you to be open about this bit right here, if you can, because it could positively affect other people. Maybe it would help reduce prejudice/discrimination a little. And don’t forget that bi and trans people exist too, and are also affected by marriage laws. And that for a lot of LGBT people, marriage stuff isn’t even a priority because there’s too many other things to worry about (bullying, being kicked out by family, housing/employment discrimination, hate crimes, ostracization, homelessness, access to gender segregated spaces, access to medical treatment, etc. etc.).
Great points Midori! I am fairly outspoken about my support of the LGBT community. I put something about it on my personal Facebook and got blasted by one guy! It was shocking to read some of the comments.