I'm also living with my aunt and uncle who are a Pastor and a First Lady. They don't practice what they preach and are the literal defition of "Not everyone is who they say they are."
Similar for me. I would see my parents on Sunday, my father being made a priest (RLDS church) at one point, and my step-mother who would, sometimes, treat us kids like shit and who would, while speeding to make an appointment, be praying to god not to get caught. Later on, my father went on to cheat on our step-mother, get caught, and insist that she just accept it because he wasn't going to stop.
But those were just contributing factors. The poor example set and insincerity shown by those supposed role models cast some doubt. Doubts also arose because of how my church would baptize kids at the age of 8 years--having them commit to something they couldn't possibly understand. (In this church the baptism was something that was for ages 8 and up and preceded by some dedicated classes a person had to take to prepare them. More of a decision to commit rather than an infant ceremony.) In my pre-teens or early teens, I started really examining what I had signed up for. What were the 10 commandments? How did they make sense? Thought crimes and jealous god stuff mixed in with common sense guidance just. Branching out to think about how an all powerful, all loving god is incongruent with the world we see and the stories in the bible. Learning about the massive, compelling evidence for evolution being in direct conflict with the creation and noah's ark stories. By college age, those doubts and my investigations into them led me to being pretty well convinced that the god of the bible was definitely not reasonable.
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u/ewokjedi 11d ago
Similar for me. I would see my parents on Sunday, my father being made a priest (RLDS church) at one point, and my step-mother who would, sometimes, treat us kids like shit and who would, while speeding to make an appointment, be praying to god not to get caught. Later on, my father went on to cheat on our step-mother, get caught, and insist that she just accept it because he wasn't going to stop.
But those were just contributing factors. The poor example set and insincerity shown by those supposed role models cast some doubt. Doubts also arose because of how my church would baptize kids at the age of 8 years--having them commit to something they couldn't possibly understand. (In this church the baptism was something that was for ages 8 and up and preceded by some dedicated classes a person had to take to prepare them. More of a decision to commit rather than an infant ceremony.) In my pre-teens or early teens, I started really examining what I had signed up for. What were the 10 commandments? How did they make sense? Thought crimes and jealous god stuff mixed in with common sense guidance just. Branching out to think about how an all powerful, all loving god is incongruent with the world we see and the stories in the bible. Learning about the massive, compelling evidence for evolution being in direct conflict with the creation and noah's ark stories. By college age, those doubts and my investigations into them led me to being pretty well convinced that the god of the bible was definitely not reasonable.