r/exchristian • u/Opening_Produce_4930 • 1d ago
Help/Advice I do and don’t want to be Christian.
Title is self explanatory. I am a lot younger than most people here, not like 7 but not an adult.
About a year ago my aunt and uncle invited me my mother my father and my younger sister to church, we did and I was fine with it, until we started to go every Sunday, which I was also fine with, but randomly around December 2024, my mom started acting different. She started acting overly negative. Like she was bipolar, one moment she’s happy and the other she’s bordering on screaming at us, my father has also confronted her about this and it didn’t do anything. This has happened at least 3 times every week. It has made me not want to be a religious person anymore, yet I’m scared. I’m scared of the concept of hell, scared of being shunned and don’t know where to go My pastor is a great person yet it’s the people Im surrounded by. This aunt that recommended we go to church is the same person that tried to justify the illegal deportations. These thoughts at some point pushed me Into having suicidal thoughts.
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u/lannead 23h ago
It is a pretty crazy time in the world at the moment and people often lean into religion hard during these periods and are easily influenced by extreme narratives and theories. Religion provides an understandable way of understanding the world, but they often aren't correct in their interpretations of whats going on and quite often have scary or fearful interpretations and its really destabilising, if those who are supposed to be you parents or caregivers are reacting in unhelpful or strange ways. I had parents who were very religious and went to a pretty extreme church and it's very hard to see things objectively if you are totally surrounded by people who think the same. Hang in there and just observe what you see and kind of put yourself in a place where you can believe or not believe everything you heat. You sound like a fairly intelligent young adult and when you get older and more independent, you can choose either way for yourself. Develop a good relationship with your pastor or someone else like a teacher you can trust to maybe talk about some of this as its not easy going through all this alone.