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A community-developed guide to surviving a loss of belief
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This website is a community forum where you can share your ideas with everyone about the topics posted. Simply click on the place at the end of each topic where it says in small letters, "comments" and read what others have shared. You may also add any ideas you think would be beneficial to this community. You may do so using your name, a nick-name, or completely anonymously. Thank you for visiting. We look forward to learning with you!
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4 comments:
Don’t start doing EVERYTHING your previous religion restricted you from doing. Although going through adolescence was awesome, this journey doesn’t need to be entitled Puberty Part II. Some of those restrictions probably had some sort of value. I think it’s good to think about what values you still admire in other people and in yourself (if your first thought is none, just keep thinking). Some of those values may be worth keeping.
If you choose to do some “used-to-could-nots,” I recommend not doing any of them in front of family or friends that are believers of your former belief system. The easiest way to create a wall between yourself and other people is to offend them. At least give it some time, you just may be able to salvage some relationships by avoiding any further offence. Hell, they just found out we have left everything they still believe in. Allow some time for this to soak in a bit. For some people, the fact that we left is going to be too much to maintain a relationship. For many, it will change the relationship. But I think we should do our best to keep what we can. Life is all about relationships.
Don’t spend much time and energy becoming Anti. I don’t feel that this is a good way of getting anger out, since it often only fuels it more. One of the things that bothered me the most about my former religion is how the members put themselves above non-members without even realizing it. Just because we are now more open-minded doesn’t mean we’ve earned the right to talk down to others.
Don’t try to hurry and latch on to a new religion. The idea of a new religion, maybe one similar to the former one, may sound comforting. The fact that we are now thinking more on our own, though, will likely lead to the realization that there are major faults in almost every religion. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we should never join another religion, but I think a better approach is to start by stripping out all belief and then building from there. Check out the Belief-O-Matic quiz at beliefnet.com and really think about the options. Don’t choose any option simply because it is aligned with the beliefs of your previous religion. Start out with a clean slate. For me, anyway, this was pretty phenomenal to realize I could now choose to believe whatever I want.
This may sound a little odd, but I’d encourage not to stop reading all materials from your previous religion. Like with any two-sided issue, it’s better to be well informed on both sides. Of course, we can open up to new books with new ideas now too.
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