The Downside of Growing Up Christian

 I am a Christian. I grew up in a Christian household. But one thing I've noticed, a lot of families that insist they live strictly by the Bible, often harbor kids that grow to be killers. I'm bringing this up here because I was watching a video of the tragic side of reality TV shows. One of those portrayed was an episode of Wife Swap. I used to watch Wife Swap. It was very interesting at times. There was this family who lived completely as the Bible says. They lived on a farm, the kids were taught strict discipline, and hard work ethics. One of their boys, who was a teen at the time of the filming, was more reserved than the others. He was crying because he was afraid of his mom finding out he watched television. The kids never even dated other kids. That was not allowed. Basically it was like the WBC 201. And you know how angry those children are. Not just the children, their parents are very angry people too. At the end of that episode of Wife Swap, where the two sets of parents meet each other, the visiting mom showed her anger at the Christian mom for not letting her kids basically have a life. They walked out of the room, still yelling at the Christian mom.

Well, several years after that episode of Wife Swap aired, the one child, who was more reserved than the others, ended up killing his mother and youngest brother. It turns out he had some mental issues. I mention all this because I've noticed a bit of a pattern. The more religious a household is, the more likely the kids are to become killers. It happened with Richard Ramirez. His parents were uber-religious! It happened with Tyler Robinson. And I can understand the feeling myself, because it almost could have been me, or my sis. Our dad, when we were growing up, was not quite as forceful with religion. It was rare that he ever went to church with us. But our mom was seriously religious. To a point of it being sickening! I was forced to go to church every Sunday. I hated it. Church was too long for me, and too boring! And there were too many people!

I'm not saying the people there were bad, most of them were quite nice. But I just hate people! I never wanted to go to church, I don't like it. I still don't like church. Over the past 30 years that I have been on my own, I've probably been to church maybe less than 10 times. And 5 of those was only because I promised a friend if she took me to some classes I wanted to take, I'd go to church with her on Sunday. But after the class was over, I told her I really didn't want to go back to church. The people were nice, for the most part, but I just don't like being surrounded by a bunch of people. I'm not a people-person. I'd rather stay home in the company of my animals. Maybe because I am a recluse, but I just don't feel comfortable around a lot of people. It was bad enough having to go to school Monday through Friday, it made it much worse having to go to church on Sunday too. That meant I only got one real day of rest! Saturday!

Animals never connive me. They accept me for who I am. My dogs are always happy to see me, and I literally miss them when I am away from them. As for people, except for family, and a few really close friends, I don't tend to miss people as much as I do my animals. That's the main reason I don't like going to church or school. I only went to school because I had to. But only my mom was forcing me to go to church. I remember I couldn't wait to turn 18 so she would not be able to force me to go to church anymore. Thus, I could have my whole weekends off.

Most times when I went to church, all I did was draw pictures, or work on story ideas, I rarely talked to anyone. One day, as we were coming home, my mom was threatening to punish me when we got home because of something she saw me doing in church. I asked her what it was I did, and she said "You know what you did!" and I said "no I don't." All I remember doing was drawing pictures. I wasn't hurting anything. My mom kept reminding me how she was going to wail into me when we got home. I still have no idea what I did that made my mom so angry that day. But that wasn't the only such incident like that involving some connection to church. She didn't wail into me, BTW. Dad made her calm down. And I still never learned what it was I did. But it was cases like that that was the reason I hated going to church so much. If I did do something so angering, I probably don't remember it because church was so boring, my mind went to sleep, and whatever it was I probably did it without knowing I did it.

I hated church, I hated how my mom forced me to go to church, I didn't want to be around any people at all. To this day, I still hate going to church. But I still consider myself a Christian. I figure GOD knows where I am, I can worship HIM no matter where I am sitting. The next time I want to see the inside of a church is at my funeral. And all those people we knew in that church, most of them are gone now. We went to a Pentacostal church. The people were mostly nice, but I am just uncomfortable around too many people. I think that is why so many killer kids come out of religious families, because they are not really allowed to have a life. Imagine not being able to date someone just because you're scared of what your highly-religious parents might say. It's very confining. And it's not fun.

For example, my sis liked modern rock n roll music (in the 1980s). Our mom did not like her listening to that music because she claimed it promoted devil-worship. One day while my sis and I were at school, our mom snuck into my sis's room and threw away all her cassette tapes that she recorded with all her favorite songs on the radio. My sis was so mad! But see how I mean uber-religious parents just don't want to let their kids have a life? I mean, who wants to listen to religious music day in and day out??? It gets boring after a while. And I heard most of the songs my sis used to listen to, and none that I've ever heard promotes anything close to devil-worship! Not even the really hard metal rock from the 80s did.

I think in some cases, parents should let kids explore. Not in all cases, I would not condone sneaking out at night, or killing anybody. But some cases, parents should learn to give their children a bit of freedom. Forcing kids to do something they really don't want to do is just going to make them resent the parents.