As a boy I’d always looked around and had seen God.
My family was among the more than 19 million Canadians who identify as Christian, making up roughly 53 per cent of the population according to Statistics Canada.
We used to be a textbook religious household. We went to church every few days, went to Sunday school and I was even homeschooled until the fifth grade.
I remember some of the verses we cited, the stories we read, even fragments of the hymns we sang in church. The question of why we took part in the traditions never really dawned on me until much later in my life. I never questioned the existence of a God. I never bothered to examine what I was being taught in church until much later in my life.
God was always just part of the background, I accepted that He existed, without much question. I thought everyone had some kind of belief in God.
Non-belief was shunned in church, I was “taught” in Sunday school that what scientists said was little more than a joke, it was ridiculed more than analyzed.
One thing I vividly remember was when I was less than 10 years old. I never felt what many would call the “fear of God” until that moment in church.
During the service one day the pastor was talking about Revelations, he went on about how even the smallest sin would be judged when you died — no matter what it was.
He spoke about how the sinners would be taken by men with the faces of men and the bodies of scorpions, then taken to hell for even the smallest slight against God.
I cried into my father’s arms after the service. I was remembering everything I’d done that could be considered a sin. All of these things were running through my mind as the pastor spoke.
I don’t remember much about the church after that.
The religious significance of marriage is discussed in Christian households. I never considered the institution of marriage to be based on religion. I just assumed it was just something everyone would experience eventually.
Most of the denominations of Christianity believe marriage to be a sacred and holy ritual that honours God. To break this ritual was a sin backed by several verses from the bible.
A conversation with my father about divorce shocked me. From all the discussions about marriage, I thought the marriage of my own parents would last forever. Divorce could never happen to me.
Then I overheard the verbal fights between my parents. Several of them. I even attempted to intervene, all in vain of course. I couldn’t comprehend what had gone wrong, I was far too young to understand it. Eventually, it happened, and my family was split in two.
My family was among the 40 per cent of families who are divorced in Canada, according to the Merchant Law Group in Toronto, a firm that specializes in family law.
At the time I didn’t realize we were part of a statistic that significant, I figured there was just something wrong with our family.
As I grew older, though, I began to question more things, including my faith, and I looked into sources outside of Sunday school and holy men. I also began to accept my parent’s split, not paying much attention to the religious side of marriage anymore.
I love my family and I hold no ill will towards anyone who has faith, however my experience has left me a non-believer with admittedly unreasonable resentment at times towards religion. I doubt it’ll ever go away.