Pretending for their sake

United States
July 2, 2012 11:08am CST
Ok, before I say anything, I want it to be known that I believe in God and in no way feel like the religion is false. I respect all religions, despite my own beliefs. Now, I'm curious as to what to do about my situation. I'm a deist. If you don't know what it is look it up. If you want to be lazy I'll tell you that deists basically believe that God made the world to run on its own and does not actively play a part in the lives of people other than through their belief in Him. Basically he made a watch to watch it run. Now, my grandparents roped my sisters and I into their church that they were attending. I mean this literally, we only went with them because they asked, and then my granddad forced my grandma and us to join the church with him. That's not the problem. My problem is that I'm not a christian. I don't believe that God answers prayers, I don't believe that a book that has been re-written several hundred times throughout history holds any real power in the world, and I don't believe that any God would let His people suffer on this earth the way we are now. But I digress, I'm curious as to what I should do about this problem, the problem being that I'm a deist in a family of Christians. It makes me feel awkward when they tell me to pray and read my bible when I don;t believe in it. I don't want to participate in any of these church events or even look at my bible let alone read it. It makes me feel like I'm disrespecting the religion by pretending to be a part of it, and though I have my own personal beliefs, I don't want to go around disrespecting others' religions, that's now how I am. I don't want to come out and tell my family and have them pray for me or look at me differently, but I don't want them to think I just plain don't care about what they're telling me and wanting me to do. What should I do? just put up with it all or what? I'm not telling them, that's a given, but I'm sure there are other options I'm not thinking of here...
1 response
@choybel (5042)
• Philippines
2 Jul 12
I am a Christian with an open mind. A Catholic who strongly disagrees to some of it's practices. So I think I know a little of how you feel. It must be really hard for you though. It wouldn't be easy to tell your family about your belief and it would be tiresome or useless to just go on with it, so what can you do? I guess in I would have to suggest that you just have to live with it for a while until you are in an age where you can actually go and live your life the way you choose to. Take this events as lessons and experiences, just learn as much from it as you can. Try to just look at it as a learning experience, maybe like math or history, where you don't really want to hear about it but you have to study anyway to pass.
• United States
2 Jul 12
Thanks for your thoughts. i guess I'll just end up and have to do that then. I've been living with this for the past couple years. A few more wont hurt me. Though if there was any other way to deal with this that I hadn't thought of I wanted to ask so that I could cover all of my bases. Thanks again man, I appreciate it.
@choybel (5042)
• Philippines
2 Jul 12
I am happy to be able to help. Good luck on this and all your other endeavors in life!