Todays question comes from Mike who asks….<\/p>\n
Name: Mike
\nMessage: Out or in? \u00a0I was raised in a conservative Christian household, but can remember questioning my faith from an early age. \u00a0I played along for the sake of my family, but finally decided about five years ago that I am in fact an atheist . \u00a0Now in my 40’s, I have a wonderful fiance’ and friends who share and\/or respect my beliefs, but I am wondering if I should “come out” as atheist to my parents, siblings, and childhood friends. \u00a0The prospect of this terrifies me. \u00a0My family are not just believers – they are committed Christians that feel you should be constantly in prayer, commit bible verses to memory, have a daily “walk” with Christ, etc. \u00a0I’m worried that this revelation would kill my mother. \u00a0Literally. \u00a0My father would probably react with anger and dismay. \u00a0I KNOW that they would spend the rest of their days praying for my lost soul. \u00a0I could face being ostracized by my sisters and childhood friends.<\/p>\nWhat should I do? \u00a0Do I spare my family the heartbreak of this news and continue to go through the motions? \u00a0Or am I betraying myself and lying to my family by not coming out?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Well Mike. That’s not an easy question to answer. In my own experience I was able to “come out” to most people in my family except my grandmother. I knew it would hurt her and I didn’t want to do that to her, so I avoided talking about it around her. To me, it wouldn’t have done any good.<\/p>\n
Some people will say however that by not telling your family that you are somehow not being honest with yourself. I think the flaw in this argument is that there are things that we already keep to ourselves because we don’t consider them to be appropriate. For example most don’t share their sexual kinks with their family. Why not? It’s part of who we are isn’t it? Aren’t we lying by not telling our families that we may be into tentacle porn? (Just an example people. Keep calm.)<\/p>\n
I think it’s a case by case basis. If you want to come out to those who you know won’t think less of you or that wont be hurt, than do so. I see nothing wrong though with keeping it to yourself if you think it will do more harm than good. That’s not being dishonest, that’s being compassionate.<\/p>\n
One last thing, and this is something I always say to those who want to come out. Before you do, be an example. Be better then they expect you to be. Be kinder. Be more compassionate. Be more. Then when you do come out, if they judge you, they will be judging their prejudice of you, not you. Eventually with time, they may see that, and it may give them peace.<\/p>\n
Hope that helps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Todays question comes from Mike who asks…. Name: Mike Message: Out or in? \u00a0I was raised in a conservative Christian household, but can remember questioning my faith from an early age. \u00a0I played along for the sake of my family, but finally decided about five years ago that I am in fact an atheist . … Continue reading “If I don’t come out, am I being honest with myself?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pB6tr-tf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1813"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1818,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1813\/revisions\/1818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}