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My parents didn’t raise me religiously.
Part of it was because we largely kept to ourselves, and part of it was because my parents grew up in Maoist China, a society that was heavily atheist and squashed popular religious movements in the countryside with violence. As such, my parents weren’t necessarily Christian, Buddhist, or any religion — they were just atheists, and religion was never a large part of their lives.
I’d heard stories from my friends of parents who forced them to go to church every Sunday. When they revealed to their parents that they didn’t believe in God, their parents broke down or got angry at them. I have heard so many stories of kids who have grown up in the Church that no longer believe in God, and it begs the age-old question for me as I get older:
How will I raise my kids with faith?
My situation is unique in the sense that I didn’t believe in God until I was 20 years old. I was a staunch atheist who thought I was above all these dumb religious people who believed in make-believe. I used to hate over-the-top, fundamentalist Christians who imposed their faith on others. I realized how wrong I was by meeting a lot of Christians who treated people, including myself, with a kindness…
