This week's featured post: When Leaving Jesus Means Losing Your Family

My goal is to blog weekly on a story that stands out and deservers special attention from our site http://www.atheistspot.com/. This weeks story was submitted by a user named "jewsforjesus", titled "When Leaving Jesus Means Losing Your Family."

In most of the world, including the US, it is often not a simple matter to come out as an atheist. Those of us that come from like-minded families or "free" societies take it for granted that we can decide for ourselves what we choose to believe. If I truly wanted to convert to Mormonism, my family would think I had lost it, but they would accept it and keep on loving me just the same. This simple fact is far from true for far too much of the world, including a huge part of the US.

"Not everyone is so lucky. Some families cannot get past revulsion and sense of betrayal they feel toward a member who has literally broken faith. Manifest examples of kindness, integrity, warmth, or generosity get reinterpreted. They were never real -- or the person has changed utterly."

This week's post illustrates how hard it is for "normal" american families to deal with a son coming out as an atheist, and the cost that is almost always overlooked to the persons coming out, such as their psychological well-being. In most of these cases, the family/friends feel as if god is punishing them. They hope by praying, guilt, shame, and often times violence, they can "save" their kid and bring him back into the light. The son or daughter is completely outcast, left on their own.

Now add to loss and self-loathing a crush of rejection by people who have loved you "unconditionally": friends, cousins, siblings, parents, or even a spouse.

And people say that religion is harmless. Families turn against their own when someone realizes there is no magic man in the sky. It's as if they are a completely different person the moment they admit to being an atheist, and nothing they do or say will change that.

The superficial reason this is such an issue for families and communities is because it
brings shame on the family from the community around them and makes the parents look as if they failed. And obviously it's more important to bring honor to your tribe then to let love your kids.

The real reason, as with most drama in life, is that it all comes down to spreading our genes (shout out to Richard Dawkins!). Just like the similar situation of a son or daughter coming out as homosexual, this news brings with it a reduced chance in spreading the family's seed. Innate in all of us is the need to propagate our genes. Anything that hurts this chance (e.g. unhealthy spouse, lack of food, lack of sex) causes drama and depression. A son or daughter claiming they no longer share the faith of the family not only means he/she is going to be roasting marshmallows in hell, but on a deeper level it means their culture and family heritage has less chance to survive. With that, there is less chance for the community to survive. In addition, to the parents there is the fear that the son or daughter will have a much smaller chance of having a successful life (how can an atheist make it through life without murdering someone!) and as such their chance to spread the genes of their parents is diminished.

One last thought...it is really amazing how similar this situation is to coming out as being homosexual, as this article points out. Your coming out is followed by shock, denial, violence, attempts to convert back, etc. Even the coming out process is similar. One day you realize that your whole life was an illusion, brought on by society and the need to be normal. One day you realize what you've known all along. The truth. And there's no going back.