I hate Sundays at work…

That awkward moment when a religious song talks about your guilt being gone after you accept Jesus. My guilt dissappeared when I realized I didn’t believe. They sing about not being able to go back to life without Jesus, and that God’s presence changed them. Well, I can’t go back to being a sheep. I can’t go back to blind faith and doing good things based solely on my fear of persecution. Now I do it out of the love from my own heart and genuine care for other people. I don’t need God or Jesus to be who I am. I don’t want to go back to being afraid to live a full, loving, fullfilling life for fear of sin.
I don’t want to be afriad of screwing up and going to hell for the rest of my life. So I wont. I live for me, and no one else.

Definitely shit that rocks.

So, this happened to me yesterday…

[Unrelated note: From now on, I will tag all life-stories, shitty happenstances, and general me-ness (excluding pictures) with “This happened to me.”]

As any follower I have had for more than a week or two would know, I’m a caregiver for elderly and disabled people. Non-medical, non-certified CNA.

Yesterday, I went to a client’s home for a 9 hour shift. First of all, she wasn’t even scheduled for that time. Her, the office workers and I didn’t even find out until the next day that she wasn’t scheduled because her daughter in law called to cancel those hours. So, the client called the office to ask if they had someone to cover the shift, unaware of the cancellation that was made. They called me, asked me to take the shift, which I did. But, I wasn’t told I would have to take her to church.

Now, escorting clients to places they need to go isn’t usually a big deal. It happens that most people have places they need to go, and things they need to do out of their house. It’s no big deal. I didn’t think escorting her to church would be a big deal, either. It was.

We rode her church bus to the church, got inside, sat down for Sunday school, and everything was going fine. I tried to find a place to sit outside of the Sunday school classroom, but there wasn’t one, so I sad inside with my client. The women in her Sunday school class were so pleasant and welcoming. At first. Before I continue, I’d like to say that as a rule of my job, I am not allowed to discuss religion or politics with my clients, my clients’ families, or my clients’ friends. This is obviously going to be difficult to manage in a church. I also made no mention of my atheism to anyone. Because of that rule.

When asked about my religion, I simply said that I was not allowed to speak about it at work because of our policies. They didn’t take kindly to that. At all. I was berated and constantly asked questions about my religious affiliations, my church attendance record, which church I attended, who my pastor was, if I was raised with religion, all sorts of other questions. Each I answered with a simple “I’m not allowed to talk about it while at work, or on the clock.” They persisted. I was asked questions in the middle of the Sunday school lesson, about why I refused to talk about “my lord and savior.” At one point, the Sunday school teacher singled me out by saying “Some people aren’t allowed to talk about their religion at work, for risk of losing their jobs. That isn’t fair. We should always stand up for our beliefs. And losing a job for our lord is a dignified thing to do.”

It wouldn’t stop. No matter how many times I politely declined continuation of the conversation, these women would just not drop it. By the time it came time for Sunday school to be over, and for the service to start, these women were giving me mean looks, talking about me and how some people are just “bad Christians” and tried several times to give me literature and other things related to their religion, and looked at me with disgust every time I politely turned them down.

I can’t even remember all of the horribly mean-hearted things these women said to me. The most I remember is having never felt worse about myself than I did right then. I just wanted to curl into a ball and disappear.

I couldn’t leave, and I couldn’t get away. And everywhere I turned, there was someone condemning me for being a non-believer, even though I was nothing but pleasant, courteous and respectful, and had never said anything one way or another about believing or not believing in any god.

Yesterday was just a crappy day.

pastaistheopiateofthemasses:

For those theists who actually believe that atheists are devil worshipers,

that’s actually a common misconception. Contrary to popular belief, we atheists aren’t satanists, but rather, we are the spawn of Satan himself, sent here to test your faith in God; the very being who created, and allows, Satan to live in the first place. Nbd :)

I just snorted mountain dew out of my nose…

What the hell?!

Welcome to my life.

pastaistheopiateofthemasses:

idk. i already post enough offensive shit as it is, i didn’t want to piss anyone off. it just peeves me that by saying “America is a Christian nation”, people are pretty much destroying everything our founding fathers worked so hard to build. i think it’s disrespectful.

Yeah. I feel you, bro. Like… I mean, I’m not even going to try to lie and say that the majority of Americans aren’t Christian. Because they are… But, the majority of our founding fathers were either atheists or deists, or believed that something created us, and then just left us to our own devices and moved on. There were less Christians than anything else. And even those Christians were so pissed about what the English Catholic church was doing to them before they left, that religious freedom was their #1 priority. Total religious freedom.

I can understand why the “under God” thing was added to everything in the 50s… It was something to hold onto for most Americans, and it was beneficial to them then. But, it serves no purpose now and it only tears people apart.

Not to mention, I’ve heard so many religious people say that by people who believe in a different god, or people that believe in to god asking not to have religion incorporated into our government and public schools we’re taking away their religious freedom… But, if we put our godlessness, or different gods into their schools and government, they’d be calling the same thing.

I’m not bashing all religious people. But some of them need to realize their hypocricy.

Teen Girl Exorcism Squad: "Half of the population is probably affected by demons..." ⇢

youmightbeanatheist:

The video on this one alone is worth checking out. ROFL!

Brynne said she can tell when someone is demonically possessed when she looks into his eyes.

Wait wait wait… which one am I … now!?

:P

“When you look at that person, you could just see the evil looking back,” she said.

O_o

The girls say there are many different types of demons, each with their own names and personalities. One demon, Brynne said, is named Jezebel and is very proud and haughty.

“There’s Hate, Murder, Anger, all of those are very violent demons,” she added.

Uh… those are emotions. Not demons. 

May as well believe that love and kindness are angels. Those are also emotions. Idiots. 

Reading this kind of made me want to cry.

I mean… I understand that exorcisms can actually help people. (Ask me about it, I have a real reason I promise)…

But, these girls and their father charge over 400 dollars for their “services” and abuse their “gifts” and “skills” and it makes me sick. And then say that most people need more than one exorcism.

They’re taking advantage of people and it makes me want to cry.

atheistsconfessions:

[submit your atheist confessions here]

Except that that’s a hugely asshole-ish thing to say. Not all women are forced to wear burkas. Some of them do it because they feel like it’s the best way to live in modesty. I understand if you makes you sick to see a woman that only wears a burka because she is forced. But if it’s her choice, you can just get over it.

I actually think the whole thing behind the burka is really sweet (when it’s not used in an oppressive way and the woman is wearing the burka by choice) because if a woman chooses to cover her face and only let her spouse see her face… I don’t know it’s just really romantic to me. It makes her nakedness, her body, her face, even her hair special to the one person she allows to see it.

atheistsconfessions:

[submit your atheist confessions here]

Then you, dear… Don’t know the meaning of disgusted. There’s literally nothin disgusting about it. I mean, if it makes you uncomfortable, whatever. It kind of confuses me, but… Disgusting? Hardly.

<improper use of words is my biggest pet peeve, btw.>