Evangelical parents finally got to my child
Grew up as an evangelical pastor’s kid - my dad continued to be a pastor well into my adulthood. I started to deconstruct 20+ years ago in college, and haven’t ever wavered or looked back.
My parents certainty have an idea of where I’m at now - I’ve had a few tearful confrontations from them - but we’ve never had a frank conversation about it, mostly because it’s easier not to. If they don’t know for sure how far gone I am, I don’t have to deal with more tears and pleading. So much of my life was spent having to unpack and justify my beliefs…I’m all the way done with that.
For my own sanity, I operate as though (and really believe) my parents have been tricked - they genuinely believe that Jesus is the way, genuinely believe that me not believing it will lead to my death, therefore genuinely believe their duty is to help save me. They’re never loud or mean - it’s very earnest and tearful. I haven’t ever felt the need to go no contact or confront them - I just hold them at arm’s length and treat them as people who believe differently than me.
Understandably, we aren’t close. They live a ways away, see my family and me twice a year at most, and don’t call often.
I have a seven year old, and we haven’t raised her in the church or faith in any way. We haven’t demonized any set of beliefs - we just talk about how different people believe different things. She’s been to church maybe five times in her life - all around visiting family for holidays.
It’s come up with her grandparents a few times, mostly around Christmas - “grandma and grandpa believe that this holiday is about Jesus being born”, “grandma and grandpa believe Jesus is…” etc. She’s only spent a little one on one time with them, and I know they’ve had some “Jesus loves you” and “god made you” convos because my daughter has asked me about it later - again, I just talk about it in the sense that everyone has their own beliefs.
Earlier this summer, my last grandparent passed away. We traveled for the funeral, and my dad led the services. Instead of honoring my grandparent, the service was a sermon about how thankful he was that my grandparent was a Christian and how we all have to believe Jesus is the way or we’ll perish.
In our few church visits with our daughter, we have managed to miss this message so far, but she definitely heard it this time. She whispered to me in panicky tears saying she doesn’t want to perish and that she’s sorry she never believed in god. I was already pretty emotional about the funeral, so I just told her “we don’t believe that” and said we would talk more afterward.
I almost thought she’d forgotten about it, but she brought it up again a few days later to ask me what “perish” meant. That really got me - she didn’t even know what the word meant, but the fear-mongering was so prevalent just in the way it was said that she knew to be scared.
I had a very similar “salvation” story - I was very young and prayed the sinner’s prayer because I was terrified by an Easter church musical - so this hit me extra hard. It’s come up a few times since then - I always try to reassure her that we don’t believe it, and if the god grandpa claimed to love was real, he wouldn’t kill people for believing something different. She kind of gets it, but the scare tactic worked. She said she does believe in god now, just so she won’t “perish.”
Thanks for letting me vent, if you’ve made it this far. I know I now need to have a convo with my parents about this boundary, which i hate, but I’m mostly just sad that I didn’t see this coming at a funeral, and that my daughter, despite my best efforts, was also a victim of the eternal damnation scare tactic.