I was raised by traditional Roman Catholic parents and attended a Roman Catholic high school. Baptized as an infant, I confessed by age eight, and I accepted Communion by nine. I was praised by my religious education instructor for my reverence to God. Naturally, my parents were dumfounded when I told them I would not participate in the Catholic sacrament of Confirmation, in which I would have committed to the faith forever. 

“'After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself.” (1 Samuel 18:1) 

'David says of Jonathan: “Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women.”' (2 Samuel 1:26).

By this time, I had deconverted due to the problem of evil. Christian Robert Adams, who carries a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary, defines the "problem of evil" as the logical impossibility that God is all-powerful, all-loving, and evil exists (25; 67). He argues that perhaps God's good may massively outweigh evil, so that it barely seems to exist in proportion. I did not find this sort of argument convincing, as the fact that evil exists at all, and God for some reason can not convey his message without it, even though he is supposed to have the power to do that like he has the power to do all things... That just didn't comport with me. I have grown up to be a pacifist; to believe humans will eventually do anything we put put minds to, including abolishing violence. Regardless of whether you agree with me on that point, though, you must understand why I would think an all-powerful God should be able to figure out some way to accomplish his purpose without utilizing evil.

 The ends just didn't justify the means. Threatening eternal damnation, when I am told I am incapable of understanding eternity or the afterlife, seemed like something an all-loving God wouldn't do. An all-loving God would be empathetic toward small mistakes because his children could not understand the consequences of their actions -- they are, to him, children, after all -- so he would never hold them eternally responsible. 

And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Luke 23:24

The same way my father went into the store and instructed me not to draw on the cool gray paper he gave me, but it had his name written all fancy (with a signature!) so I wanted to add a fancy picture for him, too. So I drew, and I scribbled (for emphasis), and I drew, and I scribbled again (to cover up mistakes), and I poked holes for the eyes, nose, and mouth (the black ink just didn't give the authentic sense of "face hole" the way real holes in the paper did). I was only just learning to read. I wondered what "financial aid" meant.

Being reasonable, my father punished me as if I had colored on something that I wasn't allowed to, not as if I had potentially just costed him thousands of dollars that we really needed. I could never have paid that back off. I was ignorant, and I didn't have the foresight he did. I had no special skills, at least not what he considered special skills. I was great at fitting my head in small places, but my dad would never have paid me to do that. He just got upset the few times I got stuck. I would have had to work forever to pay that off, but my loving father would never had made me. 

He did try to make me get Confirmed, though. It was so important to my mother. I felt so heavy. I told my father as much, and he asked why I would not just do it then, for my mother. I told him I could not choose to believe, and if I got Confirmed, in a church brimming with irony, with women looking on, smiling, shushing their children and instructing them to respect the sacrament; and their husbands, reading the bulletin, to proud to exhibit boredom; it felt like I was lying to the whole world. And I have always been a very authentic personcde, never concealing my values or feelings. I express them responsibly -- constructive communication is a must -- but no one ever needs to wonder what values I hold. They can just ask. So lying to everyone like this would have been a betrayal of myself, and not even my deep love for my mother could supersede my need to be honest.