This, coming from my 9-year-old, wasn’t necessarily a strange question. I am very front and center about my lack of belief and why. But, the moment was a bit odd. I had dropped by the house to do some deep cleaning, giving my soon to be ex-wife and the kids a much needed break from the tedium, when my young lad piped up with this question.

“I don’t believe in God. You can choose your own way,” I said.

“No. I don’t want to. I don’t believe in him.”

So I said, “Which god do you not believe in? There are millions, nay, billions of choices. Some are nice gods, some are less nice. Some are powerful, and yet others are impotent. Some pretend they’re powerful, while being completely worthless at getting anything done or protecting those they are supposed to protect. But, really, if someone in America talks about a god, it’s probably the Biblegod. That god is one of the self-proclaimed powerful ones, yet is incapable of helping out a little girl when she’s getting raped in a back alley.”

So yeah…I said that. I’m not going to pretend that the god, based on the Holy Bible, has any sort of semblance to this loving piece of garbage that churches want you to believe in. That love is the kind of love I’ve been familiar with and running from, my entire life. Love that is utterly and unconditionally conditional. Love that has expectations, or you will be mashed into a million pieces, or burnt in fire forever, for missing one small little step in the process of perfect acquiescence and worship.

Fuck that god.

As my kids grow older, they have family members that will try to capture their minds and hearts and woo them over to belief in that awful prick of an asshole god of the Bible. Well…it’s war for me. Sure, those family members and friends are terrified my children will burn in hell forever, but that’s really the point. I don’t want them to have that worldview. It simply sets them up to accept narcissistic abuse from real people, rather than the imaginary divine being they are supposed to worship with abandon.