I suppose I've gone through many different stages in my journey to atheism. Here's my story.

I was born to a Christian mother and atheist father. My mother insisted upon taking me and my brother to church, and since she couldn't drive my father had to take us. I suppose he did it to appease her and in the hope it would make us more compliant children. As a child, I really wanted to believe in a god and was terrified of hell and the devil. My favorite part of Sunday School was the arts and crafts time. Because my father wasn't a believer, he always found something wrong with each church attended, so we drifted from one christian denomination to another. I went willingly until I approached my teens; part of my rebellion was a flat refusal to continue to go to church.

I remained an agnostic until I went through a personal crisis in my mid-twenties. I was in an abusive relationship and broke up with my fiance after 8 years together. A friend invited me to go to a Nazarene church with her and it seemed like just what I needed to deal with the fallout from the abuse and breakup. Little did I know, I was entering another abusive relationship that would last 7 years.

I married an Air Force man, my husband and I had a daughter, and during our travels we continued to attend Nazarene churches. I saw the ugly underbelly of it, found and wrestled with contradictions and hypocrisy both in the bible and in the "body of believers". My greatest struggle was with the concept that all people are born sinful and damned to hell unless they "accept Jesus Christ as their savior" and become "filled with the Holy Spirit". How could my precious innocent infant daughter be condemned to eternal torture? Eventually the light came on in my head that I was wasting my time, money and effort on a god that didn't exist, and a social club that offered no real benefits, just more and more "jobs".

I've been a happy atheist for 15 years now. I do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. I am not afraid of mythical beings or horrors in an imaginary afterlife. My relationships, my work and hobbies give my life meaning and joy. The knowledge that I only get one life motivates me to make the most of it!

- Cindy Wynia