As most young men here, I went through an attempted religious phase to bring some meaning to my life. I've never been religious, nobody in my family is religious, and I've always been an atheist. Because of cultural familiarity, I went for Christianity. This initially consisted of reading books recommended here and on /lit/. The classic Christian authors. St Augustine, GK Chesterton, Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, and C.S. Lewis, in addition to the Bible, including the most promoted version here, the King James Version.

I found some aspects of reading these authors very comforting. The idea that all my earthly sorrows and misery will simply vanish if I believe in Jesus and that I will be able to meet my relatives in heaven. A few nights I did feel something, I cried and prayed to Jesus to save me. But many things rubbed me the wrong way. In the Gospels, Jesus often came across as very manipulative and prone to emotional blackmail. He often makes unreasonable demands of people, some on the face of it absurd. I further fell for the "go to church" meme. I went to church on Easter Sunday and Christmas Eve. I went to two different Churches, an Anglican and a Catholic one. Now I know many here say orthodox is the real church, but they were far away from me and it was not realistic for me to travel 3 hours.

My impressions were not favourable. People seemed very desperate to believe. Many of them were older. There were not that many young people. I was one of the youngest. There were some young families, but they were not the brunt of the flock. We sang songs and hymns on both occasions. They gave me some cool old copies of song books. People were friendly, but I couldn't shake the feeling that they really didn't know whether any of it was true. They were desperately trying to convince themselves of it. I felt like I was in a room of very frightened people, scared of their own shadow and mortality. Clinging to superstition and stories to cope with it.