Expert: Bob - 3/2/2006

Question
Hi. To begin with, everyone in my family are Christians, some claim to be more religious than the other and so on but as for me I am not a religious person and I am leaning towards atheism. To begin, my mother and niece have reciently died. Before their deaths, my mother hardly ever went to church and did not bring up the topic of church or religion often -- She was a Christian but not very religious, and she never had me or my brother baptised, I guess her reasoning was for us to make that choice I dunno. I have been leaning towards athiesm before the incident happened but now its like everybody expects me to goto church every sunday and my brother is so gung-ho about going to get baptised and go to church, but I am not. I did go to church with them a couple of times though because I had nothing else to do on Sunday my choice was to be bored and lonely or go with them and I did feel uncomfortable there so I stopped going. So last week the subject of being baptised came up and my brother said he was going to get baptised and when my cousin asked me I said no because I didn't want to. So now they jump on me and try to guilt me into getting baptised. They never asked me what I felt they just got angry talking about I ain't going to heaven if I don't do it. They make me feel uncomfortable when I am around them on Sundays now. What can I do?

Answer
Terra,
  First off let me apologize for taking so long to get back to you, I must have skipped right over your question in my in-box, sorry.
  As a long term atheist I have found myself in the same situation you're in once or twice. Take my advice and stick to your guns. You don't need to have a big blow-up about it or anything like that, it's just that if you stay firm in your beliefs your family and friends will come around. What usually helps is letting them know that you support their right to believe however they wish but expect them to show you the same courtesy. What you are going through now will be the most turbulent times. Give it a little while and you will see that everything has a way of working itself out.

Bob