Christians were not any more moral than anyone else

My father’s side was a lot different.

My grandfather on that side also passed away in the mid 70s, after a fatal stroke. Poppa was a lovely fellow and as far as I was aware, growing up, he was my real grandfather. Mum and Dad always referred to him by his first name and it never even struck me to ask Dad why. I guess when you are kids you accept a lot of things without question which is why it’s so easy to indoctrinate children into religion. 

I had no idea that my true grandfather had died before I was born and that he was an abusive scumbag, so my dad never talked about him when I was young. Gran however… my dad’s mother… wasn’t exactly all that wonderful either.

She was the type of person that seemed to think that children should be seen and not heard. Whenever we came for a visit, my sister, Lee and I were immediately sent to a corner of the lounge to play with a box of toys and weren’t allowed to venture anywhere else in the house in case we broke or dirtied something. Fortunately, her box of toys had a lot of cool stuff in it and it kept us entertained most of the time, but we had to remain quiet. No noise otherwise we got growled at. 

Gran (as well as her former husband) was a very committed Christian and she was heavily involved with the Salvation Army. She had a large piano accordion and would often get on it and we would all sing hymns and choruses in the lounge. That was about the only time us kids were allowed to make any noise. Fortunately, both Lee and I were good singers.

Her Christian beliefs took a bit of a toll later in her life.  She was sure that the devil was attacking her especially once when she took a fall that put her in hospital.  

After Gran passed away in 2005, Dad was a lot more open about the past and revealed that Gran had never really accepted him due to the fact that he was born with a cleft pallet.  She had said to my mother that Dad was all brawn and no brains.

I used to feel a little guilty about not visiting Gran very often as an adult, but hearing about this sort of stuff, made any guilty feelings go away very quickly. Especially as she never did anything to prevent her husband from doing the things he did to his kids. 

Throughout my life I have rubbed shoulders with many Christians and there were plenty of wonderful ones. However everywhere I went there were also awful ones and I learnt that just because you were a Christian didn’t mean you were a good person with good morals. And later still I realised that you didn’t have to have God in your life to be a decent human being. Atheists, in general, have as good morals as your average Christian. In many cases better!