Important Lessons I Learned in Church [View all]

As a youngster, starting about age 6, I attended Sunday School each week at a local small town Presbyterian church. My parents, who were non-believers, sent their children there to learn about the dominant religion in the United States. I attended each week for 12 years. Here are some of the lessons I learned:

1. Do not ask difficult questions. Instead of answers, you will receive punishments.
2. If you are challenged to memorize parts of the Bible, do not memorize the entire Book of Matthew. When called on to recite what you have memorized, you will be told peevishly to sit down after reciting the first chapter.
3. Keep your distance from the older man who teaches the 10-year-old Sunday School class. He will try to touch you in unwanted ways.
4. Be wary of making friends with the church's pastor. He will be fired soon because a Deacon on the church board made a pass at his wife, who told him to leave her alone.
5. Do not expect the Youth Minister to be punished for having a shy 14-year-old girl perform oral sex on him, even if he is caught in the act. He will just be sent off to another church, and the family of the girl will be shamed into leaving town.
6. If you are a bright, outgoing 17-year-old high school senior and are invited to teach a lesson at the adult Sunday School class, do NOT choose Jesus's teachings on hypocrisy as your subject. Just don't do that. Really.
7. When you enlist in the military, do not try to attend a local church of your home denomination in the town near your training base. You will be advised by a Deacon that you should attend services on the base, instead. You are not welcome there, because daughters.

Those are some of the lessons I learned in Sunday School.

I stopped going to churches, and all of those things stopped happening to me.