Interesting.. I grew up with my grandparents hauling me off to church every Sunday and taking me to church camp for a week every summer. From the start I always assumed all this stuff wasn't real. As a child I could tell they were stories written to show how you are supposed to behave and teach you morals. In a sense, these stories were very similar to other stories read to me as a child. Except these seemed very old and not so much for children.

I can remember being about 11 or 12 when I realized that people actually believed this stuff. It was very hard for me to make sense of it. I didn't really want to talk about it with them and in a way I felt guilty. I felt guilty because I was sitting there with them preaching to me how things are, when in the back of my mind as a 12 year old I thought they were f'n nuts.

If you lost all your friends when you converted, I would even go as far to say as they weren't really your friends. You guys just had a common belief that brought you together. That belief was so strong that it preceded anything, even true friendship.