“A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”
You don't need to be religious to see good advice. Speaking about the good/happy things in your heart makes sense. I am so, very, very happy to be rid of the TSCC!!! 2017 had no church people visit my door, or contact me in any way. My TBM parents and siblings also see how happy I am. I tell them about my hobbies and fun things I do with my wife and kids. I am so very, very happy about this.
Every morning I awake to find the dark cloud of lonely ghawdlessness waiting cheerfully to assail me. I swear the damn cloud grins at me as it envelopes. What little hope I might have felt upon awakening is choked out by the enormous despair the cloud imparts to me.
I get up and I slog through my atheist day, knowing nothing of mirth, or joy, of companionship, or good cheer. I spend the day battling despair and the lack of any connection with any decent specimen of my fellow man, because I refuse to honor the concept of divinity and thus all who see me know to avoid me so as not to participate in the horror that is my life. I know that the goal of good and decent people is to avoid me at all costs.
At the end of yet one more miserable, ghawdless day, I retire to the futility of my cold, lonely bedroom where I cry myself to sleep, wondering what it would be like to know even just one minute of joy, or even just contentedness.
When I finally fall asleep, the cloud must leave me, because why else would I dream of the days long ago when I joyfully participated in the joyfulness of religion?
But there is no good in me now, only the foul emptiness of my ghawdless existence. Here, for having no grace of ghawd, go I.