I do assert that your relationship with God is truly important, but your relationship with Him is between you and Him.
I’m not sure how popular this opinion will be here, but I assert that having no relationship with God or any god whatsoever is completely healthy and ultimately would make most people better off.
That would be healthy if there was no God, but there is.
You can tell yourself that all you want, but there’s no way to know that there’s a god, so to many people just excising the whole equation from their life is comforting and liberating.
What I’m concerned about here is that just because people be crazy, religious people or otherwise, that doesn’t affect the importance of one’s relationship with God. In my opinion, relationship with God is too important to let bad experiences with foolish, ignorant, overbearing people stand in the way of it. Be they parents, pastors, or whoever else. Even us. But one has to do it themselves. To choose to do it themselves. You have to make up your own mind what you want.
Well, he’s obviously not enjoying a relationship with God even aside from the southern US religious setting he’s in.