Share your religious experience

[Pendragon]

First: This is for sharing how you came to believe as you do. There comes a point in everyone's life when they make a decision about faith. This is what I want to see here.

Second: No arguing on this thread. Disagreements and questions should be directed to the individual on Private Messaging.

Third: Share experience, don't preach.

Now, my story.

I was raised a Christian in an extremely strict sect by a domineering and frankly fanatical mother. In our church TV was taboo. Movies and sporting advents likewise. The women did not cut their hair, wear pants or makeup. Drinking and smoking were forbidden. Men had to keep their hair short and facial hair was frowned upon. The more radical churches also forbade Christmas, Easter, and Halloween.

Church was three times a week, twice on Sunday and on Wednesday night. Unsatisfied with this, people, including my mother, chased tent revivals which were popular in the late 60's early 70's. I was often in church every night. I went through a lot at school since we didn't believe in wearing gym shorts, and were forbidden to play sports. Dating was a problem as well, as we were not to date outside of church people, and were expected to not even kiss or hold hands.

Shouting and speaking in tongues was common, as was casting out devils, and prayer for the sick. I have witnessed too much to down these practices, but I want you to get a clear picture.

Of course, I rebelled. I took up smoking, drinking, and took drugs. I did my share of "heavy petting" with girls, including the pastor's daughter who was as much a rebel as I. I was very foul mouthed and constantly in trouble.

Then right before my 19th birthday, my future wife and I were saved in a revival meeting. By age 20 I was a minister, fully ordained by age 24. I became an evangelist, preaching anywhere I could get an invitation. My ministry for the next ten years was much like I had been taught, but I wasn't afraid to publicly come out against some of the harsh regulations, teach more mercy than policy. I preached in my home state of Virginia, in North Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Arkansas' I had tentative invitations to Connecticut, Georgia, and Texas.

Then when I turned 34 the genetic bomb I inherited from my parents went off with serious problems. My bipolar/depression/borderline personality disorder was one of the worst my doctors had ever seen. They also said they were only surprised that it happened at age 34, as most people with my severity of illness rarely get through their twenties before disaster strikes. I landed in the mental hospital four times in one six month period.

At first I had support. They visited me in the hospital, I received a great number of invitations to speak, they prayed with me and for me constantly. But after the third trip, they became rather cold towards me. I visited a church where I had often preached one Sunday morning to find that I and my illness were the topic of the sermon. Why I didn't just walk out I will never know.

Back at my home church where I served as Assistant Pastor, things grew even worse. I had a face-off with the pastor over a decision he was making. I swore then that I would tell no one what really passed between us, and although he has been in the grave for a dozen years I keep my word.

I was excommunicated. The other churches I preached for, while many said they disagreed with my excommunication, shunned me as well. My illness got so bad that I was placed on full disability without question. But I couldn't quit.

I preached in homes to whoever came. I stressed the importance of choice over rigid rules. I urged people to seek the will of God for themselves. My wife still doesn't cut her hair or wear pants. But this is because it is her Preference, not a church rule. My daughter and daughter-in-law both wear pants and cut their hair. I don't toss them into hell as I was taught to do. There are things the Bible directly condemns, these I preach; others are enforced by different sects of religion, without Bible confirmation, these I ignore.

We have TV, go to movies, my children had wonderful Christmases, Easter egg hunts, and dressed up for Halloween. In school they were less prosecuted for church rules. They made their own choices.

Now, I still preach every Sunday my illness allows. The congregation has gotten smaller as many have moved to other towns or chose to quit. But I still stand.

I went from a radical Evangelical hellfire-breathing preacher to one who, still believing in heaven to gain and hell to shun, drops rules not in the Bible, preach tolerance, and seek to encourage my small congregation to make the right choices, I don't beat rules into them.

St. Matthew 23 has became my guideline.

Now you have heard my reasons for believing as I do. I am now non-denominational, I would still preach in any church that would have me. But my eyes have been opened to the fact that being too strict and omitting justice, compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and uplifting my brother or sister in Christ would be the height of hypocrisy. Live a simple, humble Christian life, read the Bible daily and pray daily, attend church when you are physically able.

Matthew 22:
[35] Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying,
[36] Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
[37] Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
[38] This is the first and great commandment.
[39] And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
[40] On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Now God richly bless you.

Remember, any questions or comments concerning this post, PM me.

Pen

[Denizen]

I came to believe as I do at a young age. My mother was religious, and I went to a Church of England school which would encourage prayer, and regular visits to church. However, my father was an avowed atheist, and often expressed disapproval that I was effectively being indoctrinated by Christian dogma.

As I matured into a teenager, I lost all interest in religion. I had concluded that I did not believe in God, but my arguments for not doing so were naturally immature, and based on a misunderstanding of philosophical argument and religious scripture. As I got older, I developed a taste for philosophy, and spent almost all of my spare time learning about almost every discipline of philosophy. Naturally, I also became intrigued with science; namely physics. By 17 I was certain no God existed. I had deduced that no formal argument can be used to show it is rational to assume a creator, which is a belief I still maintain today.

I'm not, nor will I ever be, militant with my atheism. Though I disagree with religious morality (particularly ecclesiastical morality, though this downfall is not peculiar to Christianity), I recognise that many find solace and comfort in a belief in God. This is not something which I would like to take away from any man.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Wow, what a life story Pendragon. Thank you for sharing.

I was not raised in a religious family--that isn't to say I was raised in an atheist one, either. We never went to church, never read the bible, etc. I was allowed to choose my own path. So, my journey was pretty simple. I got to look at religion from the outside, and chose in high school that religion wasn't for me. Even when I was in daycare, they'd take us to this church where a nun would read/tell us Bible stories. That I was bored to death notwithstanding, even at that young age I thought the stories were BS. Out of a fear of no life after death, I clung to that vague idea of "something more" being out there, that this couldn't all be coincidence. I don't really believe that anymore, but I still hope. At one point I flirted with becoming a Buddhist, as it seemed the only reasonable religion out there, but it didn't work.

[Desolation]

I was raised in a sort of complicated religious environment.

My dad was, is, and always has been an atheist. He was raised as a Catholic, though. Anyone who has been raised Catholic knows just how difficult it is to shake the faith, so there was always some Catholic imagery around. He was also profoundly impacted by Buddhism, though he wasn't entirely Buddhist.

My mother is a lot more complicated. She was also raised Catholic and had abandoned the faith...But, she had a lot of demons to battle, which lead her through several religions when I was a kid. This included Catholicism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Buddhism. So, I did go to churches, even if they weren't exactly consistent.

One of the most influential moments of my religious development came when I was 9. All the kids in my class were talking about heaven and hell while we were in the lunch-line. While they were talking, I had a thought, and being that I was 9 it seemed like no one else had ever had the thought before. So, I asked, "How do you know that heaven and hell are real? No one's ever been there, dead people can't come back to life and tell us about them." I got beat up. When I told my dad about it, he shared his views with me (he was careful not to do so before, because he wanted me to come to my own conclusions and make my own decisions) and reassured me that I wasn't alone.

I didn't think about it too much until years later. Other people believed, I didn't...It didn't seem like a big deal. It still doesn't seem like a big deal to me, really. But, over the years, having learned more about the various religions, and about science and all that, atheism has become a valued part of my personality. I'm not militant, I'm not bitter, I'm not judgmental, I'm just a proud nonbeliever.

[YesNo]

I agree with Mutatis-Mutandis, Pendragon: that is an amazing life story. I hope things work out for you.

In my case, I suspect that I am a "panentheist" without any specific commitment to a name for this God: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panentheism

I have had a shared death experience upon the death of an aunt decades ago when I was a graduate student studying mathematics. The conversation I had with her didn't knock as much sense into me as it probably should have at the time, but I never forgot it.

The Iraq war with those fabricated weapons of mass destruction charges turned me off to Christianity. My annoyance quickly spread to all Judeo-Christo-Islamic religions. My focus was on religious groups supporting lies even when they knew they were lies. I didn't like atheists either. They didn't seem to act any better than religious people and they didn't have any ethical basis for superiority to theists. To be fair, I was no better ethically than any of them, but when one is annoyed one is rarely fair.

Finding by accident a few years ago Raymond Moody's Life After Life changed most of that. It brought some clarity to what I experienced with my aunt years before and I sort of made a peace with Judeo-Christo-Islamic religions. Although I haven't made any real peace with atheism, I realize we all make mistakes and continue to do so. Deepak Chopra, Eknath Easwaran and most recently Laura Day are some of the people whose writings I value.

[JuniperWoolf]

I was raised literally religion-free, and by that I don't mean "atheistic." It simply didn't exist for my family because my parents decided that I didn't need it, and they also felt that telling people what to believe in was wrong and that beliefs shoudn't simply be something that one inherets. I didn't even know that my mom believed in some version of a god until I was in my teens, and my father is one of those "if God exists then why is there so much suffering in the world?" kind of atheists, which is a conversation we didn't have until I was in the hospital in my early 20's.

Religion didn't exist in my childhood, so I obviously didn't even notice it's absence. I had an uncle who married a Christian woman, and she bought me a really nice book of Christian stories for my birthday once so I knew them, but I had a lot of books and didn't know that these stories were supposed to be any different from the multitudes of other stories I had. I learned about religion gradually throughout my life, through various individual realizations and discoveries (which, oddly enough, is exactly how I learned about sex). I snuck into kids' church with my friends after school occasionally because they got free snacks, I was aware of the Catechism kids who couldn't walk home with the rest of us because they were taking "extra classes" after school (or so it seemed to me) and I felt sorry for the poor (only) Jehovah's Witness in my school for not being allowed to celebrate Halloween, Christmas or birthdays and was grateful that my parents weren't "crazy." The other kids explained to me that religion was just like nationality, something you inheret from your parents. I remember when I was eleven or so my mom was driving me home after school and I asked "hey mom, what religion am I?" She responded with "I don't know, what religion are you?"

So there you have it, I'm the result of a literally religion-free upbringing. Sometimes people ask me how child-me understood the concept of death, since explaining death is kind of the main purpose of religion. My father told me the exact truth when I was little, but I really developed my full understanding of death from books. Like I said above, I read a lot, and I came to decide for myself about death from The Halloween Tree. If you haven't read it, simply put I decided that we don't know what happens after we die. No one does, there's no information, it's a great mystery and it seems to me that's how it's supposed to be, a mystery that everyone shares and absolutely everyone eventually discovers for themselves (or not, if it turns out atheists are correct). When the people I love die I dispair, but I don't hate death, and I don't try to explain it.

[OrphanPip]

There's not much of a story to how I got to where I am.

I was raised in a relatively progressive mainstream protestant home, specifically Church of England but I was baptised in a United Church of Canada because of the general scarcity of protestant churches in Montreal: my parents didn't want to drive far for the baptism. We went to church occasionally, but not every Sunday.

At some point in secondary school I became conscious that I had stopped believing, mostly because I couldn't find a personally convincing reason to. There's not much to say about it because it wasn't really a struggle or a life changing event.

[Jack of Hearts]

Fairly conservative religuous upbringing. This reader remembers being ten years old and praying to Jesus to never let him be an atheist. Well played, Jesus.







J

[Polednice]

Seeing as this thread is about "decisions about faith", I'll share how I came to my lack of faith: my parents never imposed any religious views on me, and I never came across any compelling evidence for any of mankind's thousands of religions. The end.

[WyattGwyon]

I was raised Catholic and believed in God at a young age because I actually saw him. At age three, my mom told me "We are going to God's house!," before we walked the two blocks to a gorgeous three-quarter size copy of a Romanesque French Cathedral with a million-dollar organ and world-class choir. I assumed the angry man in a white robe shouting at us from the pulpit must be God because he was acting like he owned the place. (A neighbor who was a doctor ended up having to give this scumbag CPR after he had a heart attack during a dalliance with the "church secretary.") At age five(?), I had that "Santa-Claus moment" when I said "Hey, that's not the same guy up there, are there two of them?" Then they did the classic bait and switch and told me about the trinity.

Anyway, by eighth grade in a Catholic elementary school, I was going through my own private Reformation; by ninth grade I no longer believed in supernatural phenomena of any kind.

[ShadowsCool]

I've had a few. Some are too private to divulge. However, some are curious to say the least.

One in particular I remember is a nun in seeing me, got down on her knees and started to pray. I suppose she thought she saw a devil in me. Who knows. Whatever.

[WyattGwyon]

.....

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Religion didn't exist in my childhood, so I obviously didn't even notice it's absence. I

I'm not sure this is even possible in America, unless one lives isolated from any other people and all forms of media. I was raised in a family much like you described, Juniper, but as long as I can remember, I was always aware of religion. Even though my parents, or anyone, never told me I should be Christians and believe in Jesus, I always felt like I should.

I learned about religion gradually throughout my life, through various individual realizations and discoveries (which, oddly enough, is exactly how I learned about sex).

This too sounds like an interesting story.

[KCurtis]

Interesting stories, everyone. And Pendragon, considering your geographic location, your experience is not a surprise to me. I am glad you are doing better, and having a son with mental illness, I can appreciate your struggle.
I was never religious, my parents weren't-but when I was in junior high school we lived across the street from a church and they made us go, I don't know why. They went too for a short time. I was baptized (protestant), but everyone was then. It really was meaningless to me.
I went to catholic confession with a friend once when I was 12, and I did feel a bit better afterwards. When I was a young adult I thought I was supposed to believe in god. I called myself an agnostic because it is easier to tell people that- in certain areas of the U.S. athiests are quite outnumbered by people who do believe in god, and most of the places I have worked and people I have met do. I am finally honest and will tell people I am not religious.
I also make it known that I don't want to discuss god or religion in the work place, because people assume it's okay to do so and everyone believes-especially here on Cape Cod and most of Massachusetts. I try to be as polite as I can, and let it be known that I respect others views. If I tell anyone I am an athiest I can assure you they will be taken aback, so I always try to emphasize that I am NOT a militant athiest. I don't mind the pledge of allegiance, said daily at school where I work.
What I do mind is having good friday off. Most schools in Massachusetts have that day off, even though it is a religious holiday. I don't go so far as to advocate for it to be banned though. I love seeing Christmas decorations in town, but towns around here don't put them up-which makes no sense since schools have good friday off.
I would never, ever try to change someone's views on religion. If a religious person wants to discuss it further, I won't. I like to be polite with people.
So that's my kinda boring story!
Oh, and to make it a bit more interesting, my thought about where people go when they die is simple. Some are in graveyards, which I kind of like because they have a lot of history, and some are cremated and mix with the earth, or the water, depending on preference. My mother in law's ashes are here at home with my husband and I, temporarily. They are under my son's bed (he no longer lives with us). I don't think she would object. Soon they will be with the earth, maybe some with the water-the rest may be spread among the living who loved her.

[JuniperWoolf]

I'm not sure this is even possible in America, unless one lives isolated from any other people and all forms of media. I was raised in a family much like you described, Juniper, but as long as I can remember, I was always aware of religion. Even though my parents, or anyone, never told me I should be Christians and believe in Jesus, I always felt like I should.

Church isn't a big part of society or daily life in Canada unless you're a church-goer. It's illegal for teachers to talk about their religion, and religion simply has no part in politics. I'd say about 80% of my town doesn't go to church, but my town's church-goers come in three varieties:

1. The nice ones who go to that pink church on the corner, I think it's called "universal" or "global" something. They don't really talk about church, so you usually don't even know they're Christians. About 30% of the church-goers belong in this category.

2. The mean church people who keep to themselves. Their children keep to themselves too, I think they're only allowed to hang out with other church kids. There are two groups, and they go to the brown one on mainstreet if they're Catholic or the blueish orange one near the prison if they're Protestant. I always felt like they considered themselves superior to the rest of us which made me feel kind of awkward and confused, but then I heard what they had to say about homosexuals and decided that they can go **** themselves. About 60% of my town's church-goers belong in this category.

3. We have this little Jehovah's Witness church across the street from the highschool, it's just a regular house that's been converted and it has only maybe 55 members. One of them was in my grade, like I said above. They're not bad, a little weird and uber friendly and they try to convert you sometimes, but I guess they're just trying to save your soul so that's nice of them. The thing is, and I have no idea why this is so, but by divine providence they've got a lot of extremely attractive guys in their congregation, six of them to be exact, all of them about five to seven years older than me and all of them absolutely mouthwatering. When I was little and they were teenagers I used to follow them around, them walking in pairs with their little black ties and rolled-up white shirt sleeves, yowza. Now they're all 29-31 or so.

"Excuse me, miss, would you like to spend just an hour of your time this afternoon hearing about the lord?"
"...Yes. Yes I would."

Oh yeah, also, we have:

4. Two muslim families, and

5. One jew, but I think he might have moved last year. I didn't see his Star of David set up on his appartment balcony last holidays.