Your beliefs should be yours and yours alone. If you believe everything and exactly what one organized religion teaches, you are deluded. Personally, my beliefs are most similar to Buddhism and Taoism. I think Christianity is a joke. Now, everyone is free to believe what they wish, but what pisses me off about Christianity is their incredible arrogance, intolerance, and constant "Well if you don't belive in God then you will burn in Hell." It pisses me off. Regardless of how open I try to be to people's opinions, I LOVE to debate religion. It's a passion.
remember, big difference between crazy fundies who judge all others, and those who happen to follow a path guided by a big religion but can still accept others
i'm similarly confused. i guess i feel like i'm missing out when it comes to organised religion, like belonging to something. a lot of my friends are born again christians, but they just did it because of the youth club and cute guys. sure, that sounds cool to me, but i don't wanna convert just for friends... i'm so not sure. i believe in a spiritual presence, but i know its hard. just stick to what u believe in, if you're not sure what that is, be the best person you possibly can, answers will come, i promise! take care and know that we are forever here for u. i wish you peace and love!
y did i ever question god... i was doing just fine when i knew he was there.. then i wasnt so sure, but i believed.. just in case.. and now, i dont even care but that may or may not be a good thing
It's my opinion that before you can tackle the question of religion you must first have a better understanding of yourself. If I bring a belief into my consciousness, then I must know if that belief fits in with who I am, does it represent the real me, is my life truly reflective of what I believe. My beliefs should represent who I am, not vice versa. And to find those beliefs to marry up with my conscience I need to know who I am, what I will tolerate from myself and others, what I see as my strengths and weaknesses, and will I accept tangible/intangible concepts. Believe it or not, one source of finding out some of these points for me occured while I was attending a college course on Astonomy. Didn't take the class thinking it would cause me to learn something spiritual about myself, but it did. And it fits perfectly into my knowledge of me. Take some time, even years, ask yourself the hard questions about life and try to define just who you are, and then go seek the higher questions. If it's truth you want, then seek it truthfully, otherwise just go down to the religion store and pick out one that appeals to you. Best of luck, my friend.
i've been to a fare variety of churches, as a visitor or a member. The only one which has appealed to me yet is Catholic, which is to me very homely. Well, duh! I was pretty strictly raised Catholic. I know those strangers like family. However I have no true beliefs in any God. I often laugh at the thought of it, because the stories seem so artificial. I've chosen to accept myself as my own God, because what really matters to me, or what I would truthfully call a sin is only whatever disobeys my own guilty concsience. And as far as afterlife, well. Maybe I will return to Earth like everything else, even my energy; thus being myself. Or I could still have that dangling hope in the back of my mind.. that my energy would be metaphysically or physically alive and well in another mind, another world. or maybe maybe nothing and i shoud stop asking because theres no answer it just is like that
Don't matter what you're told or what you believe.There are many falsehoods and only one truth.What it is i have no idea.
No- no organized religion for me. It wasn't until I stopped going to church that I found peace. Most of the "christians" I have known have been posers, trying to appear more christian than everyone else, judgemental, consumed with if other people are following their rules, and shallow, superficial people absolutely paranoid about anyone who thinks or acts different from themselves. Most of them worship their idea of christianity and not God. Once I let go of the "rules" and accepted myself and started listening to my inner voice, that is when my spiritual journey began.
I know how you feel, I was catholic for many years but i'm not shure now if I ever believed it or I was just doing what my familly did. When I matured into an adult I had many conflicting views towards religion. I don't think religion should control you in any way. I started reading up on wicca and was interested in the freedom of thought and inner power associated with it. I'm still not part of an organized religion and I don't think i'll ever be. I can be spiritual without regularly attending a cult.
When I was young a worked for a father and son operated buisness. The small town that they lived in was dominated by two churches...the catholic and the presbiterian(sp). The father joined the presbiterian and then had his son become catholic and join that church to increase the number of buisness contacts and vis a vis increase the amount of buisness they did in the town...that struck me as the ultimate posers.
I'm not a part of any organized religion, but gather my beliefs from many different places, especially earth based belief systems.
I've been borne in a very christian traditional family, whoe made me go to church weekly, prey and read the bible daily, even if "good loving mamma" had to beet the shit out of the 4 years old child to make him!!! any way in church I didn't realy listen to any thing, all I cared about was the movies they played and the candy some times, thank god I didn't spit in their faces ... any way by the age of 15-16 I stopped going to church praying and all, started reading around 5-8 hours a day, Phelosophy, from sarter, to Aristo, Homer, and what ever I could lay my hands on, naturally I lost any thought of belive in a god, when I did think of him I thought he was the most crule and unfair person ever, that went on till I was say 20 years old, that's when I started to go fishing, I always went alone, to far quite places by the river side, and I started realising that connection to the water, fish, birds, and I could feel that breaze into my soul, and then I started thinking that whoever made all this can't be that bad anyway, and it was peace and enlightment to both mind and soule, as good as it was it couldn't last for long, some poeple starting on with me for some racial realigious reasons, they hacked into my computer and ruined my graduation project, but I did get fine any way, they chassed me every where I went and spreeded rumers about me at work so I got fired, and refused by many companies "good ones", so I thought I'd just go to the monstary for some help, ans great help that I got ... that athos summoned some sourt of a deamon on me that kept giving me these terrifing thoughts, and horrible voices, so I started fasting, praying and reding the bible among every possible book about every religious issue "christian of course", what do you know? it only got worse and worse, I tryed to go other preistes and preachers, most of them tolled me just go c some shrink, some of the shrinks I did see tolled me to go see an exorsist !!! Other preistes didn't realy help, they prayed and layed hands on me but that didn't relife me more than a couple of hours, at it's best, now it went worse and worse, that shit filled the house, every body knew about it and they where too scared to even talk about it, next step it's at work making that kinda " my soul clean and yours on fire" thing, four years has that been going I went back to the monstary many times trying to find that scocerer athoss, of course he didn't show, and no one would even tell me his name, what ever they did just didn't work .. eventually I swore to my self I'll never go to a church, a monstary or even talk to any preist or preacher, I'll never fast or prey long nights again, I'll never attend service, and it started to look a bit better ... I don't hate Jesus in fact I do love him, I just don't understand why would he just leave me there with all that, and do nothing, yeas I seen a couple of things that kinda looked like he's telling me I'm here but still nothing happened... religion? no I donno, not any more for me any way, think i've had enough THIS IS A TRUE STORY, I CAN PROVIDE NAMES, PHONE NUMBERS, PLACES, ADDRESSES AND ALL
It sounds as though you were trying to get yourself to believe, which is where the dificulty was coming from. Had you honestly believed, then the behaviors you were trying to ingraine in yourself would have followed as easily as breathing. Faith cannot be forced, it must be planted and nurtured, then allowed to grow.
