Personal Narrative: How Religion Changed My Life

To say my faith life has been completely revamped in the last year would be an understatement. I had views and ideas about faith that seem somewhat vile to me know with the experiences I’ve had. From just lectures to the retreats my spiritual side has gone from that of a holiday catholic to a Campus Ministry Student. From little things to big ethic topics I’ve changed in a multitude of ways, my Spiritual Autobiography looks like looks like someone else wrote it compared to any year before it. I think faith is one of the most important aspects of our life and it took me until last year to realize it.

I am an atheist, but it wasn't always that way. My entire life there was a constant pressure on me to accept that there was a supreme being that created all. Even at a young age I couldn’t bring myself to fully believe this. I continued grasping for straws because, just like every other religious person, I was scared of the “consequences” that would come with not believing. My Non-Denominational Christian Church promoted telling this to everyone, even children.

Ever since I was a little girl, my family always pushed Christianity. We would all go to church every Sunday and every big holiday, like Easter or Christmas. All of the grandchildren, including me, had to be in the holiday plays, where we would sing and dance for the whole church. We also were all in the choir, we had practice every Saturday, so that we could sing that Sunday. During the service, when I was younger, I would fall asleep to the preacher preaching. Once I turned 9, I couldn’t do that anymore. It was seen as disrespectful because I was old enough to stay awake during church. I always struggled to stay awake while the preacher preached. As my cousins and I grew older, we started going to church less and less, while the adults still pushed the idea.

When it comes to my religious beliefs, I am Catholic and after taking this class Religious Imagination class with Professor Martin. I can say that I have gained new insight to the different religions that we have learned throughout the course of the class. This class really opened and broadened my perspective on different religions because never experience or even learned about these different religions before taking this class. The specific religions that I have gained insight on were Hinduism, Buddhism and Primal religion. Before taking this class I heard of these religions but I did not actually know what they were. Each Religion that we learned helped me is the amazing ways people believe in God. I found the Primal religion extremely interesting

Growing up, I was not brought up in a certain religion; I did not attend church every Sunday and did not have a greater being to turn to when life became challenging. I was always envious of my friends that had something so powerful and inspirational

I came to Christ at the young age of four. My parents were Christians and were actively involved in the church. Most of my only memories from when I was between the ages of three and ten were going to church, VBS, and house church. I loved going to those events and having fun and learning about Jesus. The things I learned at church and from others had a major impact on my entire childhood and built me into the person I am now. I was as die hard of a Christian as a child could be. I knew Jesus, I loved Him, and all I can remember was wanting to learn more about Him.

Before, I considered God to be a protector of all, but overtime, I slowly became more and more skeptical of his abilities. At this point in my life, I decided to venture out and even slowly start to question the concepts of other religions.

If someone were to describe me based on the outside information that they are able to see they would probably say that I am a Caucasian female. They would also describe my religious beliefs as being a Christian. Also they would describe my sexual orientation as being heterosexual. I would hope that people would describe me in a positive way, however if people learn those things about me they might start judging me either positively or negatively.

8 billion people in the world and how many do you think are the same? none, no one in this world of 8 billion people are the same there is always something that makes someone different from someone else identity is one of those things that make us different. There are other things that make us different like fingerprints, hair, clothes, ect... but one that no one has is our full identity some people might have part of it but not all. Identity is the one thing that can make us who we are fully. Identity is defined as "the fact of being who or what a person or thing is". When I think of identity, I immediately think of my religin. My religin Is my identity. I identify myself as a child of god. I have gone to church all my life and I think

Growing up I went to atrium every Sunday, I’d sit on the small cushions they provided and listen to all these stories about the creation of the world, angles, a man being crucified, burning bushes, God’s calling and so much more. At the time I had no idea what it meant to have faith or a God, I’d think nothing of what I’d learned and believe them to be just

It made me realize how unhappy I was because I was pretending to be someone I wasn't which can get really tiring after a while. I'm not conservative like my family, I'm an open minded liberal, and that's okay. No longer conforming in a religious aspect also made me more comfortable being more individualistic in every other aspect of my life. In our society, it is almost frowned upon to not be religious. We have religion for one purpose and one purpose only, to eradicate fear. Fear of the unknown. We as humans, don't know what's real and what's not. We don't know why we're here or how we got here, and we never will. Because I'm not religious, I personally struggle with this a lot. I don't have a God to answer all of my questions, which can be scary a lot of the time and that's why most people want to believe so badly. You just have to accept that you're never going to have legitimate answers and just live your life. In my opinion life is exactly what you make it. You can live in agony of wanting to know the reason for your existence, or you can live a meaningful, positive life. I've come to realize that your thoughts completely make your world, it's all up to

I gradually became confused and appealed to God consistently for help to discover an exit plan from my trauma and abuse GreenWave spiritual and -love-ecstasy senses #53. However, there never came protection from the recurring injury in and around me that continued to transpire in daily life. Thus, I began to visit various houses of worship to seek help to heal and a place to escape. Eventually, I became baptized and spent time in summer bible school with a belief this would remedy my situation. I could memorize the required verses from the bible. The part I enjoyed most about those summers was being in nature. It seemed these houses of worship often repeated a story, which since conception everyone was a born sinner. Therefore, by one means or another, this helped to provide hope I could defeat the enormous obstacle home life

Growing up in a Catholic home, going to a Catholic grade school, and attending Mass every week all resulted in everything being handed to me. Receiving a religious education was a given, and did not truly matter to me. When it came time for high school, I started attending Timberland High School, which was a complete shift. I went from a class of sixty to a class of five hundred and I was in shock. I knew zero people and it was all up to me to make friends and fit in. At first everything was fine, but as the weeks went on I realized that I felt miserable. I remember crying in the bathroom every morning before leaving for school because I was so alone. I told my parents that I wanted to switch schools and they agreed to send me to St. Dominic

His thoughts, his hopes, his memories; it was difficult to believe that they had vanished. Later on that year, I asked one of my friends how she knew that God existed. She replied that she simply knew he was there, and had always been told that he was real. By her expression, it was obvious that she had never been asked that before, but she was so confident in her response that I couldn't help but want her to be right. My lack of guidance in religion left me unbiased in the realization that no matter how much I may desire to know if God is really there, I will never find out. Faith is hope in its highest form, and I started to understand that not-knowing is incredibly freeing. That absence of restraint isn’t limited to religious freedom. My lack of knowledge on what is and what will be allows me to follow my true passions and interests. I have no idea what will happen when my life ends, so in the meantime it seems worthwhile to do what I love, which is writing. Writing allows me to create worlds with never ending mysteries and beautiful, impossible realities. I began to write down my ideas on any piece of paper within grabbing

My entire life has been a constant brush with death. I had grown up not knowing whether my brother would survive another night with his illness. A hospital begun to be the only place I felt safe. It was irocic that this battlefield where lives are constantly at stake had begun to be my sanctuary, my church. My entire life I could not understand why my father prayed so much to God asking for a miracle, he forced our entire family to Sunday mass every week and to believe with all our hearts. His never ending jump at the throat about Christianity forced me to lose my belief for some period in my life. I began to believe there was not a God who created all of mankind because I had been taught for many years that God loved all his children, but I could not fathom why he made us feel pain when he loved us. I began to blame God for all the bad in the world and for his little intervention to those suffering. Eventually, my lack of spirituality prevented me from accepting the words spoken during mass. I became outwardly disrespectful during mass by falling asleep and disagreeing