When thinking, about reflecting on a time when I question or challenged a belief or idea, all that comes to mind is religion. This is how I questioned, challenged and had my final decision on Christianity and its beliefs. I always found the idea of God, Jesus, and the bible were interesting. At the age of 12 I decided to really think about the stories and lessons and how it all happened in the bible. In my mind when thinking it all over I found it ridiculous, but in my heart, I thought of all the time I prayed for a loved one and asked God to watch them. Believing was something I said and not did at that point. To others I lied and said I was a true believer, even my family and best friends. Turning 15 is when going to church and the truth started to come out. Being part of a religious family, this was very hard for me. My brother had already come out and said that he doesn’t believe, but that never influenced me because the friend who was like a brother to me said it first. He never believed and was honest about it, but since we argued all the time I told him I believed and began to tell my parent how I felt. This part of the story was the challenge and how I argued my way through it. My father is a heavily indulged Christian so telling him wasn’t going to be easy. After telling him I got a response that I didn’t expect from him. He told me when he was young, he had no religious ties, but the ways of the lord changed his life. In his mind, I was going to be just like him
Religion is universal. Although people may have different ideologies and practices, everyone believes in something, whether they deem it their religion or not. In this way, religion is a powerful connection between all of humanity; thus, it is important to understand the people behind religion and how their unique characteristics correlates with and influences religion—whether that be their social class, ethnicity, gender, or politics. However, ethnicity and gender, along with the closely linked topics of sexuality and politics, are the most significant concepts to understand religion in our modern world.
One of the most talked about discussions in the world is religion. Across the world, you will find numerous religions, some more prominent than others and some more extreme than others. Religion is fundamental in so many places and cultures in the world today. Religion helps people understand the meaning of life or discern the origin of life. Countless people across the world invest their entire lives into their beliefs and their religions. To say that religion is influential in the world today is an understatement. There are many major religions across the world, but in China, there are five major religions: Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam,
Now, at that time, I was only 12 years old, God had not endowed me with those gifts, but when I answered him no, he began to act differently towards me. It was from that interaction that I began to take notice of the different teachings in different denominations.
Ever since I was a young boy, my family would pile into our old 15-passenger van and drive to church each and every Sunday, without fail. I didn't really understand it at first, it was just something I had to do. When I was around 6 years old, my mother encouraged me to accept Jesus Christ as my lord and savior. I hardly understood what it meant, but I went through with it, much to my mother’s excitement. Years passed, and my understanding grew. Up until I was around 13 years old, my faith had no correlation to my actions. I could recite bible verses for hours, yet I couldn't say what any of them meant. That all changed one year at Camp Selah, a Then, in the year 2014, my faith took a turn for the worst. I’d had a testing first year of high
Both of my parents were born and raised in religious household, one in an Irish Catholic suburb of St. Louis, and the other a small Roman Catholic town in rural Spain. By the time they were young adults both had rejected the religiously institutions they had grown up in. My brothers and I were raised in a house, which viewed religion indifferently resulting in us never receiving formal religious instruction. I grew up a scientist. I quickly developed a passion for science and mathematics, and found particular interest in areas of those fields supported by empirical evidence and had undergone trial by scientific method. I found comfort in the structure provided by my faith in our scientific exploration into the laws that govern the form and
"Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important" (C.S. Lewis). Christianity is a religion based on the life and teaching, in the New Testament, of Jesus. It is a type of religion that only believes in one God. People who follow this religion are called Christians. Most Christians believe that God is one eternal being who exists as three distinct, eternal, and indivisible persons: the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ the eternal Word), and the Holy Spirit. Most Christians says that the work of the "Spirit of God", the Holy Spirit, is truly important.
I believe that my siblings conformed to the idea of being Catholics. That fueled the fire for me to be expressive about the doubts I had in this religion. I began to just say that I was an atheist and around this age there is a large portion of teenagers that are trying to rebel against their parents. I was invested in proving that I was right and that everyone should be able to see what I believe or why I believe it. As I got older I became more humble about my views and what I believed in, I stopped being so upfront about what I thought was right or wrong. One of the main reasons was that it was brought to my attention that everyone has their own personal reasons for what they believe in and just because I don’t agree with it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t respect it. A break through moment was when I had a conversation with my sister about God and the concept of him watching over everyone, and she told me that she believed in God because it was reassurance, she needed to believe that there was something beyond her and that she wasn’t entirely alone in this world. I understood what she was saying and at that point I respected her views. I also realized that in this point of my life I can’t be at peace with that. I’ve struggled with a lot of things in my life and it just wasn’t logical to me it still really isn’t clear to me. I continue to venture out and inform myself about different religions and
Fasting is abstaining from food, drink, sleep or sex to focus on a period of spiritual
This might not change anyone's mind, but I thought this story was interesting nonetheless. One night, I was searching through Quora, and it was early in the morning (I hadn't fallen asleep yet). I was reading through many stories, and many opinion's and "truths" of the world, and decided I would become atheist. I had previously been a Christian all my live, and was scared to doubt or believe differently or even critically think of religion, in fear of going to Hell, or on a more personal level, having my parents being disappointed with me. But, even through all this, I felt I couldn't believe in God, well not necessarily God, but I couldn't accept Christianity's view on religion and God. So I guess I considered myself no longer a Christian,
However, over the years, my faith began to wane. I don’t know If I always doubted my religion, but slowly over the years I began to slowly slip away from my religious upbringing. This all culminated in a youth camp my church held when I was around thirteen years old. During this youth camp, we were scheduled to do all sorts of service work and spiritual experiences. I had been told for years that this camp was where people finally “experienced” God, and where people finally saw God’s impact in their lives. While I appreciated the service work I got to do for others, I never had any spiritual experiences, and this moment really impacted me, and caused me to doubt the existence of a higher
Even at an extremely young age I was always on the fence about what I truly believed in. There was never a religion forced down my throat, opening my mind to a lot
I never really considered myself as religious, despite having many religious family members. It took meeting other atheists as a senior in high school for me to see that I shared their same views.
My ongoing journey with faith has been complex. Growing up, I was surrounded by a family full of preachers, teachers, and other persons of God whose highly saturated faith background and deep loyalty to the church shaped my world views. Deeply ingrained into the fabric of my past was devotion and servitude to something I couldn't quite grasp; it was something that I found hard to believe and difficult to commit to.
What religion am I? In my life, I have been told many things about my religion. My mother is a Roman Catholic, while my father is Jewish. I have learned about both religions, and I have tried to practice both as best I could, but I am now faced with the decision; which one am I?
Growing up I always lived in a religious household. We always prayed before we ate, prayed before we went to bed, and always went to church on Sunday and Wednesday night. While I never questioned these actions and never tried to rebel against them, I still didn’t understand the importance of them either. I was merely walking in my parents footsteps, doing what my parents told me, singing along to the children’s songs in Sunday school, gave a tithing of my allowance every Sunday, but my life was void of the real meanings of my actions. This went on for years. Because I had not yet read through the Bible to understand why these actions had any meaning, they were just things I did all the time and I thought that was normal and that was what it meant to be a Christian.