I wrote this as a response to someone on a forum, and I wanted to turn it into a blog entry so I didn't lose the text:
Not understanding what you believe and why is a common plight in the modern-day western world. No one has any interest in it any more and people grow up unaware of traditions and rituals they are born into, or that they enter as an adult and never learned the roots.
When Christianity was a baby faith, the Church didn't even want people to be able to study the faith, did you know that? There is so much more. Church officials were the only ones allowed to read the Bible, and people were fed the Bible from Priests/Church Officials alone. Reading the Bible as a commoner was considered a heresy... you could be punished for it! It was actually a form of control by the church, but it also aided by the high illiteracy rates back then.
As people learned more often to read, and started questioning why they couldn't have more control over faith, they began to read themselves and study because they couldn't get straight answers from the Church. This I believe is a turning point for many people still today: Study.
How much reading, research, study, etc. have people done on the history of Christianity and their own traditions in which they partake? Typically, not much. And I mean real Christian history, not the stuff the Church will feed you. I highly recommend people go to the local book store and/or library and hit up the Religion section... not the Christian section [if they are different, like they are here], which is full of mushy "I love God" books that barely touch on history at all. Studying also includes reading all the resources you don't think you even want to read. You can't say you truly know anything until you study it's opposite and understand the "why not" as well as the "why". The things people might tell you are heretical or "wrong," well that's up to you to decide after proper research, not something to take on the words of others. You might be surprised what you learn that other people don't even know because they never bothered.
People often call something "wrong" having never studied it at all. They go based on what we have always based our decisions on: What the church tells us. But the Church sets out with interests primarily in the Church for 80% of establishments. It is not a reliable source on most occasions.
Read about everything. Your own faith, the faiths of other people, and those who don't believe at all. Knowing why everyone believes what they do, or doesn't believe anything at all, was a key turning point in how I better understood myself.
The biggest aid for myself was learning about the true roots of my own faith. Where did Christianity come from, what happened to it over the years, and what are all the real answers to questions I had that no one in the Churches will actually give you.
I highly recommend study. Not Bible study but real study (not that Bible study isn't real, but Bible study will not teach you Church history in any form, or even the history of Christianity in the real world). Learning the history behind what you believe is important. If you are ignorant of your roots, how can you participate in the fruit of those plants? We need to know where we came from. And for the record, studying does not include turning to your fellow internet-goers and asking "why, how, what". You need to seek those answers for yourself.
You learn so much about yourself when you open your mind in the diverse world of personal study. I just can't express how much so. What you do with your faith is completely in your own control, and most people don't even act on a fraction of what they can learn. It's a total waste, and spiritual death begins when we stop seeking knowledge in all forms, I truly believe it.
Not understanding what you believe and why is a common plight in the modern-day western world. No one has any interest in it any more and people grow up unaware of traditions and rituals they are born into, or that they enter as an adult and never learned the roots.
When Christianity was a baby faith, the Church didn't even want people to be able to study the faith, did you know that? There is so much more. Church officials were the only ones allowed to read the Bible, and people were fed the Bible from Priests/Church Officials alone. Reading the Bible as a commoner was considered a heresy... you could be punished for it! It was actually a form of control by the church, but it also aided by the high illiteracy rates back then.
As people learned more often to read, and started questioning why they couldn't have more control over faith, they began to read themselves and study because they couldn't get straight answers from the Church. This I believe is a turning point for many people still today: Study.
How much reading, research, study, etc. have people done on the history of Christianity and their own traditions in which they partake? Typically, not much. And I mean real Christian history, not the stuff the Church will feed you. I highly recommend people go to the local book store and/or library and hit up the Religion section... not the Christian section [if they are different, like they are here], which is full of mushy "I love God" books that barely touch on history at all. Studying also includes reading all the resources you don't think you even want to read. You can't say you truly know anything until you study it's opposite and understand the "why not" as well as the "why". The things people might tell you are heretical or "wrong," well that's up to you to decide after proper research, not something to take on the words of others. You might be surprised what you learn that other people don't even know because they never bothered.
People often call something "wrong" having never studied it at all. They go based on what we have always based our decisions on: What the church tells us. But the Church sets out with interests primarily in the Church for 80% of establishments. It is not a reliable source on most occasions.
Read about everything. Your own faith, the faiths of other people, and those who don't believe at all. Knowing why everyone believes what they do, or doesn't believe anything at all, was a key turning point in how I better understood myself.
The biggest aid for myself was learning about the true roots of my own faith. Where did Christianity come from, what happened to it over the years, and what are all the real answers to questions I had that no one in the Churches will actually give you.
I highly recommend study. Not Bible study but real study (not that Bible study isn't real, but Bible study will not teach you Church history in any form, or even the history of Christianity in the real world). Learning the history behind what you believe is important. If you are ignorant of your roots, how can you participate in the fruit of those plants? We need to know where we came from. And for the record, studying does not include turning to your fellow internet-goers and asking "why, how, what". You need to seek those answers for yourself.
You learn so much about yourself when you open your mind in the diverse world of personal study. I just can't express how much so. What you do with your faith is completely in your own control, and most people don't even act on a fraction of what they can learn. It's a total waste, and spiritual death begins when we stop seeking knowledge in all forms, I truly believe it.