- Aug 24, 2018
- 1,466
- 1,017
- Country
- United States
- Gender
- Male
- Faith
- Christian
- Marital Status
- Private
I grew up in a Diest family, they believe in God but they don't believe God wants anything to do with humanity (My moms side of the family suffered during the soviet union, so her side absolutely has no faith at all in God anymore, their generation moved to America anyways during the 80's). I wasn't brought up this way, my parents could care less what I believe although their opinion on atheism is that they think its stupid so I'll give them a plus on that. My beliefs of God in the past, I was a monotheist, one God is enough 2 gods made no sense to me and I certainly didn't believe God was in statues or that we were Gods so Hinduism never flew with me. The pagan religions seemed like myths so I never really bothered with those either, and with the other eastern religions, those were really just ways of living like Buddism is. I didn't want to make a God out of my imagination so I looked at the Abrahamic religions since they are the only monotheistic ones. I got frustrated that there were so many, along with Christianity having so many denominations I just gave up on it and decided to seek again at a later time, I was thinking maybe when I am old and just go out for now and enjoy my youth.
In middle school throughout high school I did get a bitterness from religious people because a lot of them acted like complete hypocrites, at that time I wanted nothing to do with religion but later on I understood that I was being biased and a hypocrite for judging them as all the same. Most of my friends during my high school and middle school all happened to be Christian, and they were only the nice ones, some of them were Catholic, Evangelical, and one was Orthodox. The people who were JW and from weird Christian groups were for the most part nasty (in their personality) so I stayed away from them. I still have a negative view towards Christian groups that are considered cults by mainline Christianity.
I understood that there are nice people in other religions too, but the Christians friendliness was actually genuine so that gave me some interest, along with seeing some beauty in Christianity. Also during this time throughout my middle school and high school I did undergo some suffering, I was exposed to the news of tragedies in the world, but that was all just part of reality and growing up I just moved passed those things, one of the biggest questions I have had was why are human beings sometimes so evil to each other? Also there was a time I have heard a passing from a friend that committed suicide, I looked on his facebook and I saw a picture of a pentagram with reaper, the last few months of his life were very dark I don’t fully understand what he was going though. I was horrified that he took his life in a gruesome way, and that he didn’t even turn 20 yet gave me chills. I won’t give full details on why he gave his life away, he got really screwed over by his family that wasn’t supportive of him, I won’t go into details.
From where I live Islam is highly frowned upon and condemned, same thing with JW and cults that were around my neighborhood town. I didn’t know anything about religion and wondered why people hated them so much. At first I was deceived about Islam and thought others were just taking things out of context and misrepresenting their religion, but until I actually wanted to find out for myself I honestly was disgusted of their history and their prophet so Islam was quickly a scratch off my list. The JW, later from my research I found they abuse people and are just a mind control cult just from common sense, so any whacky cult was easily avoided for me, if I wanted to join a Church I would just find a regular normal church nothing out of the ordinary. Lastly during my highschool I watched debates with atheists and theists, I found the atheist position to be completely stupid because they kept claiming to know that no God exists and how everything came into existence when they don’t know that. I saw how they acted like big brain intellectuals when really it was just a arrogance and pride behind all that. Most of the classmates were not athiests but they're were still a lot of them in my school so it had a influence there. They would accuse Christians of being indoctrinated, having an imaginary friend, blah blah blah.
I was left with 2 choices, Judaism or Christianity. These were the only religions that seemed like rational choices. I was quickly turned off from Judaism seeing how legalistic it was, I could not bear with it. Also seeing how heated the rabbis could be towards gentiles I did not like (Not all Rabbis). Lastly it being such a small religion I wondered is this really God’s true religion? I heard about Jesus Christ but I did not know much about him, I decided to give it a try and see if Jesus really is the Messiah. I started off at a non-denominational Church, were the pastor was a complete heretic and I did not know it at all at the time. He had a hatred towards Catholicism, he would often talk about how the Pope is the anti-christ. The Church didn’t believe in the Trinity it was a modalist Church, and he preached a works-based salvation.
For a half a year I went, I wasn’t really active. The Pastor took notice of my church attendance and had a talk with me in a private room which was strange. He opened up the OT and showed me how people were killed for breaking the Sabbath back then, he compared this to now and asked me how much do I think God takes it seriously that I go to Church. Other than that we were taught things in the Church such as Jews will be saved regardless if they believe because they are still Gods people, and we were told that if we tithe to the Church God will bless us, and he taught that tithing is required for God and commanded. This guy seemed on to something, he kept asking me if I worked a job or what kind of car I have randomly when I entered the church soon after he got to know me. I brushed it off at first, and I noticed people were leaving the Church because they suspected that the guy just wants peoples tithes since he really emphasized people to give to his Church. The pastor was rude and demanding, He has a bitterness towards protestants too because he believed they preached a false gospel (The ACTUAL GOSPEL)….
I felt like he was a wolf’s in sheeps clothing, I was terrified for myself since I didn’t know if I was in a good church or if what he was teaching was correct since it contradicted a lot of things in the Bible. After a few powerful dreams, one night I opened my Bible and I actually got saved, then after that I just knew the pastor was a phony and left the Church soon after.
Now I am just seeking out another Church, and learning the Bible for myself instead of listening to some guy. It surprises me all this fiasco just to get to here, when it was simple and the truth was right in my face the whole time. I am grateful, but I wish I knew sooner. I wasted so much time at that Church and learned absolutely nothing useful except for a couple parables…
The thing that is scary is what if I never came to Christianity and hardened my heart towards it. I am just glad that didn't happen.
In middle school throughout high school I did get a bitterness from religious people because a lot of them acted like complete hypocrites, at that time I wanted nothing to do with religion but later on I understood that I was being biased and a hypocrite for judging them as all the same. Most of my friends during my high school and middle school all happened to be Christian, and they were only the nice ones, some of them were Catholic, Evangelical, and one was Orthodox. The people who were JW and from weird Christian groups were for the most part nasty (in their personality) so I stayed away from them. I still have a negative view towards Christian groups that are considered cults by mainline Christianity.
I understood that there are nice people in other religions too, but the Christians friendliness was actually genuine so that gave me some interest, along with seeing some beauty in Christianity. Also during this time throughout my middle school and high school I did undergo some suffering, I was exposed to the news of tragedies in the world, but that was all just part of reality and growing up I just moved passed those things, one of the biggest questions I have had was why are human beings sometimes so evil to each other? Also there was a time I have heard a passing from a friend that committed suicide, I looked on his facebook and I saw a picture of a pentagram with reaper, the last few months of his life were very dark I don’t fully understand what he was going though. I was horrified that he took his life in a gruesome way, and that he didn’t even turn 20 yet gave me chills. I won’t give full details on why he gave his life away, he got really screwed over by his family that wasn’t supportive of him, I won’t go into details.
From where I live Islam is highly frowned upon and condemned, same thing with JW and cults that were around my neighborhood town. I didn’t know anything about religion and wondered why people hated them so much. At first I was deceived about Islam and thought others were just taking things out of context and misrepresenting their religion, but until I actually wanted to find out for myself I honestly was disgusted of their history and their prophet so Islam was quickly a scratch off my list. The JW, later from my research I found they abuse people and are just a mind control cult just from common sense, so any whacky cult was easily avoided for me, if I wanted to join a Church I would just find a regular normal church nothing out of the ordinary. Lastly during my highschool I watched debates with atheists and theists, I found the atheist position to be completely stupid because they kept claiming to know that no God exists and how everything came into existence when they don’t know that. I saw how they acted like big brain intellectuals when really it was just a arrogance and pride behind all that. Most of the classmates were not athiests but they're were still a lot of them in my school so it had a influence there. They would accuse Christians of being indoctrinated, having an imaginary friend, blah blah blah.
I was left with 2 choices, Judaism or Christianity. These were the only religions that seemed like rational choices. I was quickly turned off from Judaism seeing how legalistic it was, I could not bear with it. Also seeing how heated the rabbis could be towards gentiles I did not like (Not all Rabbis). Lastly it being such a small religion I wondered is this really God’s true religion? I heard about Jesus Christ but I did not know much about him, I decided to give it a try and see if Jesus really is the Messiah. I started off at a non-denominational Church, were the pastor was a complete heretic and I did not know it at all at the time. He had a hatred towards Catholicism, he would often talk about how the Pope is the anti-christ. The Church didn’t believe in the Trinity it was a modalist Church, and he preached a works-based salvation.
For a half a year I went, I wasn’t really active. The Pastor took notice of my church attendance and had a talk with me in a private room which was strange. He opened up the OT and showed me how people were killed for breaking the Sabbath back then, he compared this to now and asked me how much do I think God takes it seriously that I go to Church. Other than that we were taught things in the Church such as Jews will be saved regardless if they believe because they are still Gods people, and we were told that if we tithe to the Church God will bless us, and he taught that tithing is required for God and commanded. This guy seemed on to something, he kept asking me if I worked a job or what kind of car I have randomly when I entered the church soon after he got to know me. I brushed it off at first, and I noticed people were leaving the Church because they suspected that the guy just wants peoples tithes since he really emphasized people to give to his Church. The pastor was rude and demanding, He has a bitterness towards protestants too because he believed they preached a false gospel (The ACTUAL GOSPEL)….
I felt like he was a wolf’s in sheeps clothing, I was terrified for myself since I didn’t know if I was in a good church or if what he was teaching was correct since it contradicted a lot of things in the Bible. After a few powerful dreams, one night I opened my Bible and I actually got saved, then after that I just knew the pastor was a phony and left the Church soon after.
Now I am just seeking out another Church, and learning the Bible for myself instead of listening to some guy. It surprises me all this fiasco just to get to here, when it was simple and the truth was right in my face the whole time. I am grateful, but I wish I knew sooner. I wasted so much time at that Church and learned absolutely nothing useful except for a couple parables…
The thing that is scary is what if I never came to Christianity and hardened my heart towards it. I am just glad that didn't happen.
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