why do you believe what you believe?
- Locked due to inactivity on Aug 4, '16 4:26pm
Thread Topic: why do you believe what you believe?
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This is mostly supposed to be kind of a spiritual life story. Say what you believe and why. I'll start:
I was not raised to be religious. Spiritual maybe, but not religious. My parents both strayed from the religious traditions of their respective families, Judaism in my father's case, Catholicism in my mom's case. I was always taught that there was a God, but I think of it as believing the way a kid would believe in Santa Claus. It was superficial, especially now that I know my the belief of my parents falls in some grey area. If there was any religious influence in my life, it came from my born-again Christian babysitter. She had a bunch of children's books of Bible stories. This, along with Veggie Tales, is the sum total of my education in the Christian faith. It should be mentioned that I was molested in her care by an older boy. I only now realize the irony of the devil's work taking place in a house of God.
So now we skip ahead to middle school. This is typically a trying time for everyone, but exceptionally so for me. In the wake of my misery, I began to question the existence of God, eventually finding that no one would steer back towards Him. If everyone else had given up on God, why should I continue to believe?
I went on a bit of a search to try and get back to God in some way, to find some kind of spiritual wellness, but finally by my final year of high school, I decided that there was no higher power looking out for me or anyone else in the world. That is basically how I decided I was an atheist. -
Why I am a Christian and why I believe what I believe is actually a little bit difficult to explain. While I was raised by my mom as a pentacostal Christain, she isn't the reason why I choose to stay a pentacostal Christain. I suppose the reason is actually God himself. Whenever my life has been hard or when I've been caught in an impossible situation when it looked like there was no escape God protected me and brought me out of it.
My past few years througout High School have been some of the lonliest of my entire life. At school I felt alone and, sometimes, the lonliness was so much it felt like I was being driven insane. Of course, I was never truely alone. When I prayed and during the school day I could feel his prescence and I new he was there. Everytime I prayed to him and begged him for just ONE friend God came through every time. The whole time my God had never forsaken me, abandoned me, or left me in a battle alone. I know that during the times when I have felt unbarable lonliness it has only helped my faith to grow stronger.
Here's another example of why I believe:
Once, a few years ago when I was 8 and my brother was 4, my parents got divorced and my father got a girlfriend. An awful, spiteful, evil girlfriend. She and my father had right to us for all summer that year. They were going to take us to Tenessee for a vacation. Somehow, my mom and I knew that once my brother and I left the driveway with them that we weren't going to come back. My father and his girlfriend probably would've done away with us somehow. The weeks before we were supposed to go with them it felt like our whole world was coming down. Then, a week before my brother and I were supposed to leave, the phone rang. It was my dads girlfriend/fiance. My father had packed his bags, left his engagement ring on the table, and run away. The vacation never happened. We never left. It was only because of God that we never left with them, and still I pray thanks to God because of it. Those are only some of the reasons why I believe that God is real and why I am a Christian.
After everything that God has helped me with and protected me from, I can't let go of him now. Nor will I ever.
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