Your faith...

[Pheebs]

When asked, I've always said I'm a Christian. I was brought up from a very young age to attend mass weekly and say my bed time prayers and so on. It was when I hit mid teens (oooh the rebellious age!) I started to question what it was I was doing every Sunday and why I was doing it.

For me... in short... I was going each week to a church where I "chanted" the same words over again. 90% of the readings I had already heard and most of the preaching between was about how *I* reject God and was a sinner, so I should ask for his forgiveness. He will then forgive me and does love me so I should be joyous.

This... began to grate on me. Eventually I spoke to my Ma (who worked at the presbytery) and said that although I believe there's a higher power of sorts out there, I do not feel right to attend church weekly to participate in what I felt was almost a cult like ceremony.

I then became an infrequent church visitor. I would pop in when I felt the need but was not keen about it.

It was about 4... possibly 5 years ago now that my feelings for the church and Christianity was really pushed for me. My Nanny had passed away and I was stood at the front of this beautiful church mourning the coffin next to me... when I suddenly became aware that the priest in front of me was telling me I was a sinner and I didn't deserve the life I was given. This... riled me. Beyond belief. Obviously it was an emotional time as it was but to tell me... after I had worked my bum off to do all I could to support my Nan and my family as she slowly died a horrible death that I was a sinner and need to ask for forgiveness... well screw that for a laugh.

I then resented going to Church. I didn't even feel the need/want to go at Christmas and Easter. I just... didn't want to do it.

On top of that, I had been giving it all a lot of thought. God. Supposedly this chap in the human form... created everything. I'd like to consider myself as quite an open minded person but how could this one chap create all of this around me? And not being funny, where did he come from then?! What about evolution, which I believe in? I've always felt the Bible was a glamorous book of morals with some flicker of true stories in it but no more.

What baffles me is that all of this seems so obvious to me... it just seems so unrealistic to believe in some of the Christian beliefs. But what baffles me even more than this... is there are SO many highly intellectual people who do believe in it. Believe the bible, believe in God and Jesus and so on. They're more intelligent than I these people... what am I not seeing?


Now... I'm just confused I think there could very well be some form of super power above us that started everything... but not in human form!! Soooo. Tonight. I am going to a Christianity Explored church course. I'm intrigued now by what they have to say. I don't think I will be contributing a lot to the evening but I'm certainly going to listen and try and absorb the logic in the Christian belief.


I think it will be interesting. I'm always up for learning more about different beliefs and so on... but hopefully this will help figure out what I feel in my head. This post doesn't really put across my full arguments particularly well (excuse me for that - I'm just whacking this down whilst I finish my afternoon cuppa tea break) but you get an idea of what I think


How do you guys and girls feel?