Day 04 - Religion

In continuing with my 30 Day Challenge...I'm now on:

Day 04 - Your views on religion.

Oh boy....I guess the point of this challenge is to get a girl thinking, but this topic makes me kinda uncomfortable.  At least I'm not skipping it, right?!  This is kinda wordy *warning*.

Here goes.  I was raised Catholic.  I have no issue with the Catholic faith.  I just stopped going to church because I got really annoyed with something that happened in mass when I was in college.  I guess, in general, you could say that I'm an open-minded person.  That is to say regardless of whether or not I agree with certain controversial topics, I can see both sides of an argument/issue.  In this particular incident, the church allowed for people to shout out prayer requests.  Most everyone shouted out something of a personal nature like a "please pray for my grandmother who is having surgery next Tuesday" kinda thing.  This is just an example, by the way.  My grandmother is not having surgery.  One parishioner shouted out, "please pray that Congress will reverse the abortion laws and that abortion will once again be illegal."  I was appalled.  I can't say that I necessarily agree with abortion, but I can say that I very much understand why it is legal.  Perhaps it was immature of me to stop attending church because of this.  I don't know.  All I knew was that I felt so uncomfortable and I just couldn't return there, so I didn't return to A CHURCH until many years later when some friends of mine encouraged me to attend church with them.  It was a Baptist church.  Wow!  That was way different.  It was like culture shock.  It was surreal to go from little old ladies singing hymns in high pitched, terrible voices that only dogs can hear to an entire congregation singing contemporary Christian hits from the radio with their hands raised in the air as they are swaying back and forth really feeling the music.  The pastor was an incredibly dynamic speaker.  He was able to hold my attention throughout his entire sermon and I walked away with something, many somethings actually.  I went to this church for 4 years.  I met one of my very best friends, Meliska, at this church.

I had my struggles there, however.  I don't choose to get into all of them because I don't want this post to take you 100 years to read.

Bottom line - I never joined the church.  In part because of the issues and also because I did not want to become a religion hopper - someone who keeps changing religions.  I wanted to join a church once I was basically sure what religion I wanted to be "when I grew up."  I wasn't entirely convinced the Baptist "label" was the one for me, so I remained content with just attenting church...and then eventually Sunday school in addition to church...for quite some time.

One Sunday, we had a guest Sunday school teacher.  He happened to be one of our classmates, actually.  He decided to do a comparison between the Baptist faith and another, unnamed faith.  He was clearly Catholic bashing.  I was offended.  Having been raised Catholic, having parents and many extended family members who are Catholic, and having Catholic friends, I was angered at the very notion of what he was insinuating.  What, pray tell, makes any one faith supreme to another?  Who, pray tell gives any one faith righteousness over another?  It was obnoxious and it took everything in me not to hold this against that Sunday school class and that church.  BUT, it was in the back of my mind.  I guess I had matured since my college days when I walked away from a church over less, eh?  For the record, a comparison of faiths can be done in an unbiased manner.  While in high school, I attended church for a while with my friend Stephanie.  She grew up Lutheran.  Her Sunday school class was studying other religions and even went to go visit some of the churches.  I never once got the impression that the message was loud and clear GO LUTHERAN and/or BAD {INSERT ANOTHER RELIGION HERE}.  It was done properly.

THEN...there was him.

I dated someone who I felt tried to use God against me.  He attended church once, if not twice a week (not my church).  He would pray before each and every meal.  He would read his Bible daily.  He could quote the Bible like any pastor.  He listened to Christian music and watched Christian television programming.  He was also a nightmare.  I don't care to get into specifics in this post, but to put it simply, he was one giant contradiction.  It was confusing, to say the least.  Throughout my entire ordeal with him, I never lost sight of God, mind you.   I lost respect for religion.

My life became a roller coaster ride that came off the tracks.  My emotions were out of control.  I was a mess.  I didn't feel comfortable going to church anymore.  I felt like the very idea of church was...hypocritical, if that makes any sense.  I blamed church and religion because he abused it and me.

So where am I now?  I've gone to a few churches a few times here and there.  I haven't found another church that I like, though.  I've considered going back to that same one I attended for 4 years as I did love the music and the Pastor.  I wonder, though, if I would be doing that for comfort sake and maybe I need to step out of my comfort zone and really seek out a true church home - one that I could someday raise a family in.  I guess you could say I've been feeling a calling to do so, so it shall be done soon.

To wrap it up...I am a Christian.  I'm a fairly private pursuer of my faith.  I do not trust self righteous people.