If you're a strong believer of God. Were you brainwashed from birth to believe or did you believe later on.

Question

If you believed later in life about God, what made you believe and how old were you?

Answer 1

Yes, I do believe in God. I have separated God from Religion. Religion is an invention of man, before man there was God.

Answer 2

“Faith Follows the Thing Heard”

It is not enough, however, simply to have a Bible or even to believe that it is inspired. “Faith,” writes the apostle Paul, “follows the thing heard.” (Romans 10:17) Hearing the Bible, not just having a Bible, is what builds faith. You “hear” what God has to say by reading and studying his Word. Even young ones can do this. Paul says that “from infancy” Timothy was taught “the holy writings” by his mother and grandmother. Does this suggest that some kind of brainwashing was involved? No! Timothy was not manipulated or deceived in any way. He was “persuaded to believe” what he heard and read.—2 Timothy 1:5; 3:14, 15.

ild true faith—the kind of faith described by the apostle Paul in his letter to the Hebrew Christians. Such faith, he said, is “the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld.” (Hebrews 11:1) Having such faith, you will be absolutely sure that all your hopes and expectations, including God’s promise of a resurrection, will be realized. You will be convinced that such hopes are based on sure guarantees, not on wishful thinking. You will know that Jehovah has never failed to keep his promises. (Joshua 21:45; 23:14; Isaiah 55:10, 11; Hebrews 6:18) God’s promised new world will be as real to you as if it were already here. (2 Peter 3:13.)

If you would like further information without obligation or a free home Bible study, please contact Jehovah's Witnesses at the local Kingdom Hall. Or visit http://www.watchtower.org

Answer 3

I was taken to Sunday school mostly until I was 16, then I went on my own until 17 to another church with a friend. I quit and didn't go back and get saved until I was 20 at still another church. After about 10 young people including an ex boyfriend all died separately I thought I could be next and I didn't want to go to hell so I got saved. Since I got saved and have been faithful to church for 31 years,I have experienced the love and security of God, answered prayers ,healing and truly love to go to church and live for God.

Answer 4

I am a strong believer. But not, I was never brainwashed, not as a child and neither as an adult.

God exists and He reveals Himself in many ways.

I became a Christian when I was 30 years old.

Answer 5

My parents were not religious people. They never told me about God, Jesus or hell. Yet I remember at the tender age of 5 in believing in a higher power. I didn't understand this completely until I was about 40 years old. I am now 51.

Answer 6

I believe the way i do for many years, and am open to change if proved otherwise.
The basic truth is : God is a spirit, and made us in his image, therefore we are also spirit after he made us. He can only 'make ' us, through his Son, which speaks to us through people, which are all members on the body of his Son, being a church.
The only way we can be 'image' of each other , is spiritually.
Ef 4 v 22 to 24.

Answer 7

I believe all humans have a driven to find something great then themselves to worship. Not all people are brainwashed. some people find their "god" later in life some are taught at home to worship one way then change to another. I have meet people that changed from Judaism to Christianity. I know someone who was a Christian that became Wiccan.

Answer 8

I suppose the answer to this question is a little difficult for me. My father was raised Jehovah's Witness and had a falling out with the Watchtower organization when he was a teenager, my mother wasn't religoius but her family was, so religion wasn't a big deal in my house growing up, but there were a lot of religious books around, and two or three Bibles in every room. So the seeds were there for me to get interested in religion, and I had family and family friends to answer all my questions about religion. It wasn't pushed on me, and there were also non-religious books, and to say that there were a lot of confusing answeres is an understatement: I had Mormons on my mom's mom's side, Minnonites on my mom's dad's side Anglicans in a family friend of my mom's, Baptists in a family friend of my dad's, and Jehovah's Witnesses on my dad's side. The only thing I was missing was a Catholic perspective, not to mention the various athiest and agnostic people my dad worked with, and since he was a foreman, the people he worked with were around a lot. (Ironically, that was the first religion I considered joining was Catholicism.) So I had all the reason in the world to think that religions couldn't be reconciled. I had every reason to question the existience, power, stability, and persistance of God. My parents certainly never told me to believe one way or the other. My dad prayed, but we didn't pray as a family. (My mother wouldn't allow it until I was in college.) On the other hand, I don't ever remember personally not believing in God.

But time marches on, and I did get to a point of questioning the exisience of God. It wasn't unbelief, more like the questioning the exienstence of Europe. Sure, it's out there, but how do I *know* it's out there? So I started to look for evidence. For me, the first actually compelling evidence that someone pointed out to me was the number five in nature is previlant in a way that is hard to explain except by design. Five fingers, toes, points on a starfish, planets visible to the naked eye, most leaves and flowers have five points or petals, etc. Yet there is also enough instances of "not five" to show that there's no magical power in the number five. It was chosen by God to be a mark on creation, not mandated by mathematics.

It wasn't until I was in high school that I actually had the brain power to question which god was the god that chose the number five. For that, I turned to predictive prophesy, but at first I figured the Bible was too old to be reliable. So I started looking for real "prophets" that made 100% reliable and accurate predictions in more modern times, and found Joan d'Arc. (Yeah, the little girl from France.) She was right when she said something came from her voices, which in turn told her they came from the God of the Bible, and she was only wrong when she didn't know what her voices thought on a subject. That one was one that no one showed me, I more-or-less found it on my own. Since no one I knew was Catholic, they all advised me to stay away from studying her writings and sayings, because "we all know how bad the Catholics are." So, of course, after that, I had to study a lot of what the Catholics believe, just because everyone told me not to and they seemed to have the strongest claim at that point. I ended up having theological problems with the faith that I didn't think were founded in the Bible (which Joan gave the final authority in all things.) But I can really see how some people following the same logic I did would choose to be Catholic. At one point, I considered leaving the decision to persue becomming Catholic to a coin flip.

So, I guess I'm somewhere in the middle.

Answer 9

An interesting point to add would be whether you were baptised as a baby. Kind of non-consensual that one! It would tend to point towards indoctrination from an early age.

Interestingly, many atheists began as quite religious or had leanings, but when they tried to find out more in depth on the subject of their adopted religion, the whole belief structure was shattered. It was just too inconceivable.

Below is a link to a couple of case study of an atheist who explored religion in depth and came to the conclusion it was mumbo-jumbo!

Answer 10

some people become strong believers because they were raised that way from the time they were little but some are taught about it later on in their age but if you want your kid to be a strong believer you should teach them young so they noe what kinda problems they will come up against