What have you, personally, experienced...?

Question

What have you personally experienced in/as a part of your religion (or lack thereof) that makes you believe as you do? No quotes of any kind here, please, just your personal stories. (Big emphasis on the story here. Doesn't matter if it was a huge revelation or something just clicked--I want to hear the story.)

I'm highly curious as to what makes people tick, and why someone follows a religion is a big part of that!

Answer 1

I was brought up a Catholic. Now if that means that we hear so much of it that we are more rebelious to it than others then so be it.
However...lol....
Whilst taking LSD as a late teenager with friends (cred gone down the tube already with many) i had an experience.

I must point out that the whole reason behind taking anything non legal was the Christian endevour to help others and serve Jesus.

Anyway, as the time passed, sitting in a friends house, LSD already inside the tummy. We had a candle burning, just to watch the flame. A flame is different to almost everything we ever see, but we hardly ever look at them.

Someone may have found an old Bible in the house and begun to read it from the start.
With having an open mind the words made perfect sense, without any hidden meanings or interpretations at all. I was so at peace that every word made perfect sense. To this day i believe the Bible is true word for word, only we cant understand it because of our everyday thoughts and dogma.

If your interested still......

I became within the spirit. I was no longer just a human sat down with a body, i was transient, or transending, not up, but outwardly.
The purpose of light became more than a means of seeing, it was the stuff of life. It permiated everything and traversed all space and time. This was the beginning but i get bored of typing quickly and i dont believe more than 10% of the readers have the courage to accept what im writing here, so i will end here.

Answer 2

I don't follow religion now or from now onwards.
I used to think the idea was good when i was about 7 but my family wasn't heavily religious at all but later at around 12 I swore off all religion because i thought it was a way it controls people, the way people think and what they do.

I didn't want to be controlled at all or be a follower of a religion that told me how to think or anything like that. I think it's more important that people follow their own beliefs that they created themselves, not a belief written by someone else.

Answer 3

After a period of skepticism in all things religious I reached a point where I was physically very ill and emotionally weary. I was home-bound and so I 'surfed' on the computer a lot. I ran across a Buddhist site and something clicked. I remember thinking--"I can't live without some sort of spiritualism in my life." After studying and studying I became Buddhist. I am happy now and also healthy. The mind and body link? Maybe so.

Answer 4

I come from a Hindu background so following this religion and the practices associated wid it comes naturally to me, but that does not mean that i stay aloff to other religious practices, i am totally comforatable visiting a Church or a Gurudwara , my spirit guide is Hindu and He has always been around during my time of need infact i was protected from physical harm several times while i was 100 s of mile away from home so practising Hinduism comes naturally to me , but here in i would like to add all religions are just vehicles or means to make us unite with God who i feel incidentally is one and only one having different names, Religions are just means of indentification of a person a source of motivation for us lesser mortals to concentrate on God ....

Answer 5

I have belonged to 3 different churches, and my dad was an atheist. All my life he told me that I was too smart to believe in fairytales. But plugged on, searching for the truth. A lot of my family members and most of my friends were Catholic, so I know a lot about that religion, but was put off by all the edits that were not in the Bible, but that my friends thought were "mortal sins". It seems like everything was and I rejected that. Finally I just wanted to know WHAT the Bible said. I washed my hands of established religion and studied the Bible for five years with Jehovah's Witnesses. I was able to read the Bible and ask questions, and was able to decide what was meant on my own and able to sift out their own interpretation of the words. But I realized that most of the stuff in the Bible was stories written to make people behave right in society. And that what was for "your good" just meant that it made life for everyone else easier if you acted that way. There were too many flaws, too many unjustices, too many "mysteries" and too many contradictions for it to be "inspired by God". If he had instructed anyone to write it, it would have been perfect. It just hit me like a thunderbolt, that if established religion was corrupted from the Bible, and if the Bible was not true, then I just could NOT put my faith in something so false. I could not become an atheist, like my dad, because I was still so spiritual. And a part of me cannot shuck off God totally. But I don't believe any of the Bible tales about him, so I don't believe that he did anything but create everything (which ain't bad). I don't believe that he guides us, or expects anything from us but to do the most with our lives while we are here on this Earth. I do think that our intelligence, wisdom and emotions come from him and that in this respect, we are like him. We can be good or we can be bad, but it all reflects on what our lives end up to be. I don't believe in an afterlife or in Judgment Day. Our actions determine the quality of our lives.

Answer 6

I was raised fire and brimstone Baptist. I walked away from my own baptism at the age of 12 and finally walked away from christianity altogether at the age of 15 when the Reverend told me my pattern of sin was set for a lifetime and I had no choices in the decisions I made. That I had no freewill. So I exercised it right there and walked away. That was 1984 and I've never been back in a church except for the occasionally family wedding or funeral.

Answer 7

I was raised Catholic and Mentally Agreed Who Jesus was, but I never got Born-Again in that Church so that I could BELIEVE Who Jesus was, and Is.
I left that church and went into the World. Almost died, called out on GOD, Got Saved,(Spirit Recreated) and then All Kinds of Spiritual Things started Happening to me.
Jesus is Lord and you Better Believe it (get Saved).
HE is LORD.
Following Jesus IS NOT A RELIGION---it is REALITY.
All religions are False cause they Cannot Recreate your Spirit (save you).

Answer 8

I went to a Baptist elementary school. We had Bible study every tuesday. At one of these studies the teacher said that if we had friends who weren't "Saved" we had to stop being with them.

My best friend was Catholic... but that wasn't being "Saved".

So I told him that he had to be saved or I couldn't be his friend. It was what my teach had told me so I believed it. He cried, screamed and left.

The next day he tried in vain to explain that the religions were the same, but my teacher had prepared me for this and I countered everything he said. It was very tense.

That night I stayed awake thinking about it. I realized that if God existed and he wouldn't let me be friends with someone because they weren't "Saved" then I didn't want that god. I couldn't believe in that.

I've been an atheist ever since.

Answer 9

I am a Christian. Once when my dad was in egypt he heard this story. Two kids were being treated harshly by their relatives, so they locked the kids in a tomb. They were in there for two weeks before a team of ezcavator heard their knocking and let them out. When asked how they had survived, they said, "A man in a shining white robe took care of us and brought us food every day." Now who could have gotten through a locked tomb wihtiut any tools? Christ Jesus could

Answer 10

i have personally experienced messages from spirit .. giving and recieving of them
these messages are so personal and informative that it leaves me in no doubt that death is not the end
i do not follow my religion ( spiritualism ) because of this however as it can be kept quite seperate
but i do find it comforting to be with similar people
so it was a natural step for me to attend spiritualist church after many years of feeling alone in what i do