Your Religional beliefs.?

Question

What is your religion? Do you proclaim it? Does it offend you when people disagree with your religion? And if you don't proclaim it then do you really believe?

Answer 1

I am a Christian and I proclaim it all the time and in everything I do. A part of me gets offended when people make silly assumptions about all Christians, but if we don't agree on the same religion I can't get angry because I respect the fact the everyone has their own belief system.

Now I do know some Christians who don't proclaim the Christian faith and lifestyle all the time. I feel there are a lot of 'part-time Christians' who show their faith only when it's convenient for them or only when they are in the prescence of other Christians (i.e. church). Most of these people can't tell you a verse from the bible but say they are Christians becasue their parents took them to church as children. Keep in mind I can not place judgement on these people because I don't know what's going on in their lives and it's not my place.

Then there are the 'holy-rollers' that are very judgemental and they try to play judge and jury of everyone but themselves. Jesus said "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." Normally these are the people who use the Great Commision and passages like Mark 6:11 as their stronghold for their actions. Again, I can't judge these people because I don't know what their circumstances are.

Okay enough for the soapbox answer...

Answer 2

I am a pagan/Wiccan.

We do not feel the need to "proclaim" our spiritual path. Paganism isn't about making a spectacle of yourself, proselytizing, or trying to gain converts. It is a spiritual journey that one takes for themselves.

Does it offend me when people disagree with Wicca? No, as I said above, it's not about other people, it's about MY relationship with the Divine, what others think of my faith doesn't matter.

Anyone can stand up and "proclaim" a religion, it doesn't mean they truly believe. If a person is "right" with the Divine, they don't need to run around telling everyone, they can show it ny how they live.

Answer 3

I'm one of Jehovah's Witnesses, and yes I do proclaim it as you well know, but no it does not offend me when people disagree. I feel it's very important to share the Good News that I have learned with others. By going door to door, most will not want to hear it, but 1 out of 10, or even 20 makes it all worthwhile.

Answer 4

I'm a proclaimed Muslim. If people discuss about religion in a graceful, polite and respectful manner with me, then why should I be offended? On the other hand, if a discussion is filled with religious bigotry, sacrilege and vilification, surely I would be offended, although yes, my religion prohibits me to transgress certain limitations and preaches patience and kindness even to the enemy, as demostrated by the Prophet (peace be upon him).

God knows best

Peace and Love

Answer 5

I'm Buddhist. I answer questions when they're asked and I do just about everything from a Buddhist philosophy but I don't proselytize. I enjoy REAL debate and good conversation but I don't care if people disagree... not everybody is always capable of getting beyond their narrow view enough to understand Buddhist philosophy and reasoning, for which I have compassion and understanding.

"Not proclaiming" is not a failure in belief, it's just keeping one's mouth shut. Belief is a mental concept that is within your OWN mind, nobody can shift your belief unless you find a flaw within it (and are open-minded and intelligent enough to honestly chew over the logic of it) and change it yourself. You can be killed, you can be tortured and babble whatever they want you to say, but can anyone ever truly CHANGE your belief without your "consent"? NO.

_()_

Answer 6

Atheist...it's not a religion BTW.

I don't know if I proclaim it, but I do tell some people about it. I don't try to convert others...people should be able to believe however they wish.

It doesn't offend me that others don't believe as I do, what offends me is the stupidity of SOME religious people who claim that atheists worship Satan, or say that we are evil with no morals, or say that we really do seek god, or that there are no atheists in foxholes...etc...etc...etc...

Answer 7

I'm Pagan (equal parts hedge-witch and small-w wiccan).

There's no need to "proclaim" anything. if asked, I will answer.

I don't start out every conversation with 'As a Pagan, I think......", and I don't feel the need to prove the rightness of my spiritual path to anyone.

It doesn't offend me when people disagree with my religion. it does annoy me when non-Pagan people think they know more about what I believe in and practice than I do.

And, yes - I really believe. But if you need a proclamation in order to believe that I believe, here is mine:


I believe that there is a sacred force that manifests in living things, which are all things in the natural world. This creative force, which has no gender, is imminent in all the natural world, and is also transcendent of the natural world.

I experience this divine Source in maleness and femaleness, in light and dark, in community and individuality, in the cycle of life - gestation, growth, maturity, decay, death, and transmutation, in cold and heat, etc.

The God is one polarity, the Goddess the other.

This is the world view of of wicca - not a fight between good and evil, but a dance between the Goddess and the God.

The balance of God and Goddess is ever-changing and yet follows a repeating pattern. At any moment, the God energy/force may be in ascendancy (Summer) or the Goddess energy/force may be (Winter), but the dance has a pattern that does not change.

We circle around and come back to where we started from.


Since the Divine is *manifest* in the natural world, we can learn about the Divine from observing that natural world. It is the primary source of our understanding, and the reason that Wiccans (and Pagans, generally) cannot claim to know the "one truth" or "one right way" - for just as there is no one right way to be a flower or tree or dog or bird or rock or cloud, there can be no ONE right way to experience the Divine or have a relationship with It.

We celebrate the Dance of the seasons, and the dance of our own lives, which also follow the pattern; we grow, and mature, and decline, and die, and change into something else.

Our holidays (holy days) mark the most important of the balance points, and also the seasonal changes: the solstices and Equinoxes, and the seasons of planting and harvest and fallowness. We gather also at full (and for some, dark) Moons, and we look inside ourselves and see what we need to work on.

We gather to celebrate LIFE.

Our altars are everywhere, for the entire Earth is sacred. Our names for the Goddess and the God are myriad, for They have been experienced in many cultures through the ages.

Our purpose is to align oursleves with the sacred pattern that exists in the natural world, to be an active part of the cycle of life, NOT to try to make the natural world conform to our convenience or greed or hunger for power.

If you can be deeply moved by listening to uplifting music in your church or synagogue, then you know how I feel when I listen to birdsong or breezes; if you can just NOT help but clap or shout "Amen!' or "Hallelujah!", then you know why I dance in celebration to drums and chants; if your eyes fill with tears of joy at knowing that you are loved by your God, then you know how I feel when my feet touch the flesh of our Mother; if you weep over the story of the crucifixion, then you know how I react to seeing people polluting and degrading the good green Earth that we live on.

The Divine is in all things in the Natural world. We don't own the Earth. She is not our posession, but our Mother.

Answer 8

My religion is Islam. Yes I proclaim it and yes it offends me and annoys me when people disagree with me on Islam.

Answer 9

I consider myself an "accomplished" Catholic since I do not feel any need to "practice" it anymore. I personally abhor organized religion since all it seems to do is divide people and cause hatred. I do believe in a creator "God" but I am of the opinion that since God is infinite and timeless, there would be justification for creating the world in 7 days; so, when God created the Universe, God created the principles of science and consequently utilized the fundamentals of evolution to create life on this planet (and probably created life in the same fashion on millions of other planets). So, my thought is that God gives mankind a variety of ways to introduce Itself (be it Christianity, Islam, etc.) and that it is up to each individual to find their place in God's creation.

In addition, the thought of trying to understand a munificant and omniscient "God" is a waste of time since one can never know the uncomprehensible. And the idea of trying to interpret other people's idea of what "God" is (through ancient writings like the Torah, Bible, Qu'ran, Bhagavadgita, etc.) is a lazy person's way of finding God for themselves because all they are doing is taking another person's concept and making it their own instead of trying to "find" God through their own experiences and through their own eyes, just as the ancients did when they first wrote those tomes.

Answer 10

Christianity......Yes I proclaim it.....I enjoy when people disagree with my religion because by defending my faith, I will strengthen it. I will be posed new questions and tasked to find new answers. Faith is not blind. I have questions everyday and I reaffirm my beliefs daily because of them.