We played in a hotel room in the early morning, the night before the state Academic Decathlon competition. Our advisor stopped by the room at 11 or midnight and saw us all there, teen boys and girls together. He asked if we needed any snacks or drinks, we told him we were set, and then he went off to bed. He trusted us, and remarkably, we merited it.

They called the game True Colors. Everyone in the group writes three questions on separate pieces of paper. Individuals take turns drawing out papers, reading then answering the questions on them – and then everyone else must answer the same question in turn, writer included. No ducking, no distracting dares. Just truth.

I remember sharing my doubt that anyone unrelated to me would attend my funeral if I died. “I’d come,” Erica said. So did John, April…others, solemnly. It meant a lot to a somewhat depressed sophomore. I was the kid on the team; they welcomed me and looked out for me. Acadeca was the first friend group I felt solidly part of, and that night in the hotel room, I learned that I mattered to them.

I also learned that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

I was a strict Catholic in those days, and I did my level best to abide by the Ten Commandments. Needless to say, number six gets a little tricky during adolescence with its “impure thoughts.” (That’s an awful, damaging lens with which to view sexuality, but I’m already meandering enough without adding a rant.) I strove earnestly to maintain my purity. Mostly, I drew arbitrary lines in the sand about what was “too far.” Those sands were constantly shifting, of course, because I was a teenager and had hormones, but I kept drawing out new lines when they got blown or washed away, and I fought not to let them budge too far, largely with success.

Half my teammates, I learned during True Colors, were averred beach bums who had frolicked through plenty of sand.

I realized, at some point during the night, that according to my prior convictions, those people should go to Hell. I realized at the same moment that my beliefs had to be wrong. I knew them, and they were good people; a just and loving God who would consign them to eternal flames could not be just and loving.

That was my first major shift in my religious beliefs. I had always asked inconvenient questions in Sunday school and mentally criticized some of the teacher’s statements. (Did you know that the Disney corporation sinfully promoted homosexuality, and that the sexually permissive attitudes in Sweden made it nearly impossible to maintain purity of mind there?) The pace of my questioning grew along with my discomfort with catechism. Following Confirmation, I begged my parents to let me stop going; I’d spend the whole hour at home reading the Bible, I offered. They said no, and that the teacher (a family friend) was well-prepared and knowledgeable, so I should ask any questions I had and make catechism better. She wasn’t, and I didn’t. But I still had the questions.

The second major shift came three years after, when the investigative team of the Boston Globe demonstrated the Catholic Church had systematically buried the crimes of pedophilic priests for decades. Cardinal Law, a man delegated to elect the pope himself, had enabled priests to harm dozens and dozens of children, and the practice was hardly confined to Boston. I had excused the Church’s past abuses as the past, but I could not excuse hierarchy-shielded molestation.

I sought other churches for a few years. The Methodist pastor in my hometown had charisma and intellect. The fourth or fifth time I attended, he used the word “heretics” to describe Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and my stomach churned. He knew what the word meant, knew what viciousness believers have justified using that word, and he used it anyway. I never attended again. Once I moved out of state, I attended a United Church of Christ congregation maybe a dozen times. The social views were progressive, and everyone was friendly; a well-meaning fortyish woman suggested on multiple occasions that she could set me up with a young woman my age who was looking for a “nice young Christian man.” Was that what I was? The phrase betokened a doctrinal soundness I hadn’t felt in years. I would have demurred even if I hadn’t been dating my now-wife.

I felt more welcome in these places because they were not Catholic; these places felt wrong because they were not Catholic enough. The politics, the attitudes, the reactionary stances of the Catholic Church all repel me, but I still feel impelled toward ritual. Protestants commonly refer to Jesus as “their personal Lord and Savior,” or discuss “their personal relationship to Jesus Christ.” As a former Catholic, I couldn’t feel that. I had been trained since birth to apply my heart to ritual, to discern God in the distance and the unknowable, to follow priests and contemplate the mysteries of the sacraments. In a time gone by, I once told a close friend that even if I broke with Catholicism, I would still feel compelled to attend Mass periodically to take the Eucharist. Once you’ve held the transubstantiated Body and Blood of Christ within you, wept with the joy of it, the little wafers of Protestant churches don’t cut it. They’re just bread.

So are the Catholics hosts. “Give it time,” my friend had responded, and he was right. Every once in a long while I wish he hadn’t been. Faith left behind a sad, angry, necessary hole. I’m a better man for having felt both.

I suppose I’m a secular humanist, nearly, but there’s that backbone of belief that seems to disqualify me there, too. I sometimes tell people that I’m a recovered Catholic, and the first half of that is mostly true. I don’t really look for labels, and I don’t think it matters. I don’t have absolute certainty in my answers to life’s questions – I mostly distrust those who think they do. Those I most admire, religious and irreligious alike, pursue belief and moral rightness as seekers, rather than viewing religion or other dogma as an answer key, or importable code like kung fu in The Matrix. I try to live and be good, love my neighbor and make people’s lives better instead of worse. I feel as though most sects and faiths owe their existences to debates over technicalities, and I just cannot imagine an all-good, all-knowing, all-loving God caring about quibbles. As the great American thinker Amy Farrah Fowler said on The Big Bang Theory, “I don’t object to the concept of a deity, but I’m baffled by the notion of one that takes attendance.”

I enter churches very rarely these days – weddings, funerals, architectural tours. When I do, I pray briefly. Not a rote prayer, which I left behind with Catholicism (though I assure you that if pressed, I could still rip through the decades of a rosary with speed to match any church lady). It’s some variation of this:

God, I do not know for certain that I am following the right path, but I am trying. You gave me a wonderful mind that I’m grateful for, and all I know to do is to trust to my thinking and do what I believe is good, and if I am failing in that, I am sorry. Thank you for the life I have.

I have found none to suit, so I was forced to create my own religion. Here is its credo:

“I bow to Woman, as life would be pointless without her.

I bow to spirits from the past who show me how to address the future.

I bow to the minds of science as they work to prove a God.

I bow to a sun that lights the way, warms the skin, breathes life, illuminates the night, and provides two wonderous miracles a day as it spins me through the cosmos... all while effortlessly holding this world in it’s rightful place.

... and I bow to our youth, and to their endless, discomforting questions.”

Feel free to join, but there is no church, no bible, no clergy, no tithe, and no parish.

1. I never was in a very religious household, had a bible in our house and celebrated Christmas but never was taught to be religious and believe in heaven and hell, my parent has always been quite liberal and free-thinking when it comes to topics of religion. A few times I tried to believe and pray, I could not make myself believe.

2. I feel no need for religion, as long I have art, friends, and family I’m happy, to be honest. Some people feel a need to attach themselves to a greater and eternal idea like Christianity or Islam but not me

3. There is no evidence for any human-made religion right now, only weak arguments about how the universe being so complex that a god had to have made it. Just because something is complex doesn’t mean it could not have happened naturally, we have the evidence of the big bang and evolution, adding a god(s) to the equation makes no sense, then you would need to prove the existence of that being and that is a whole new can of worms.

4. There are so many religions, which one would be right? Seriously I mean maybe the pagans are correct, maybe the Ancient Greeks got it right, who is to say? There is no smoking gun evidence for any religion and what makes you think your religion is right, the probabilities that your particular religion is right is very low, considering all the other religions.

5. Religions always reveal more about human society than they do about eternal ethical laws and metaphysical reality. Look at how religious people have treated women for example or gays, it says a lot about those patriarchal societies they came from more than the actual truth of the world.

Walking With

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

Genesis 3:8‭-‬9 NIV

https://bible.com/bible/111/gen.3.8-9.NIV

God walked in the garden

Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.

Genesis 5:24 NIV

https://genesis.bible/genesis-5-24

Enoch walked with God

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6:8 NIV

https://micah.bible/micah-6-8

God wishes that we walk with Him

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

John 17:20‭-‬21‭, ‬23 NIV

https://bible.com/bible/111/jhn.17.20-23.NIV

Walking with God, is Jesus' answered prayer.

Walk with God (it's a relationship, not a ritual).

Bless me father for I have been wronged.

I spent years modeling myself as the Martyr of Marriage. The Madonna of Motherhood. Always the saint, refuting my sins. Kneeling for confession. Asking for absolution in the eyes of our friends. Spouting the liturgy of the wronged wife. Abiding by the holy scripture of the divorce decree.

Bless me father for I have been wronged.

Where to begin? So much nonsense is talked about theology. Before I attempt to answer your question, I need to clear the field. Let's start by getting rid of some misconceptions.

One:There is no God.

If not, what preceded the Big Bang? Something had to cause it. Science suggests the multiverse, a notion for which no evidence exists. I have to wonder. Maybe non-belief requires blind faith?

The gravitational constant defines the strength of the attraction between masses. Had this constant been a tad smaller, the universe would have fallen in on itself. A tad larger, the universe would long ago have flown apart. There are dozens of similar constants in found physics, each one so finely tuned it seems miraculous that life exists. Blind luck? The odds against are preposterous, but why not have an infinite number of imaginary multiverses. Blind faith has no limitations.

And what about kids in the schoolyard condemning the others who cheat, lie, or bully. How did they come by their moral code? Isn't evolution about survival of the fittest. There's just too much evidence for God. At the end of the day, non-belief is frankly unsustainable.

Two: All religions are the same.

Religions do two things. They tell us how to be good, and they tell us how we'll be saved. Here's the first problem. For most religions, people are saved by their good works except for Christians. They are saved by faith in Christ alone. That's because Christ, unlike Lao Tzu, Abraham and the others, supposedly died and came back to life.

There is one sense that all religions are the same. They all share the same moral code (the Tao, the Ten Commandments, the Five Pillars, the Eight Fold way). And isn't that remarkable. As with the school kids, I have to wonder why?

On the other hand, regarding actual deities, religions can have a single god (Judaism), a triune god (Christianity), many gods (Hinduism), or no gods at all (Taoism), and as for heaven, it can be an actual garden (Islam), or a realm of pure spirit (Buddhism). Tell me how these are alike.

Three: Religious faith is only opinion.

The Christian faith claims that Christ was executed on the Friday before Jewish Passover in probably AD 30, but was then raised from death the following Sunday, and seen to be walking around in ancient Palestine. This alleged miracle occurred at a precise point in recorded history. Surely that would leave behind some record. This matters. If Christ stayed dead, there's no salvation for Christians. As Paul put it, without the resurrection, “Our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” While non-belief is purely opinion, Christianity a testable hypothesis. However, only by using historical method, and that raises another problem.

Four: Science, historical method and post-modernism.

Science is good with how questions, and most of the time, that doesn't matter. How the sky is blue fully explains the why of it, but what about the parting of the Red Sea. Why can't science help us understand that? Many believe 'Red Sea' is a mistranslation, and the actual water crossed was a shallow lake somewhere near the Suez Canal. Scripture informs us a strong wind blew ahead of the waters parting, and in parts of the world, strong winds are known to pile up water, sometimes exposing the sea bed below. If that's what happened, then how the sea parted can be explained entirely by physics. No need to assume the supernatural. Any miracle, if it exists, is in why this and why now, and that's outside the scope of scientific interest, meaning for it no miracle occurred.

On the other hand, why it happened when it happened might seem miraculous, and if it happened might be confirmed by historical research. This is also a fact-based discipline. However, while as empirical as science, it lacks the rigour of scientific method with its controlled and replicated experiments. Sadly, history doesn't provide for duplication or experimental control, and in any case, post-modernists, with some justification, maintain the winners cherry pick the facts. “History is bunk,” as Henry Ford said, and any research is considered flawed, its findings dismissed. That permits us to ignore evidence for the resurrection drawn from archaeology or ancient history.

Five: Moralistic therapeutic deism.

We are left now with a God of sorts but lacking Christ, and this has become the standard theology of many American believers. There is now a theology that grafts Buddhist thought onto American Exceptionalism and Pentecostalism, its name provided by the sociologists who've studied it. Google therapeutic moralistic deism. You'll find it has the following characteristics.

There is a God, and He is available to us on demand. This God wants us to be happy, and will come and fix our problems when we need Him. However, the rest of the time, He respects our independence and lets us lead our own lives but when we die, if we ourselves are satisfied with how well we've lived, He will reward us with heaven, whatever that means.

Now I can answer you. I believe in the resurrection, just as I believe my good works count for nothing with God. I am saved by faith in Christ alone. I also believe that God wants everyone else to be saved, but the Evil One has blinded most eyes to the truth of the gospel message – acknowledging we cannot hope to be the authors of our own salvation. We're all too much in love with ourselves.

Hope that helps.

What is my religion and why?

I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints because Christ is my savior and faith has given my life depth and meaning. I believe that Christ’s atonement can save us from all of our weakness, sins, heartaches, and failings. I believe that families can carry on even after death. I believe that our lives have purpose. I believe that God is in the tiniest details of our lives and knows us and loves us like no one else can.

Pick a team, any team!

Does it matter anymore?

Don’t research too much.

Pick your lip up off the floor.

Does it matter anymore?

I have life to attend.

Pick your lip up off the floor.

Or, be Muslim again?

I have life to attend.

No time for these views.

Or, be Muslim again?

Or, perhaps I’m a Jew?

No time for these views.

Who wants to dive deep?

Or, perhaps I’m a Jew?

I can’t overthink!

Who wants to dive deep?

My questions abound.

I can’t overthink.

Is my soul in the ground?

My questions abound.

Forget these groups!

Is my soul in the ground?

I’ll devise my own truths!

After much thinking, I became a Christian. 10 years ago, I moved to northern Canada for a couple of years. Wifi and TV cost an arm and a leg so I had a lot of time to think and that's also where I picked up my love of reading and writing.

A few of the books I read were "Beyond Good and Evil" "The Bible" and "The End of Reason." After reading all these books, I realized that I was living a double life. I wanted to believe that nothing happens after you die. So that I can do whatever I wanted. But I also cherry-picked the beliefs of Christianity that I liked. Even if those beliefs contradicted each other.

Then I remember reading the Bible and thinking. If there is no God, then nothing this book says really matters, even the parts that we all like. Morality would just be based on convenience and there would be no consequences for breaking your moral code. If that is the case then might really does make right. And all the governments of the world are only right and just, because they are the strongest.

I understand that this is a very complex subject. People who are far more intelligent than myself have written extensively on this. So, I'll leave it at this: without God, there is no real justice. Only what's legal. What is legal today, is illegal tomorrow. Which is why I don't base my morality on what is legal.

 Listen closely & you can hear HIS voice while you gaze into HIS gleaming of a sparkling silvery moon & HIS voice is that of...Our Lord Jesus Christ. 

So warm, caring & loving HE is to us, evem when feel HE let us down, don't wear a frown. 

When we are sick HE holds our hands & conformts us like a walk on the beach in the warmth of the sands. 

Don't worry when your ill, count your blessings that God is there forever with you & HIS love is true!

 Thank Jesus for everyday life & be blessed for the hardships, his lessons are his gifts, even when we don't get our wish. 

God loves us either way & for that, along with our love for him, never be ashamed of HIS love in anyway!

 PRAISE THE lord everyday & in our hearts he forever stays! AMEN

The Lord takes care of us everyday, we may not like how he does this at times, but it is all in his plans. He gave me a loving family when I was 3 years old after my biological family didn't want my two sister's & I. My adoptive family have unconditional love.

My other sister's were adopted to Christian families too. I found my little biological sister and we are close now, our older sister passed away years ago, I never met her. But she is always in my heart.

This is why I am religious and no matter what I do, or how sick I am, God is there. He is love.