growing up Christian Options

[eunie03]

I've lived a pretty dogmatic life. I haven't known much else. I started talking to a friend who's a philosophy major, and he up and tells me he thinks we just disappear after this. We have no soul, no spirit. We just live and die, and decompose. Like we never existed.

It's kind of pointless then. To live a Christian life.

I've been trying to get away from it since the end of high school. Christianity, I mean. But no matter how hard I try, it's so hard for me to believe that this is it. That there's no heaven or hell. Then I think about all the years I've wasted going to church and essentially just talking to the ceiling in my room.

It's just as easy for me to doubt it all.

Anyway, the point of my topic. If you've grown up in a church, you've probably noticed how much stronger the fire is in the newborn Christian. Growing up with it... it just makes everything mundane and routine. Have you ever denounced Christianity, just so you can have that newborn fire? Do you think it's a sin? To want to experience the world and gain some sort of insight before blindly following the faith?

[Heewee]

I know exactly what you mean when you talk about growing up Christian and just going through the normal routines. I grew up going to church every Sunday and going to religious education once a week. However, for a lot of kids in my church, what makes or breaks their religious faith is usually on this church retreat weekend that we have to go on sophomore year in order to be confirmed into the church. Most people go into the weekend with a really bad attitude, expecting that it's going to be a boring and dull weekend. Most people go home on Sunday with a strengthened relationship with God. I believe that it's not what happens on that weekend or who talks on that weekend that makes you believe...it's what you get out of it. Nobody can make you believe but yourself. I know there are people out there that have different beliefs or none at all and I respect their opinions. However, my opinion is that there are some things that happen in this world that are unexplainable without believing in a higher being. I know I wrote a lot and I really want to write more but I'm already late for my doctor's appointment.