I’ve always been skeptical of people who tell you something and then expect you to just believe it without doing your own research. I was the kid who told my parents that Santa didn’t exist (instead of the other way around), and asked questions like, “Would Gandhi go to hell because he didn’t believe that Jesus is the son of God and died for our sins?” Having been raised in the conservative Church of Christ where I was expected to simply believe the teachings, I felt that it was my duty to do my own research and not blindly accept “on faith” what I was being taught. How can you truly believe something if you haven’t researched it and other options?
I’m amazed at people who claim a certain religion and haven’t even critically examined and studied the primary source(s) of information for their beliefs (e.g. the Bible, Koran, Torah, Bagvadhgita, Vedas, etc.). At the end of the day I care more about what you do, not what you say you believe, because I think your truebeliefs will drive your actions.
More to the point, I’m still on my own spiritual journey and have just recently started to spend time seriously investigating other options besides the one that was shoved at me when I was young and impressionable. I was attempting to share some of my findings with someone very close to me, and they basically shut down. I mean, they were physically affected by the information. I was just sharing some information I thought was interesting, not trying to convert them or anything. I was amazed at how people have been brainwashed to the point that they are closed to even learning about anything else. I use the word “brainwashed” because if it was simply a matter of having faith, then this person would not have been affected in such a way by new, conflicting information. I realized that you can’t just spring stuff on people that basically refutes everything they’ve been taught to believe all at once. There’s a process for effectively sharing information regarding sensitive subjects like religion.
So I said all that to make this request: Do you have any inspirational conversion stories either about yourself or someone you know?
I’m specifically interested in hearing examples of people being raised in a certain religion who believed it without question and then converted (either to another religion or to a more spiritually pure path) after reaching adulthood. You can share by commenting on this post or emailing me directly at tre@dnbeapparel.com. To get the conversation started, here’s the most inspirational story I’ve read so far.
DNLee
That's interesting. I was a skeptic, even as a kid. I remember trying to read the real bible on my own, not the illustrated Children's version, at the age of 6. The poetry confused me, but I was getting through it. I read how God created the world in 6 days and I had to shut the book. I asked every adult: “If the whole world can be created in 6 days, then I why must I wait s long for my new tooth to come in?”
My skepticism wasn't about doubting the exisitence of God (I don't), my issue was with logical proceedings of events. By that age, I had started to gain an idea of time and how long it takes for things to happen. (I was a VERY impatient child – still am), e.g. the school day, the school year, one birthday to the next, time to prepare dinner, arrival of Christmas, the regrowth of my front teeth, etc. It just didn't make sense that the WHOLE, ENTIRE World could spring up in a short amount of time and my whole life was about waiting.
After that, I became the ever skeptical, always reading individual who always cross-referenced EVERYTHING. I felt better when I read (somewhere) that that reference was about 6 man days, but that a day to the Lord is like a thousand or more years. Whew. Made reconciling Evolution easy for me.
January 5, 2009 at 3:05 pm
gib
I've spent 27+ years judging people and doling out rules for what to do and how to live. I've spent that time being right and having neat, black-letter prescriptions for what every one else should be doing. Now? There is not time enough in the day to know if what somewhat else is doing is wrong, with all the cleansing and perfecting of myself yet to do.
The first dream I remember is coming home from vacation and dropping my suitcase down in front of the door of my room. When I opened it, “Satan” (who, in my view now, does not exist in form) popped out and when I looked down into the suitcase there was the fiery pit of hell. I could not have been more than 4 or 5. Now? There is no way I will participate in stories and ideas that would make a child of mine have that kind of dream.
And then I remember later wondering if every person in some tribe or jungle in Africa or Brazil would go to hell if some evangelical or missionary didn't go deliver a Bible and salvation. Now? God is really probably imperceptible. Can't really be intellectualized. God must be felt. Anybody choosing peace, love and forgiveness is experiencing God. There is no mistaking it. Bible, Koran, Zen master or not.
The conversion? Jesus can no more save someone than he can eat for someone. His example (fulfilling the law, aligning with, his words, “the Father within”) is what saves (or better, frees) me from the lure of desire, judgment, compulsion and stuff. Same with Krishna, Buddha, Ramana or anyone else. Being the example. Being the difference. Being the love. Being the non-judgment. Jesus said I'd do the same things … BEING that stuff, not memorizing rules and pointing fingers, is how. Hell or Heaven is in my mind. And, it is right now. There is no dichotomous good or evil, there is only perception. God is not peaceful or loving. God is the peace and the love itself. Not a man in the sky doling out treats occasionally and according to deeds. And this is true for me and me alone. I cannot say what spiritual experience is right for someone else.
I have found that the extent to which I don't judge others is the extent to which I don't judge myself. The extent to which I allow other people's opinions, needs, desires, and their very selves, to be free, is the extent to which I am free. In order to imprison someone (in order for them to be “wrong”) I have to be there watching and holding the chain. Believing in their awfulness, instead of their likeness and similarity to God (perfection, love, light) and kinship to me. I am “tied” to their misdeed as much as they are. No mas!
Life is very simple. So is God. Either we are experiencing love or choosing a (seeming) opposite (like fear, judgment, hate, violence, greed, dejection, doubt, confusion, lack – God is not and can never be any of these things).
Either God is all good all the time, or not. Either God is All Power (omnipotent), All Presence (omnipresent) and All Knowing (omniscient) or not. There is no duality. There is perception. There is wrong-thinking based on human choice and will, but the only “evil” is not acting from my innate divinity. The only wrong is when my actions, choices or thoughts miss the mark (“sin” means missing the mark). When I “repent” (or, turn away from the errors in judgment and poor choices) my “salvation” (or the remembrance of my wholeness in GOD) just IS. God never stops being love or peace or light or good or salvation or freedom. I choose something different. If I am made in the image and likeness of God, then my God-liness is ready to BE. But I must choose it.
I'm an ex-Baptist. It has taken 28 years to undo my condemnation mentality… and it has made all the difference. All I see is good. All there is, in my view, is the potential to see God realized everywhere and in everyone.
This read was a pleasure! Welcome!
January 5, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Helese
I find that I am going through the same kind of journey, and it is scary sometimes. Sometimes I get so afraid that I am doing the wrong thing (premarital sex, partying, drinking, lusting, masturbating, cursing, concern with material things, pursuing the wrong interests) that I am going to be eternally punished for it.
I have had nightmares about hell since I pretty much could remember. They have caused me to cry myself to sleep up until even now, and I'm 24.
I tried to have a conversation with my father about some of the new things that I had learned about the origin of the stories in the Bible and stuff, and I now know that that is a pandora's box I will never open again. My father has been involved in the church since before I was born and was a former penecostal pastor, now an elder.
Lately I have been getting the feeling that something is not right with my life spiritually. I am very sensitive and always have been, and I can't watch scary movies because then I become jumpy and have nightmares. I've always been this way too.
I believe in demons and so called low spirits and I definitely believe in God. I believe in my own power and I have great aspirations to be in music, film, and television, I have always wanted to travel and I get paid to as an international flight attendant.
But there's always this nagging feeling that if I really had it all together would I really be freaked about by a scary movie, and be afraid of the dark? If the truth has been made so plain to me that Christianity is a lie, then why do I have major doubts when I see a testimonty on youtube about a guy who supposedly spend 23 minutes in hell?
And why is it that when I had an abusive relationship with someone who I am convinced was/is possessed by a demon, why did I know that I must read my Bible everyday and make a last and final commitment to God that I would stick to it, go to church, and why after all that, did I fail? (Or decide that it wasn't worth it to do it at the level I was doing it at…)
I mean that situation was before I was introduced to kimeticism. But still. I feel that I felt the presence of God then, was I wrong?
At this point I'm unsure about hell. But I know for a fact a form of it exists on Earth and can exist in your own mind.
I'm still looking for the heaven part.
January 20, 2009 at 5:30 am
D.WINGO
“There is no duality. There is perception. There is wrong-thinking based on human choice and will, but the only “evil” is not acting from my innate divinity. The only wrong is when my actions, choices or thoughts miss the mark (“sin” means missing the mark).” THAT STATEMENT IS REALLY AN EXAMPLE OF HOW CONFUSED YOUR THINKING IS. SAYING “EVERYTHING IS RELATIVE”, IS A SELF-DEFEATING REMARK. BECAUSE YOU ARE REALLY JUST SAYING YOUR OWN COMMENT IS TRUTH, BUT WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE SAYING IS THAT THERE IS NO “TRUTH”. WITHOUT A CONCEPT OF TRUTH BEING ONE THING THAT IS CORRECT NO MATTER WHAT, LAW AND ORDER IS DESTORYED IN FAVOR OF CHOS! YOU HAVE REALLY DESTORYED THE BASIS OF YOUR COMMENT TO BE TOOKEN SERIOUS BY ANY ONE WHO CAN SEE THIS OBVIOUS FALICY.
April 20, 2009 at 8:24 am