30 Day Challenge: Day 4-Your Views on Religion

Day 4: Your Views on Religion

My distrust of organized religion started when I was a child and was made to attend a very very conservative Southern Baptist church with my grandmother.  I loved the singing but then the preachers, only men of course, would spend the next hour or so hollering and yelling about fire and brimstone and how we'll all burn in hell if we aren't "saved". 

Women weren't allowed to speak and weren't allowed to wear pants, because this obviously would hinder in our worshiping of God.  When I asked my grandmother how I was supposed to know it was time for me to be "saved", she told me I'd get a heavy feeling in my chest and I wouldn't be able to shake it, I'd feel like something was wrong.  Then I would know I was 'lost' and needed to be 'saved'.  The only thing more opaque than that was the way the act of saving was accomplished.  Once someone felt this heaviness they would go up the the altar at the front of the church and kneel and pray and pray and pray.  This would go on for hours, late into the night.  All members of the congregation would kneel around them while the men preached and we sang and prayed.  Having never experienced it myself I'm not sure how one knew that they had been saved but eventually after enough praying a feeling of lightness and relief would spread over you and the uncertain feeling in your heart would dissipate. I never understood it and never agreed with it.  But since I was made to go and made to attend revival, that's church three times a day for seven days in the summer, by the time I was old enough to drive I'd had enough. 

I shunned church and God and religion all together, even judging those who held so tightly to such an outdated idea...until I moved to MO.  I felt like things were coming together for me, that my life here was going to be what I was looking for but that something was missing.  My sister's friend invited us to attend her church, which was in walking distance of my apartment, and check it out.  We did and, surprisingly, it felt like home.  The people were great, everyone was welcoming, there was free doughnuts!  The only thing that tripped me up was this idea of Jesus.  I, without a doubt, believe there is a higher power up there.  If you want to call him God, Allah, Buddah, whatever it doesn't matter to me.  I pray to a higher power for strength and guidance.  I just couldn't get past the idea of him.  Regardless, it was great but still a little too Jesus centered for me.  I also attended a Unitarian Universalist  church and I loved it, it was everything I was looking for...just too far away. 

Lately I've been feeling that something was missing again, wanting to find a church that is just right.   Something non-denominational that fits me.  It would make me feel more connected to my community and would be a way to get involved.  I suppose I shouldn't quit looking because I know there is a church that would feel right and would have everything I need.  Maybe this will be my personal pilgrimage.