Question #25

[fbhjr]

This is in answer to the frozendoll meme I started earlier.

#25) Your religious beliefs
I was raised Catholic as part of the marriage agreement between my parents. My father had been a Baptist but was pretty firmly agnostic by the time I got to know him. My very early memories involve him going to church, but he stopped about the time I was five.

I was raised with a Christian belief system and to a very large extent still have it.

But, I have not gotten along well with organized religion.

When I was about 10 and going to the church CCD/Sunday school my friend Harry asked how God could be good when he had seen both his parents die in front of him in the previous year.
Our instructors answer was to kick him out for asking “inappropriate” questions.
I soon followed out the door for telling the instructor that Harry had a valid question that should be answered.

I did end up getting confirmed when the priest asked me how I liked the class and I told him about being kicked out. Having been given reading material before that, I already knew what I was supposed to know.

I did finally break with the church in college. The girl I had been interested in dumped me. I was feeling very down about that and went to the campus priest for advice.
“Read the bible more,” he told me. “If you aren’t spending as much time reading the bible every day as you spend on your school work then you’re not doing your duty and I can’t help you.”
He was wearing a monogrammed shirt with matching cufflinks. He got into his Lincoln Continental and drove off to his office off campus.
I decided that church did not offer what I needed.

In the 90’s my wife and I decided to give church a try again. A Methodist church in our town was reorganizing and starting new and we decided to join.
We got very involved almost immediately. My wife was a trustee and I was the head of administration before we had been there 3 months.
For years we were very involved. We did all sorts of church activities. We ran groups. We led meetings.
And, when my wife almost died, we lost our child and lost the chance to have children, there was silence from them.
But, we still remained active.
When we had marriage problems, as so many years before I turned to the pastor and asked for advice.
“I’m busy right now, can we do this some other time?” was the reply I received.
I walked away.

I believe in God. I consider myself a Christian.
I don’t belong to any church right now, and I’m not looking.
I do miss it some.
But, I did unto others as I had hoped they would do unto me.
And, it didn’t work out.

Comments

[ravena-kade.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear that people were not there for you when you needed them... not just as clergy, but as humans first.

[silverdragonma.livejournal.com]

As a pastor/priest it is our job to listen and aid those who look unto us as a religious person. There are not many who look to me in my priestly role, but even if I am at my regular job/middle of the night if they need help I am there. I am sorry that those that you looked toward could not be. It is one of the things that got me upset with my Grandmother's church. She had been a member for 50+ years, but it was like asking for a miracle to get someone to come visit her at home, since he was unable to make it to church anymore.