I've Lost My Faith in Organized Religion
When I was four years old, I used to stand on top of the pews and sing my heart out. I had what my mother still refers to as "a heart for Jesus," and I loved to sing. I sang so loudly and with so much enthusiasm that I was an embarrassment to my incredibly introverted parents and a "blessing" to the adults around me.
I loved church. From belting "Father Abraham" to watching Gospel Bill videos to coloring pictures of David and Goliath, it was endless fun. The Sunday School teachers seemed immortal, and I loved talking to them, and I wanted to be just like them when I grew up. I learned to obey my parents and love my neighbor and speak in tongues. And of course I learned to love Jesus.
I learned many things that I'll never teach my children. I learned how to be manipulated by guilt, and I was taught to judge people. In fact, I don't think I'd like myself much today if I would have become the person my religion wanted to make me. Maybe we all need to make some sort of spiritual connection somehow, but I'm becoming increasingly convinced that many of us are going about it the wrong way.
The first problem that I have with the church is its tendency to manipulate its members with guilt. Religions have strict guidelines that help them to manufacture the machines that become their robotic followers. Through guilt, religion often attempts to tell people who to marry, how to spend their money, who to associate with, who to hate, and how to live. Every Sunday, before my pastor takes up "the tithe and offering," he delivers a lecture about how important it is to give. He reminds us that everything we have now first belonged to the Lord and stresses that God instructed us to give ten p...
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... tell me. The issue isn't even that I've lost faith in God. I feel that he's there, and I feel that he's loving, but I've definitely lost faith in religion. I just can't live the rest of my life wearing blinders and claiming to be right when I know I'm probably not.
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"Non-existent: The Truth about the 'Anointed Class." Witness Inc: A ministry to Jehovah's Witnesses. 20 Jan 2000.
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Oxtoby, Willard G, ed. World Religions: Western Traditions. Canada: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Kohak, Erazim V. "Part II." The Green Halo: a Bird's-eye View of Ecological Ethics. Chicago,
She realized that choice and accountability were not the answer, but that curriculum and instruction were more viable solutions to America’s educational dilemma. Ravitch suggests that to abandon public schools is to abandon the institution that supports our concepts of democracy and citizenship and to the promise of American life (Ravitch, 2011, p. 12-14). The idea of school choice is rooted in Milton Friedman’s essay concerning the government’s role in education. Friedman asserted that society should support and contribute to the maximum freedom of the individual or the family. He maintained that the government should provide vouchers to help support parents financially on their children’s education, which parents could use at the school of their choosing; so long as the school met set standards. Therefore, this creation of choice would stimulate competition, which Friedman believed would increase the development and improvement of nonpublic schools, as well as, create a variety of school options (Ravitch, 2011, p. 115). As a result of the choice movement, the public received three versions of school choice: voucher schools, private schools, and charter schools. Each of these schools receives public funding, but do not operate as traditional public schools, and are not managed by a government agency (Ravitch, 2011, p. 121). Charter schools became the most popular choice of this new
Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association of Washington, D.C., strongly holds that voucher schools are, in fact, not the answer to improving America’s public schools. Rather, Chase asserts that investing tax dollars in improving public schools is a far more advantageous step in the way of progress for the school system. Moreover, Chase writes that an overwhelming majority...
One of the main lessons I learned was, for years people have been using religion for some type of power, financial gain, land or just control over people by just taking some verses in a text and not interpreting properly. I believe that the Jew had most of the things right in how they believed because they were so discipline, we have watered down religion today trying to make everyone feel a certain way instead of just telling the truth. I believe without the truth we are going to continue to put man over God instead of like the Jew in Judaism put God over everything.
Church is a major part of my life. I have always gone to church. It is a part of who I am. Church is not only about sitting through church services. I am currently involved in Russian school, Sunday school, camps, wind ensemble, teens’ group, teens' choir, and youth group. There are so many engaging activities and groups that bring together our community, defining who we are as individuals and as a society.
Growing up in Jamaica, I enjoyed worship. I remembered looking forward to church. We clapped our hands and stomped our feet and made a joyful noise unto the Lord. We didn't have keyboards and drums. We clapped and sounded like timbrels. I remembered when I learned to testify and it helped me and several others to build our confidence. I would sing in the local churches when they have special events. I watched young people being filled with the Holy Ghost and I wanted it so badly that I would pray and ask God to give it to me. I remembered watching my mother and my sister speak in tongues and I so wanted to do it.
Leopold, Aldo. “The Land Ethic” in Environmental Ethics edited by David Schmidtz and Elizabeth Willott. Oxford University Press, New York. 2002. p. 27-32.
Again I was raised neutrally with religion. As a family we didn't attend church. My grandparents are all Jehovah's Witness's, although both my father and mother ended up being disfellowshipped from the congregation. Since not having any religious influence being taught to me, I was open to explore different religions for myself. I learned about several different religions. I know now that I am a Spiritualist, rather than Christian.
United States Department of Education (1997). Overview of Charter Schools. Retrieved April 3, 2003 from the World Wide Web: http://uscharterschools.org/pub/uscs_docs/gi/overview.htm
The church in today’s world have very low standards. We are disregarding the active sins of the believers in the churches and are not ready to take a stand and speak to them about it. As a result of this churches are encouraging adultery, envy, strife, unforgiveness and lack of love which is taking us away from God on a daily basis. God will give us a time to repent but one day he will judge the church and the nation just like Israel so that we come back to him (Beckham, n.d.).
As a young boy, I attended Sunday School for many years. I learned about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit once a week and was immersed in a family that was religious. We never missed a Sunday, prayed before every meal, and talked about God in our lives. I was baptized and began attending a Lutheran church up until the end of middle school. Our lives became busier, and our attendances to church became fewer and far between. In school I began learning about evolution and how humans came about. I remember that I did not understand how school could teach something different than what I learned my entire life. At first I did not know what to believe. I became skeptical about many ideas in the Christian faith. Is there one almighty God? Did he create man as told in the story of Adam and Eve? I thought these bold ideas were far-fetched. For a short while, I did not believe the teachings of the Bible or of God. I had many of the same thoughts as doubters of the Christian religion. How can the idea of one God or Heaven be real if no living person had ever witnessed it for themselves? Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? The absence of God and the theory of evolution seemed like the reasonable explanation to me. As time went on, I continued to attend church sporadically and did a lot of thinking about my faith. Every so often, I would find
Four empirical journal articles have been chosen to identify what contributes to juvenile delinquency using the selected theories previously mentioned. These art...
Religion and faith have been a part of my life since the day I was born. My grandfather has been a pastor at Selma Church of God for 39 years and my mom, along with my grandmother and aunts, run our churches worship team. One could only assume, I have spent much of my life in the church. From years of children 's church and Sunday school, I learned of God 's unconditional love for me and His constant willingness to forgive me of my sins. My family and teachers explained the crucifixion and resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ. As a child, I knew all these things, these wonderful things about my God and my religion, but it was not until my early teens that I began to thirst for more.
In the article “Prevalence and Development of Child Delinquency” written by Howard N. Snyder, he explains that “Older juveniles often influence younger children. In addition, studies have shown that juveniles who associate with deviant peers are more likely to be involved in delinquent behavior and arrested at a younger age than those who do not associate with such deviant juveniles” (Snyder 36). Children that are abused and/or associate themselves with delinquents run a greater risk of developing delinquent behavior themselves. According to "Breaking the Cycle of Violence: A Rational Approach to At-Risk Youth." Written by Judy Briscoe, “Peer rejection may also influence child and adolescent delinquency by inducing the rejected child to associate with deviant peer groups and gangs. Gang membership provides a ready source of co-offenders for juvenile delinquency and reflects the greatest degree of deviant peer influence on offending. Also, youth tend to join gangs at younger ages than in the past, which leads to an increased number of youthful offenders.” (Briscoe 8) Although children tend to have the same values and beliefs as their parents, their different experiences and influences while growing up shape their beliefs and their view of the world, which has a direct impact on their ability to make rational decisions. It’s possible that if a child had
... demonstrate criminal behaviour when they do not have similar resources as their peers (Reading Craze, 2013). According to McCord (2001), “factors such as peer delinquent behaviour, peer approval of delinquent behaviour, attachment to peers, time spent with peers and peer pressure for deviance have all been associated with adolescent antisocial behaviour” (via Shader, 2004). Giddens and Sutton (2013) believe there are strong links between crime and social exclusion. They claim that crime rates reflect the growing number of people who do not feel valued by the societies they live in and they lack parental support and guidance.