My Journey Through Religion

There is so much to cover about my journey through religion, but I’d prefer to keep this reasonably short. I will leave a small request at the end for any religious person, should they read this.

I went through Catholic private schools in my first few years. So when I had to leave and join a public school, I attended its small religion class instead of one of the other sessions. Pretty much a man playing a guitar saying praise Jesus.

One thing that stands out now is that when they asked us questions, they weren’t looking for the correct answer. They just wanted to hear “God” or “Jesus”. It annoyed me as a child because I knew the answers and as such I got a lot of the lollies they handed out to anyone who answered. I could accurately tell them which passage or how many animals, what their name was, the whole lot! Others would just answer “God” or “Jesus” and the teachers would make it correct. 

“Who built the ark?”

“God?”

“Yes, Noah built the Ark, but it was through the power of God”

And just like that they would hand them a lolly. This applied to every question. Whenever I asked an honest question about God their answer was always bitter. But I remained quite happy in the belief there was a God although I was in no way involved with attending church or praying.

Now fast forward some years time I’m 15, in high school and I’m simply unsure. So many Gods and religions – how could the first one be the right one? So I decided that I’d compare them all to discover whatever one has the best rules, makes the most sense and explain it better. I read through Paganism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Catholicism, Christianity and the small amount I could find on Indigenous Australian religions and beliefs, and more. It took an excessive amount of time but the answers I got were different to the answers I was looking for. Rather than explaining the mysteries of life, they explained common events, like thunder, daytime, rainbows, earthquakes… and they all got them wrong. Before long I noticed they often had the same (if not very similar) ideas or teachings. Other things claimed as teachings were just common sense.

Slowly I dwindled from it and just simply didn’t think about it, I had other things to study, until one day some one mentioned God to me as I walked by and I thought “Ha for God’s word it’s sure wrong a lot, how could it be the right one?”

And just like that I was an Atheist. Why would I believe a book with so many contradictions? It was riddled with horribly incorrect information. There was nothing in any Holy Book that I read that contained proof of a God. If anything they contained proof that there was no God – in the very least not their God.

And now I ask anyone who is willing to read their Holy Book to ask yourself two questions:

1) Is this what a God of love would do?

2) Is that what an all knowing God would do?

Ask yourself those two questions after every paragraph. You will find your all knowing God still needs to test people to know their devotion.