I was brought up in a very religious family. My father is a
preacher. My Mother, Aunts, Uncle's, Cousin's and Grandparent's all believe and
participate in our religion. The religion I was brought up in is called
Pentecostal Evangel. I was going to church from the time I could walk until
about age thirteen. My teenage years were tough growing up without a Father
around that time. My parents got divorced when I was seven years old. I still
continued to go to church until I reached thirteen. I remember my Grandparents
coming to take me and my siblings every Sunday after my parents divorced. I
have very fond memories of going to church when I was young. I would go to
Sunday school and listen to a very colorful bible story, sing songs, color, and
just have a lot of fun. When I was young I did not really understand our
religion, to me it was just a fun thing for a kid to do and so as I grew up it
became more of something people do out of habit, a repetitive thing and so at the age of thirteen I
decided not to go anymore. I got married young and had children and had not
gone to church in some time on and off from the age of thirteen and up. I still
believed in God but just not the way the churches had taught me.
Now at the age of forty one I am much wiser and fully mature to
understand it more then when I was young. I do believe in God because of a
personal experience I have had, but not because of my upbringing. I believe in God in a different way then my
family believes because of research I have done on my own. I started to research other religions such
as, Catholicism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Hinduism. What I found interesting was
that in some areas they were almost all the same in their beliefs and in other
areas they were not. For instance all these religions including the one I
believe in all believe in one God one higher being over all creation. Another interesting fact is that the God we
all believe in died on the same date, I personally found this quite
interesting! Another fact is that all these religions believe that the world
will come to an end. These are just some of the things I learned from
researching. This gave me a new outlook on my beliefs.
