My Story
I wish I could be an active blogger, but I either don't find the time or I can't think of anything creative. Not to mention nobody reads this anyway...
However, I was thinking that I should talk a little about myself, since this is my site, and illustrate who I am and how I came to the point where I am in my life.
What I really want to do in this story is not discuss my whole life including childhood, schooling, marriage, and career. No, I want to discuss why I have chosen www.abandonedfaith.com as my site's name. I didn't simply think it was a cool combination of words. The name has significant meaning for my life and the current beliefs that I hold.
To begin my story, and to explain my usage of these words, I must start from the very beginning. My mother was raised Catholic and my father Lutheran. When they had to compromise on my religious upbringing, they decided that I would be baptized Lutheran and raised Catholic. I don't know much about how or if they attended mass when we all lived together, but I do know they were not the strict every-Sunday-to-church type of people. After they divorced, during my grade-school years, my mother put me in after-school CCD classes on Wednesdays. For non-Catholics, CCD stands for Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, which was a catechism class meant to teach children about the basics of Catholicism.
Through these classes, I marked several significant Catholic milestones, such as First Communion, confession, and Confirmation. The latter was meant to confirm your catholic beliefs and be a sort of baptism part two. Since baptism is typically performed on a young child, who doesn't have a choice of faith or belief system, confirmation is performed at an age, typically around 13 or 14, when the church feels the person is mature enough to make a decision for themselves about their faith. They are "confirming" that their beliefs follow those of the Catholic doctrine.
Even though I attended these classes and performed the Sacraments, I still was, like my parents, not much of one for church. I would go on special occasions, or sometimes with my grandparents, since it made them happy for me to attend with them. Church was just so boring. By Catholic rules, each mass was to be performed in the exact same way. Besides, I wasn't much of a fan of singing in public, let alone all the stand up, sit down, stand up, kneel, sit down, stand up nonsense.
When it came time to go to high school, I had a sort of choice to either go to the local public school or the local Catholic high school. I say sort of choice because my parents were really more interested in having me attend the Catholic school, not necessarily because of the faith, but because of the quality of education. However, I was torn, since most of my friends from my public grade school were going to the public high. I ultimately decided on the Catholic high school, even though I only knew a handful of people who were going there. Before I continue, I must say that attending that school was really a great decision, even though, at the time, it didn't feel that way. The education I received and the friends I made will last a lifetime.
Ok, back to high school. Being a Catholic high school, it had certain way of life that you would never experience in a public school. The dress code, the Sisters, the prayer services - these were all totally new experiences, since I had come from a public school before. Many of the students came from Catholic grade schools, so they were used to it. But for me, a sort of Catholic by definition, but not by practice, it was all a bit overwhelming, even though I was able to be assimilated into the routine fairly easily.
During the first couple of years I had no problems with the Catholic way of life and Catholic way of schooling. I went along with the daily prayers, religion classes, and church services. Things started to change when I started dating my girlfriend (ultimately my future wife) my second year. She and her family were Methodist. During prayer she would not do the Catholic sign-of-the-cross like I was trained to do. Methodists do not do that, and by not doing it, she was just showing that she was not Catholic. She would sometimes give me a look when I made the sign that said "You crazy Catholics with your signs and strict rules." I never really felt wrong for doing it, but after a while it started to get uncomfortable doing the sign around her. I know she never meant any harm, nor did she want to change me at all. I eventually started doing the sign less and less when she was around and ultimately stopped it completely towards the end of my high school years. However, this was just one step towards the dissolution of my Catholic faith.
A big step came during my senior year. I mentioned that we were required to take religion classes. In these classes we learned about scripture, Catholic doctrine, and Catholic way of life. Senior year I had a class called Catholic Family Life. Before I discuss this, I have to mention that, buy this time, my girlfriend and I had become a very serious couple, completely in love and inseparable. The talk of marriage in our future had even entered our discussions by this time. Anyway, in this Catholic family class, one of the topics happened to be the Sacrament of Marriage, meaning getting married in the Catholic faith in a Catholic church. Up to this time, I assumed that getting married was the same no matter what church you went to. However, according to what I learned in this class, if you wanted to get married in the Catholic faith, you had to go through a whole bunch of steps, such as meeting with priests, attending classes, and discussing with other couples. Basically, what I got out of it is that if you want to get married, the Church has to ultimately decide if you are worthy of performing the ceremony in the Catholic faith. It is not enough for two people to just want to live together and love each other. All of these steps needed to be performed before you can get married, which actually take about a year to complete. I found this completely ridiculous, and I recall leaving class one day completely disgusted with Catholicism and its dominance over people's lives and decisions. That day I went to my girlfriend and said, "If we get married, I refuse to get married in a Catholic church!" She just laughed, because she never wanted to do that anyway.
By graduation, my Catholic high school had ultimately squeezed the Catholic out of me. I still considered my self a Christian, but I would not be affiliated with Catholicism in any way. The sign-of-the-cross was gone. Catholic marriage? Forget it. Going to church? No thanks. Without the prayer services or daily affirmation of beliefs in school, I no longer expressed my faith in any way, even though I still maintained that I was Christian. I didn't know anything else anyway. That would change soon, however.
College life was obviously a big change for me. No parents, living on your own, yet with 35,000 new people from all over the country and from other parts of the world. The university was definitely a cosmopolitan environment – far different than Midwestern suburbia. I lived in the dorms my first two years. This was undoubtedly uncomfortable living, yet it was the best atmosphere for making friends and meeting new people. Of these new people were types that I never had any contact with before in large numbers: foreigners, hippies, fraternity brothers, etc. There was also a group of people on campus that I had never come into contact with before: born-again Christians. Now, I still considered myself a Christian when I came to school, but these people were different. They had an agenda. They were crusaders. It seemed like everywhere I looked, their evangelist propaganda was littered on campus. Flyers and chalked sidewalks advertised "group discussions," "Bible talks," and other euphemisms for what I felt was radical preaching and religious conversion. Contact with these people and their agendas made me sick, simply because they were so narrow minded and oppressive with their messages. Like the Catholic school before, these people and their ways managed to squeeze the remaining Christianity out of me. I simply could not call myself Christian if it meant being related to them in any way.
Yet, it was one of these born-again types that helped me in a positive way to abandon my Christian faith. It was the end of freshman year. I was tired of Christianity and was soul searching for meaning and order in the universe. He might have noticed this, but I am not for certain. He was never the type to proselytize, so I didn't mind him at all. He kept his beliefs to himself and I felt comfortable around him, unlike some of the others. He was taking a class in the religious studies department called Asian Mythology. He recommended the class to me because he found it very interesting and said it was well taught and an easy humanities class. It was only offered in the spring, so I said I would consider taking it the next year.
Second semester sophomore year I was in Asian Studies 104 - Asian Mythology. I decided to take his advice and recommendation, even though I had absolutely no interest in learning about this topic. The title of the class is a bit misleading, although an accurate description. Asian spiritual thought involves a lot of mythology and fantastic stories about how the universe works and how to live a proper life. The class was ultimately an adventure through different Asian religious belief systems: Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen, Taoism, Confucianism, etc. Some of the ideas and beliefs were a bit hard to swallow coming from my strict Catholic background, since I was taught to believe that only Catholic belief is correct - everyone else is going to hell. However, since at the time I was undergoing a period of transition in my life, I paid close attention to the lessons in the class and truly pondered on these foreign beliefs.
We covered Hinduism and Buddhism in greatest detail, since the professor was Indian and there was a lot to be said about belief systems held by literally billions of people. I am not saying that the other religious systems were less important, it was simply how the class was structured. Now, never during the time I attested to the Christian faith had I ever had any sort of spiritual awakening or any other life-changing religious events. But when I was in that class learning the basics of Hinduism, I felt something. It wasn't a bolt from heaven that knocks someone of a horse or anything. I simply felt that what I was being taught made sense. From both a logical and spiritual standpoint, what I was learning seemed right, as far as being the correct explanation to the way things are. The beliefs were all wrapped up in myths and legends, but I understood the meaning behind it all. I almost felt, in a way, enlightened by Hindu belief system.
This "spiritual awakening" if you want to call it, filled the void in my life created by the process of Christianity being squeezed out. I could truly relate to the beliefs, although very foreign and culturally difficult. I still find it hard calling myself a Hindu, since Western society is based on Judeo-Christian beliefs, and society doesn't understand Asian spirituality enough to not consider you crazy for deviating from the "norm." Yet, Hinduism is truly a universal religion, which doesn't discriminate based on culture or beliefs. Unlike Christianity, Hinduism doesn't believe all non-Hindus are condemned to eternal damnation. Even a Christian can be considered a Hindu simply because the beliefs are so simple and logical. Hinduism believes that all religions are the same, in that they are all paths to the same Truth. I am not going to get into a discussion about the ins and outs of Hinduism, but I would recommend reading about the subject. Ultimately, though, my beliefs and understanding of the world in which we live do follow those taught by Hindu spirituality.
So, my story has come to the present. I feel much better about my life, my future, and even death. As a parent, I have made a decision to not decide for my daughter, meaning she should walk her own spiritual path and decide for herself what her beliefs are. We did not baptize her, even though our family wanted us to, because that is their tradition. I will not impose any one belief upon her, and I will encourage her to explore various belief systems. Whether she decides when she gets older to be a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Wiccan, whatever - I will support her in her decision because it was hers to make. I am not saying my parents screwed me up in any way or were wrong in their decision to baptize me and raise me Catholic. They simply were members of a western society and raised in Christian households, so they really didn't know any different.
Thus concludes my story about my “abandoned faith”. I do not have any regrets in turning away from Christianity, nor do I have any hard feelings about my past. I have simply found something that fits me better, and I am happy with that. I hope that all people could be as lucky as I was and feel content with their existence and their place in the world. My only recommendation for the reader is to not turn a blind eye to the rest of the world. Consider what others believe, even if it is not the same as what you believe. Don't immediately dismiss them as wrong - don’t pass judgment on them - and possibly explore other paths if you choose. I am not saying you should question your own beliefs, but maybe look into yourself and see if the faith you follow is your own, or one that has been chosen for you.