Encounters with different beliefs when you were a kid

Faithfulservant said:
I'm sad for this child. Searching for truth.. faith enough to believe with no adult to take her by the hand to mentor her.
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Thanks, but sadness is misplaced in regards to this. There are lots of things about my upbringing I could complain about if I still wanted to, but being raised with the mixed spiritual ideas that I was, was a gift, I was lucky. 😇
 
Faithfulservant said:
VBS is free? Something to occupy idle children during long summer vacations?
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Probably something like that. Or maybe she wanted me to get information besides my grandfather's rants about imminent armageddon, or maybe I asked questions she couldn't answer thoroughly. I think she was gobsmacked when I took some of the material seriously, is all.
 
Faithfulservant said:
Searching for truth..
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Always, I just don't think I found it there
Faithfulservant said:
faith enough to believe
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I was raised to have an open mind and consider things, if nothing else
Faithfulservant said:
with no adult to take her by the hand to mentor her.
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Oh I could have gone all in with my grandfather if I wanted to.

I sort-of knew that church goers wouldn't necessarily agree with other things i was taught, but I was under the possibly false impression that religion encompassed a broad spectrum of different beliefs. I thought, at the time, possibly incorrectly, that only hardline extremists would say anything bad about either my grandfather's heterodox beliefs or my mom and grandma's interests in alternative spirituality.

I have more of an idea now where "dividing lines" are - or what categories different beliefs fall into, etc. and about how much evidence everybody has to bolster their cases - ancient writings, anecdotes, speculation, guesswork, in greater or lesser degree, for almost every belief system there is.
 
Another thing I recall is my grandparents having some - concerns? for a time that my aunt was interested in "black magic"
(they didn't spell out that I can recall what the concerns were, only some feelings of tension. I vaguely picked up from them and the culture around me that there might be something worrisome about that.)
When we went to stay with her at one point a couple of years later, i don't recall if I saw anything more than a few books on fortune telling and a few horror fiction, gothic fiction, fantasy fiction, that might have come close to that theme. I don't remember in any more detail than that. Anything seriously magical or theological that I can recall at this time.
 
Something I remember as a teenager is being on an awful lot of mailing lists somehow. I got a lot of material from Masons and from Rosicrucians. I remember thinking they were interesting, but didn't want to send them any money. Maybe I would have if they were selling books but it wasn't clear they were.

I don't remember receiving anything about Baha'i, or Theosophy, that I remember, though I would have been awfully interested if I had, given my developing theories about the validity of all religions (disliking the ideas I heard when my grandfather or others were adamant about having the one truth) I think though that openly joining up with anything like that would have upset my grandfather, with the theories about there being one world religion associated with the End Times.
 
rocala said:
Years later, A friend asked me to go to some seances with him. I attended an instantly recognised the faith healer as the medium. I saw things there which I cannot explain. I became a regular for a while until something scared the life out of me and I stopped going.

I have no doubt that there is something in spiritualism, not sure what, but I do not see it as a spiritual path.
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It sounds like you have more to tell! That is, if you wanted to share it. Sounds intense!
 
TheLightWithin said:
... and I knew of the existence of the Gnostics, whom I then thought were the earliest Christians, and who therefore probably had it right.
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Probably not the earliest ... and like all groups, probably had some stuff right, other stuff not so.

The Hypostatic Union, which became a cornerstone of Nicene (ie orthodox) Christianity, was common among the Gnostics, but not so much the 'orthodox' ...
 
rocala said:
When I was a kid and even into my twenties, Spiritualism was quite common in Britain.
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My introduction was when I was 20. I'm two years older than you ...

rocala said:
Years later, A friend asked me to go to some seances with him. I attended an instantly recognised the faith healer as the medium. I saw things there which I cannot explain. I became a regular for a while until something scared the life out of me and I stopped going.
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I was in a pseudo-Hermetic cult (informed by Gurdjieff, I was later told).

Experienced things I too cannot explain ... interested to follow your posts ...
 
TheLightWithin said:
It sounds like you have more to tell! That is, if you wanted to share it. Sounds intense!
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rocala said:
It would be a longer than usual post. I am working long hours this weekend, and then I am away from home for a week and will be without internet.
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Thomas said:
My introduction was when I was 20. I'm two years older than you ...
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Thomas said:
Experienced things I too cannot explain ... interested to follow your posts ...
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Maybe now is the time to start the follow up thread "Encounters with Other Beliefs in Young Adulthood"
This thread can continue on, but starting the other one just seems to fit the emerging timeline...
 
TheLightWithin said:
When I was 12, (12½), for some reason, despite her disapproval of organized religion, my mom decided to send me to "Vacation Bible School" that summer -- kind of like a Bible day camp, at the Methodist church down the street. I don't know what her reasons were.

They taught out of the Bible as promised. I remember learning about Noah's Ark and the promise of the rainbow, but I do not remember if they were overtly adamant about us accepting this as literal science or history. Maybe nobody would have asked that question in that group at that age.

When I came home asking questions about things like the Trinity that the bible school teachers had tried to explain, mom and grandma told me to ask my grandfather, who railed against it. Also, later I asked for a Bible of my own and reported believing some of what I learned. I think my mom was not expecting that. (Though didn't she always tell me to have an open mind?) It all seemed really important though too, and the bible teachers seemed so confident and passionate about the things they were explaining. I knew not to agree with all of it as I had learned different things from my family, and had read a lot, but going to the Youth Group at least threatened to be fun, and I thought it was important to try to agree with at least some of what the denomination taught to take part.

I also asked to be baptized when I was - somewhere 13-15.
My mom always said she would never stand in the way of my beliefs, only insisted I never push any beliefs on her.
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I had someone become VERY upset when I questioned the story of Noah's Ark. I wasn't even being skeptical. I just wanted insight on how it would have happened. With all the varied species around the world, I was confused on how they all made it to that boat. Did the kangaroos ride a whale to get to Noah? He was NOT happy that I asked about that story not did he like my sarcastic questioning.
 
When I was a kid or teenager, beliefs were not of much concern.
The earliest I remember is being slapped by a Muslim when I threw color on him during Holi.
I was about 11 year-old at that time. It did not feel right.
Later in college, I had Muslim friends.
 
Much like @Aupmanyav, I was raised Catholic but went to a non-Catholic junior school ... religion was never really a question.

My first introduction to other-than Catholic was reading Greeks myths as a kid, then The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley, collected tales in the Pan Book of Horror Stories series.
 
I continued to attend the Methodist youth group for quite awhile, even though my peers there weren't very friendly.
(People weren't friendly at school either. About 2/3 of the kids in the bible study went to my school, as they lived right there in the neighborhood, more or less, then there were several from somewhere else.)
I didn't get very good answers to my questions at Bible study.

I don't even know why I kept going. I think I didn't have much to do and thought it would help me connect to people.

I now wish I hadn't, as it demotivated me from pursuing any church in college.
 
TheLightWithin said:
I continued to attend the Methodist youth group for quite awhile, even though my peers there weren't very friendly.
(People weren't friendly at school either. About 2/3 of the kids in the bible study went to my school, as they lived right there in the neighborhood, more or less, then there were several from somewhere else.)
I didn't get very good answers to my questions at Bible study.

I don't even know why I kept going. I think I didn't have much to do and thought it would help me connect to people.

I now wish I hadn't, as it demotivated me from pursuing any church in college.
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I think I told this story here before. But anyway, I was invited to a Methodist Bible study by a friend in college. I went because we were close friends and I knew her church was very important to her. I figured I'd accompany her just to be nice. I eventually got into a debate with the woman running the Bible study. Turns out she had never read the Bible. She seriously claimed that God never would kill people. There were other debates that built up to this, but this was the one that caused me to no longer be welcome. You all know how I can get when debating, and she got to experience me face to face. I was surprised that my friend never held this against me and is still my friend to this day.

Not surprising to me is that I saw this instructor one more time demonstrating her "Christian" values. I was at a restaurant and watched as her kids threw food all over the floor and she did nothing. After she paid her bill I overheard her waitress get frustrated. The waitress was tipped a dollar and had to clean up this big mess! I tipped her double my check just because I felt so bad.
 
When I was a teenager, I ended up spending a bit of time around some rather conservative Christians partly because of the Methodist youth group, and partly because my mom insisted that if I went on some kind of out of town trip, no matter who organized it, I had to ride with either someone she knew well, or someone from that church group, or, with this one other really religious family that was well known at school. Wanting me to ride with people she knew or at least I knew isn't unreasonable. Her reasoning though for insisting I ride with Christian families she didn't really know, when I was on school trips, was that she thought I would be safer. She didn't agree with Christian theology or preaching, but she believed that Christians were serious about their own beliefs and she trusted them. She believed that THEY believed in caring and doing the right thing and not hurting people, or not wanting to do anything wrong, and that they would never harm her children.

Whether or not her trust was well placed is a complicated issue that is a little hard to parse out. No outright harm came to ME, though I was pretty stressed around those particular religious families I had to get rides with. (Events like loud preaching on long car rides, hellfire rants, political rants, denouncing whomever and whatever, unkind personal words directed at me or my family, critiques of my ambitions, ostracism, silent treatment. Basically everything my mom preferred to avoid when she declined to get involved with religion)

Also I had to miss events they didn't go to. That whole experience could have been different with different planning.

But there she was, no resources, not well connected to anybody, she disagreed with and didn't entirely respect the ideas involved in Christianity, but on a personal level she respected and trusted them. And ....

When it came to her attempting to follow similar rules for my sister few years later (I was in college by then) there were bunch of things that went wrong and not only do I not know the whole story, it's not my story to tell. I can say it started with severe tensions with? outright misconduct by? some church people and then upon leaving them, my sister went in a direction with other people that AFAIK had nothing to do with church, that also did not go well.

I do know my sister ended up being NOT AT ALL interested in organized religion.

I ended up puzzling about religion purportedly resulting in better morality.
 
Thomas said:
reading Greeks myths as a kid, then The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley, collected tales in the Pan Book of Horror Stories series.
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Absolute heaven. A book on the Greek myths was the 2nd book that I took out when I joined the children's library.
 
rocala said:
Absolute heaven!
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I know. My mum despaired of me ever reading ... she was dragging me to the library with her when I was eight, and I'd hang around waiting to go home. I can't remember what books I looked at that didn't do it for me, but I picked up a book on Perseus, and that was it. The rest, as they say, was history (only it wasn't, it was mythology).
 
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