Do you practice religion?

PRACTISING RELIGION

Brought up as a young person in a religiously inclined home, I practised religion and felt myself to be affiliated with a particular church followed by my parents during my formative years. That continued into my early teens and really up until I turned 20. Within my church I served as a lay preacher, are used leader, a person who participated in running Fake-ation Bible Schools for young people in our hometown and so on.

Not so long after I turn 20, I was appointed as a delegate to the State Conference held each year by our church. during that conference I was astounded to learn that money operation as in all churches belonging to this group were regularly asked to give, and give until it hurt, was not being used for the furtherance of the work but rather by the church leaders to amass assets. These assets included the purchase of property for investment and so on.

I asked questions at the conference of our leaders and those who were there as delegates. I was it that we were being urged to give money to further the churches work within Australia and overseas, when investment and by implication bank balances seem to be the important thing and the way that money was being directed.

In response to my questioning I was more or less told to “mind my own business”. Decisions impacting upon the church were made by people in positions of authority and it was not my right to question the propriety of what they did.

For me, being involved with organised religion and the visibly practising Christian began to cease at that point in time. I remind affiliated with the church only to satisfy my parents. That made me feel somewhat hypocritical because what I was on the outside was not how I felt about religion on the inside.

With the passing of time I disaffiliated from the church and from organised religion and that remains the case to this day. I have however tried very hard throughout my life to live in a decent and principled way and to help others per my mission statement which I will re-list at the end of this response.

For a long time after my severance from religious formalities church practices I felt guilty about what I done and felt that I had somewhat apostatised. Some years, in fact decades past and I wrote a letter to my parents, who felt guilty about my departure from the faith, to point out that they had not failed me – that I had made my own decisions about the church and religious affiliation. I hope when they passed it wasn’t with the feeling of guilt that they had misguided me in someway.

It was about going back to that conference and considering the priority is the church exposed and the practices (it seemed to me) in which the church engaged.

My parents had wanted me to train as a minister and become a pastor of the church. That of course never happened.

However, I think that my life as a teacher, educational leader and a person working with others has enabled me to fill the work I’ve done with the same (hopefully) positive outcomes for them (and myself) that would have ever been achieved had I followed my parent’s occupational wishes.