LilButtCheeks

Daily writing prompt

Describe a decision you made in the past that helped you learn or grow.

View all responses

See, I come from my own little pocket of the religious world. What social lubrication it is, that word, “religion.” What exactly does it mean to you?

For me, it meant being a leader for a small student ministry at my alma mater.

For me, it looked like a group lesson led by myself or one of the other leaders every Wednesday night about what we felt the Christian Bible was teaching based on an innate feeling we interpreted as God or the Holy Spirit.

For me, it looked like a small men’s Bible study every Thursday night, where we’d share our weekly troubles and read a chapter in one of the books of the Protestant canon.

For me, it looked like singing worship music on Sundays and writing down notes from the sermon in a small journal I had saved for the occasion.

For me, it looked like refusing an application to join our team of leaders in that student ministry because the applicant, though kind and social and energetic and so many other things that fit what we thought would make a good leader, lived with his girlfriend.

For me, it was deciding not to be in a relationship with anyone who didn’t believe in my specific way and then, following a stream of doubt in my faith, mutually ending the relationship with the woman I was dating because our faiths didn’t align anymore.

For me, religion was the acceptance of questions but not the acceptance of certain conclusions or lack thereof.

The decision to stop participating in religion has required me to grow in a number of ways, from being in a new place alone after having initially thought I’d be here with my wife(though we never got there in the first place) to having to re-process my worldview including my conception of ethics and meaning.