STRUGGLES

My Relationship With Religion And How I Achieved True Peace

Navigating life with self-agency

I grew up as a Christian. There was nothing else that I could have been. My mother and father are both Christians so they raised us accordingly.

And not just any Christians. We’re Seventh-Day Adventists.

My mother was previously Catholic, but when she married my dad she switched to Protestant and stopped wearing earrings and pretty baubles. I’m not exactly sure about why jewellery is banned in my church, but it probably has something to do with not being vain.

But for us kids, there was no choice about it. We were going to be Christians and we were going to be Seventh-Day Adventists and that was that.

Oblivion

Growing up, I didn’t really know what any of it meant. All I knew was that I showed up to church every Saturday and tried not to fall asleep, so my dad won’t whoop me when we got home.

I was so young that I thought the Bible stories I was reading were things that were going to happen, not those that had already happened. I remember asking my dad once when Noah’s Ark was coming because the concept of being drowned really scared me.

He just laughed his head off, because kids are so clueless and hilarious that he couldn’t help himself.

Annoyance

I soon grew annoyed at the whole having to go to church thing. I found it very boring and rarely listened during my sermons. And because we were Seventh-Day Adventists, I was having to wake up early on Saturdays to go to the church.

I remember my friends used to host parties on Saturdays, but I could never attend those because of my church service. It made me so mad, and I just kept getting angrier about it.

I didn’t know who my anger was directed at. I didn’t really have a concept of who God was at the time. And of course, I couldn’t aim this anger at my parents. They would’ve whooped my butt.

Paranoia and Eccentricities

Once I hit puberty, I got really into reading books. My mom indulged this habit by buying me a lot of Christian kids novels. I binged those a lot, and my love for the stories grew. They were the first novels I ever read.

I decided to be like the characters in the books and become a true Christian. Like the passionate one, who’s interested in all things Bible and prayed so often and had a lot of Christian friends. I was always mimicking characters in the books I read when I was younger, so that was what I became.

I talked to God often, and sometimes I even imagined that He talked back. I prayed over every single one of my meals, before sleeping and after waking up. I felt like the faith I had made my heart glow and the whole world shine. It wasn’t such a bad feeling.

But I also became a little bit nutty. I believed that if I died right at that moment, I would go to heaven, so I lived without fear. I’d often find myself thinking about frolicking through traffic.

Once, I was in a plane and there was some turbulence. Some people were screaming in panic. I was just grinning ear to ear.

When I wasn’t obsessed with my holiness, I was scared about committing sins. I’m not Catholic, so the path to getting forgiveness isn’t at all complex — I just needed to pray. But whenever I did sin, I would always have this fear that I could die in the next second and go straight to hell.

I’m quite the over-thinker, I’m sure you’ve noticed.

Aversion

Further into adolescence, I started stumbling onto books that weren’t Christian novels. Like fantasy novels, urban romances, stuff with magical creatures and demons, and all of that.

I had reached the stage where I wanted to burst out of the cocoon that my parents had wrapped me in. I wanted to know what else life had to offer, and I didn’t want to be afraid to do so.

I remember deliberately reading Harry Potter books. My mom had always banned me from even looking at the merch because she believed it was about devilish magic. I was curious to know what this devilish magic was about.

I devoured every single novel, and I loved them. There was a whole new world in my imagination, and it was amazing. If it was wrong, then I didn’t want to be right ever again.

I read more books like that and started thinking about how ridiculous my parents had been. How ridiculous it all was, to expect to live in one mindset of fear and formality.

And then I stumbled across a book where two characters were having a discussion about Christianity. One of them said something along the lines of ‘people shouldn’t be threatened into being good’, and I remember feeling so validated.

The fear of going to hell had hounded me for a long time, and I was tired of always trying to be this spiritually perfect version of myself. I was only fifteen then, and I wanted to be able to make mistakes and grow from them in peace.

So I stopped going to church for a while and stopped speaking to the Lord. I still read some Christian books sometimes, but I shied away from those with characters who had it all figured out and sought out those that talked about people finding their faith for the first time.

I read them and appreciated their messages and the story, but they still didn’t help me much.

Awakening

My awakening came years later. In fact, I don’t think it's still a completed process.

I went back to reading some of the Christian books that I used to love so much one summer. And while reading one of those books, I saw the quote — ‘God isn’t the problem, God is the solution’.

This made a few things click for me. God wasn’t the problem I had with religion. It was the opinions from people that I’d internalized and allowed to shape my life. Even the author of the book where I saw that quote had displayed some prejudiced views about the LGBTQ+ community, and I’d never been interested in discriminating against a person just because of who they loved or how they wanted to live their lives.

My most impactful takeaways from the Bible had always been from the New Testament, with the preachings of ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ and ‘do onto others how you would want them to do onto you’. I wanted to act in the manner that Christ had since he’d never judged or condemned anyone who sinned but had treated everyone with equal kindness.

So, once again, I sought out to imitate a book character.

Moving forward, I cast off all the restrictive rules I’d once governed myself with and tried to focus on doing right by others. This came more naturally to me, with little thought or effort on my part. And it felt more fulfilling.

The doctrine of spreading love is the only one I make a conscious effort to live by now. I’m currently reading Piers Plowman, a book by William Langland that details a quest for spiritual salvation. One of the takeaways from the book is that without charity (a.k.a love) or a moral compass, just Bible knowledge wouldn’t get you very far.

These days, I pray for others more than for myself. I join Bible study groups where I can discuss with others about God’s love and how we can spread it in our everyday actions. I focus on my health and body and my well-being and don’t poke into other people’s businesses or judge how they choose to live.

I still struggle sometimes, but it's a fight I’m willing to put my energy into. I found true peace by not being obsessed with living exactly like the rules dictate or fitting into a particular mold, but doing right to the best of my ability and hoping that God would guide me the rest of the way.

And so far He has. My relationship with religion is now one I have come to love and nurture. I hope it continues to be like this for a long time.