Everyone believes in something. There's no real argument in that. It can literally be anything you want it to be. It could be an object, a person, or, for a majority of people in the world, an organization like religion.
I do have a lot of experience and history with religion. I spent most of my childhood a part of the religion known as Christianity.
My parents are both very religious people growing up and obviously wanted to pass it along to their children. My family all together went to the same church in my hometown for some of my pre-schooling years and all of my elementary school years.
I later moved on to the middle school program at that same church but I quickly decided on my own that I didn't want to be a part of this church or this religion. I decided this for many reasons. The youth program was very cliquey. I didn't have any friends. That's just how it was during those awkward middle school years.
The biggest reason was that I was slowly but surely coming to the conclusion that I wasn't like everyone else. I knew I was gay. In church, I was always taught that it was wrong. I thought that everyone including God would hate me so I quit going altogether.
It wasn't until the summer before my sophomore year of high school when my parents decided to go to a different church I decided I'd try to start going again.
I really did love it there. I made so many friends. I had come out during the years I stopped going to church so when I started to go to this new church everyone knew I was since I was going to school or had gone to school with them. Oh, the perks of your hometown only having three public high schools. They were all very accepting and some of them are still some of my very good friends today.
On the other hand, I was still very skeptical about how I, a gay teenager, would be able to fit into this new church. I still did kind of believe all the stuff they would teach other than the views on being gay.
I eventually got to the place where I believed that God would still love me despite my "worldly sins." He can love everyone else with their "worldly sins," so why wouldn't he do the same to me? I truly believe that God doesn't hate me for being this way.
Although I believed that it was OK to be a gay man in the Christian religion, I still ended up in the same place I was many years before. I did like the people at my church but the whole concept of Christianity and religion isn't for people like me.
At the end of the day, I'm spiritually fine with where I am at. I really don't know if there is a word to define my attitude towards religion. Maybe there is but I just can't think of the right word for it. Overall, I do believe there is a higher power or God out there — but I'm just not quite sure what it is.
