Growing up I was raised Christian. My entire family attended church every Sunday it was a way for me to see my aunt uncle, cousins, and grandparents. Since I was there every week I made friends within the church that I spent a lot of time outside of church with. Every summer we would go on mission trips to different places. This I loved because it was a week long sleepover with all you friends while giving back to those less fortunate. Growing up a never questioned the presence of god or the things that were being told to be in church.
However as I grew up and began to see the world around me for what it was things began to get complicated. I distinctly remember being in my confirmation class, a course you have to take before becoming an “official remember”, and me seeing a question on the exit test that I found confusing. It was something along the lines of being comfortable enough in your faith to distinguish when popular beliefs held by the public are wrong. I asked the youth pastor, who I admired greatly at that time, what this meant. He provided me with the example he provided me was to the extent of hearing people in the public accept being gay but you know that it is wrong. I was only 16 at the time but I still was shocked by this. I asked him frankly , why would god create people gay if it is wrong. My pastor told me while people may be gay god does not believe you should act on it. This turned into a much larger discussion, but nothing became any clearer. Instead I walked away from that conversation sad and confused. Maybe this pastor I admired was not all I thought he was, and on a much larger scale maybe this religion isn’t all I thought it was either.
I struggled with this for awhile for awhile but eventually I came to my own conclusion. I agree more with spirituality then the institutions that run religion. The higher power that I believe in loves all individuals equally as they were all created to be equal. For awhile I had thought that I was the only one that held this weird notion of faith but I have recently been talking to young pastors who identify as Christian that actively feel the same way. If nothing else, this gives me hope for the future of our generations.