Are you religious? If so, when did you start believing? If not, why not?

Hey Bro. May I first say that my life was irrepairably damaged by bad Christians. I'm currently a hardcore Catholic but thought Christians were the dumbest fucking people on the planet for about the first 20 years of my life due to some of things that you describe. Nothing has done more damage to Christianity than hypocritical Christians.

That said, one thing that made me come to peace with things and my fellow Christians is realizing that we are all on a path. It's not like you become a Christian and now you're this perfect human being without error and without hypocrisy. We all fail. My question is simply am I a better person this year than I was last year? This decade better than last decade and am I continuing to get better? Remember that even the apostles who directly knew Christ denied him on his way to crucifixtion. No one is perfect and you shouldn't expect them to be so. If you do, they will fail you 100% of the time.

The real question is whether you are improving. Take your friend for example. Is she trying to get closer to God and learn more and become more or has she decided that everything is forgiven and she doesn't need to do anything else? We can be wrong theologically as long as we are trying to get better. Where we truly fail is where we make excuses for doing nothing with our lives and remaining spiritually stuck.

Even today, I disagree a lot with other religious denominations but I don't get upset about it. I just remember that these are our brothers and sisters on the same path. They may be somewhere else on their journey but we are still on the same journey. God bless and hope this helps!!

Legit question that's not a distinction withou a difference. Are you actually asking about religion? Or are you asking about spirituality in general?

Edit: can't help but notice the sheer abundance of Catholics in here. Not to hijack, but anyone else get the feeling that Catholicism is making a major comeback lately? And for the by and by, I'm one of them too.

As a proud but lapsed Roman Catholic, I found your post very interesting. My estranged uncle fits the description of the bad Christians of whom you speak in ways you cannot imagine. He is a bully with an abrasive, abusive personality, ready to hammer you and anything you say into the ground, all the while portraying himself as a pious individual with more faith than anyone else. My mother has described her elder brother as "the type of person who would cut you off and give you the finger in the church parking lot, just to get a spot in front." He is an ardent supporter of the pre-Vatican II liturgy (the Tridentine Mass in Latin) and each of his six children (five boys, one girl) are named for various popes or saints. Though I have only met him a few times in my life given our estrangement from his side of the family, I can say without a doubt that he is an absolutely horrible person to be around.

Personally, I believe that my own faith was started the very moment that I was baptised. During my childhood, I spent much of my time with my beloved Nana and Auntie (God rest their souls), the devout sister duo that I consider my shining stars of the Catholic faith. But it was after their passings that I became more interested in the faith on my own, with their guidance on earth and from Heaven that inspired me. At this point of my life, and likely until the day of my death, Christ will be the most important person in the world to me. One day, as I change my ways from the lapsed ways of sin that I've committed, I will strive to become a far better person that I am today, tomorrow, or whenever. The desire to change one's ways, coupled with the ability to admit one's problems, are the first steps to becoming a better person. I believe that, if we just begin with these steps, everything can fall into place soon enough.

One of my personal dreams in life, after I have made my money in finance, is to become a diplomatic official accredited to the Holy See. This follows another dream of becoming a knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, whose higher ranks have been open to American citizens since the 1990s, so that I can help the poor and the sick of the world through my service.

I grew up Catholic. Went to Catholic school through high school, etc. I got away from religion in my 20s (not that anything bad happened or anything, I just didn't have strong faith), found it again when I was at a really low point in life through a divorce. Now I mostly like bible-based churches; I like going to hear a good sermon that gives me brain food for the week. Love listening to Joel Osteen and his great talks. I met him and attended service at his church in Houston and that was great, but I'm not really into praise music. 

I think it's healthy for all of us to have faith and I respect that people can practice it in many ways. I may not attend church all the time but in every city I've lived, I always look for a "prayer spot" where I can go and sit and reflect and talk with God. I also believe in the fact that God sees everything that is coming up for you in life and you have to accept that plan (that's faith). So whenever I'm in a tough spot, I pray and I turn things over to God and accept any result that may come. I've done that twice in my life and it's given me amazing results doing that. 

I've had a similar journey - to cut a long story short, was raised protestant/pentecostal, have since become somewhat estranged from my faith now that I'm in my late 20's.

The main items that turned me off:

-Prosperity gospel. I think this is not biblical and theologically contradicts the idea of generosity and humbleness.

-Acceptance of situations because 'God has a plan'. This isn't an excuse to do nothing - you still need to make the most of what you've got, stay hungry, yet stay humble and keep a growth mindset. So many religious people I know use this as a cop out for not improving their lot in life or for enduring shitty situations.

I really enjoy theologically Christianity and think it can be a source of strength and self betterment. However I am disappointed with the modern church and personally struggle to find my faith and really 'believe'.

The main 'religious excersise' I still practise as much as I can is being thankful, grateful, and not taking anything for granted. I take every opportunity I can to acknowledge how fortunate I am to be where I am today - and always try to be better for tomorrow. 

Yes sinning is bad, but I try to focus on the good works I do for others. 
 

I’m not religious, but sometimes wish I was. Its scary as fuck thinking that when we die we cease to exist and knowing that the only certainty in life is death. I acknowledge the fact that we have no idea whats real though.

I grew up in a no bullshit household and was raised to formulate my own opinions. We were never brought to church or did any of that stuff. I’ve just always figured that if I cant prove it, I cant fully have faith in it I guess.

I went to Catholic school growing up, but after college my faith was really weak in my early to mid 20s. Then I went through a series of events that caused me to take a deep look at the Catholic faith and I returned like the prodigal son. I even spent a year with a Catholic community and they invited me to join permanently for life, but I didn’t feel called to live there forever. 

I believe the Catholic faith is the fullness of the truth. There is deep history and beautiful art in nearly every church, especially in Europe. If you ever have general questions about the faith, I suggest you go on Catholic Answers as they have solid apologists there.

AMDG

Aside from the 5 years I dedicated to studying religion and becoming semi religious for that period, I would have to say no. I was going to do a line by line rationale for why I am not religious but all of it can be summed up in the following way:  I have had much better experiences with non religious people compared to religious people.  As a result, I feel more comfortable with a non religious crowd. Given that I rep the liberal wing of WSO, these views should not be a surprise to anyone 

I would define myself as nominally religious, although my faith waivers quite a bit. There was definitely a period in life where I was significantly more religous than I am now, and also periods where I entertained atheism, so I've been far from stable minded or consistent on this.

Something that I've really struggled with as of late is how many churches are turning into businesses. You slightly touch on this when you wrote

Since graduating college and becoming an "adult", I've attended a few different churches to meet new people and just see what's going on. I've found at every single church, the whole sermon is almost always centered around forgiveness and how it's ok to not live righteously.

The fact is there seem to be a lot more pastors that are interesting in running a church like a business, rather than having a calling to preach firm, no matter the outcome. My pastor growing up (who is now dead), used to tell numerous stories in sermons about how people got angry with him and would leave the church. He almost said it in a joking manner, and never saw the person who was unable to handle his preaching as $$$ that he could have had, had he watered his preaching down. I didn't even realize how much of a true man he was until years after his death, but now I've come to appreciate him even more. However, many preachers do see that individual leaving as extra money that would come to the church and work it's way into that individual's salary.

So, now church sermons have become a matter of maximizing the number of attendees in a congregation, by making messages as watered down and accepting as possible, while just including a little flavor of God and some verses here and there to still make it feel like a church service. Whether you and I like it or not, forgiveness and making feel people good about themselves sells much better than telling people they are wrong and need to repent and change. 

As my professional focus has shifted into finance, I've started to pay a lot more attention to how preachers preach about donations and giving back to the church. And that too has sickened me. I see a lot of preachers using appeal to emotion and inaccurate characterizations. Here are some examples:

"God has done so much for you, shouldn't you just give a small fraction back to him?"

"God always rewards those who give back to him, step out by faith even if you don't have the money."

"When you are giving, think about the fact that Jesus died on the cross and has made you a new person" (variant of 1)

They always seem to phrase donations (or tithing) as "giving to God", "paying back to Jesus", etc. to extract as much money as possible. This is not accidental as I see this time and time again. They are using an appeal to emotion and characterizing the donations as "going to God or Jesus" when in reality it's going to the church treasury and used to pay the bills and salary for the staff including the pastor. But see saying something such as "Give what you feel comfortable and are able to give so we can keep the lights running" invokes a logical response where the individual determines a) whether they are financially comfortable to give and b) how much do they feel is an adequate amount to help with electricity/mortgage. I think it's safe to say that the amount donated with the combination of a) and b) while the practical and correct amount for the giver, is going to be lower if not significantly lower than what someone can get using the fake emotional appeals above. 

Finding churches where the pastor doesn't run it like a business is getting harder to do, but I'd encourage you to branch out of the popular churches in the white collar neighborhoods of your city, and try looking for smaller sized churches similar to your home church. Those aren't all good either, but I'm sure with some looking you should be able to find something. Even if you aren't religious anymore, I think it's worth a shot purely for the social aspects, and the moral guidance that you mention (which I too think is valuable even if my faith falters from time to time). 

God does forgive, but in order to need forgiveness, you have to have transgressed.  People who claim to be Christians and live lives that are knowingly transgressing against God, because they know he'll forgive them, are abusing the nature of God's forgiveness, aren't interested in living according to God's word, and it's shocking to me that someone who believes in an all-powerful God would intentionally live lives transgressing about him. 

To answer the original question, I do believe in God and have since I was old enough to understand the concept of a god.  I firmly believe that human beings have a deep intuition that there is a god, which doesn't have to be the Christian God.  Throughout all of human history, societies have believed in god or gods of one form or another.  The existence of a god has been the number one question for humanity since the dawn of time.  Aristotle, the greatest mind in the history of the world, even came to the conclusion that there must be an unmoved mover for the world to make sense.  I believe that an intuition, that nearly all people have had since the dawn of time, must be directionally correct.  Before I understood any of that; however, I personally had a deep and abiding intuition that there must be a god - even when I had no concept or beliefs about the nature of god and his involvement in human affairs.  I don't know there's a god, just like atheists don't know there isn't a god; however, I don't believe that atheists are instilled with an intuition that there is a god...they develop their disbelief through tragedy, hard times in their lives, and lack of tangible evidence.  However, I'm a strong believer in deep-rooted intuition and even when I'd like there not to be a god, or am confounded/angered at his inactions, that intuition has never gone away

Yes, I am. I was raised in the Catholic Church, the whole package as well, First Communion, altar boy service, Confirmation, etc. However, that never stopped me from sinning, and I have only very recently started to come back to church more and more. It's been a bit of a process and I'd put most of the thanks on the life-changing experience of interpersonal, burning love which I before only knew more abstractly from my family and nature (we Germans do love our forests). Also, my life is now a bit more "settled" and I can incorporate the walk to church more easily into my life. I'd also say reading Chesterton and CS Lewis helped a lot, as well as understanding how Catholicism is neither sour nor cold, but in practice extremely life-affirming and human-centered. Again, this is a life-long work, but I now understand that not only it will improve my chances of seeing the Eternal Beauty, but also make me into a more harmonious and fully realized human being.

I find it super interesting that this thread is about 90% older users with a ton of bananas and many of them talking about being lost in their early 20s. Just a thought for some the younger readers, what is that telling you? Open question.