Okay, so you were effectively an atheist or agnostic, right? And then you converted to some form of Buddhism? That makes you a convert.
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Are You A Convert To Your Religion?
- Thread starter Rival
- Start date
Yeah, that is correct.
NewChapter
GiveMeATicketToWork
Convert is not the word I would use. I just lost faith in Islam and gained faith in the Bible God. My present religion is just "obey God."
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Moishe3rd
Yehudi
And, something I wrote a few years to answer the question. I may have posted this before...
I was raised a well churched Episcopalian. My great grandfather, the original progenitor of my name, was an Episcopalian minister in Baltimore. My late uncle, after whom I was named, was the Episcopalian bishop of Alabama and the Gulf Coast. My mother, she should live good and fulfilling years, served in every position that she was able in the church. My late father was on the board of the church and of the local Episcopalian private school. One of my brothers, at age 50, changing from a very successful career as a Vice President in General Dynamics, became an Episcopalian minister and has a parish in Massachusetts. We all sang in the choir; were acolytes; part of the youth group and went to Sunday school. The church was a central part of our life.
When I was about 11 years old, I asked my family minister about the Resurrection and the Trinity. I told him that I didn't get it. He said "I don't think it's meant to be taken literally..." This blew my little mind and thus began my slippery slope... By the time I was 16, I was already reading about Eastern religions and New Age philosophies. By the time I was 18, I was fully embracing hippiedom in full flower and form - sex, drugs, and rock and roll (and much music that I really liked); I accompanied these hedonistic explorations with a keen interest in all things spiritual.
As I hitchhiked my way back and forth across North America, I danced with the Hare Krishnas and read their Bhagavad Gita As Is. I later read the whole Ramayana in English. I read the Vedas and the Upanishads. I read Pantajali's yoga sutras. I visited many communes including the Farm in Tennessee.
I studied "The Way," a very intense Fundamentalist Christian Cult. I meditated on the Guru MaharahJi the little fat Indian boy who was the Divine Light Mission, receiving the "secret" knowledge. I played with the Wiccans, learned about Druidism and danced naked under the Moon. I engaged in peyote and psilocybin mushroom spiritual rituals. I Sat with the late Chayom Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist Master at Naropa Institute in Colorado. I studied Tai Chi Chuan with Maggie Newman. I read all of Carlos Castaneda; Alan Watts; the Baba Ram Dass; Herman Hesse; Doris Lessing; Idries Shah, and everyone else... And the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tsu. I became adept at the I Ching, Tarot and astrology. I studied parapsychology. I learned Taoism and EST and Silva Mind Control. I learned the various schools of Buddhism and tried Zen. Sensory Deprivation tanks... Tantric Sex...
Probably a few other things that do not come immediately to mind...
After college, I joined a cult in San Francisco that studied the various teachings of Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Nicoll and Collins... A Fourth Way School as it were... I kept that up for about five years, studying everything under the sun from Homer to Socrates to the bible to the Koran to the Christian schools of monasticism and architecture to Shakepeare to music - all of the esoteric ideas behind all and everything...
And, one thing I took away from all of this was that we all choose to be born as what we are; who we are; and what religion we are born into...
And, that in order to fulfill one's spiritual destiny one should study and practice their own religion - go whole hog and pay the postage...
So I did.
I joined my local Episcopalian Church; was on the Vestry; was a Lay Minister; went to Bible Study every week; taught Sunday School; sang in the choir; and got involved in the church hierarchy and conventions. My minister was a young evangelical type who went on to "revive" various churches (*An aside - How utterly odd. I just Googled him to find out what happened to him and I find that he was "suspended" in 2006 in Florida for having a long time affair with, obviously, someone in my parish from back in 1986. The article described him as a liberal priest. Not the man that I knew... Life is strange...)
At the same time, my wife, who was Jewish, was doing the same in her Conservative Synagogue.
And I, being the ecumenical sort, would accompany my wife and son to the synagogue on Saturday.
As time went by, having again studied the new testament and inquired and read and learned and looked at everything from all sides, I began to give up on Christianity. It was obvious to me that Jesus was not god and that he never claimed to be. It was also obvious, with my very limited knowledge of Judaism, that the whole idea of Jesus being the Messiah bore no relationship to what Moshiach is or will be in Judaism. It simply didn't make any sense.
And, G-d pulled me to Judaism. There were countless "random" events that were clearly the Hand of G-d directing me (and my family) to be Jewish. It was "basheirt." (Meant to be.)
As the years went by, in 1993 I converted and we became ("ultra") Orthodox Torah observant Jews
And my children and grandchildren are all the same. It's a good life.
I explored many things over my young years and, it wasn't so much that I decided not to be Christian - in spite of my convictions that the Christian Church got it all wrong; Jesus is just all right by me.... - it was much more that G-d chose me to be Jewish.
I was raised a well churched Episcopalian. My great grandfather, the original progenitor of my name, was an Episcopalian minister in Baltimore. My late uncle, after whom I was named, was the Episcopalian bishop of Alabama and the Gulf Coast. My mother, she should live good and fulfilling years, served in every position that she was able in the church. My late father was on the board of the church and of the local Episcopalian private school. One of my brothers, at age 50, changing from a very successful career as a Vice President in General Dynamics, became an Episcopalian minister and has a parish in Massachusetts. We all sang in the choir; were acolytes; part of the youth group and went to Sunday school. The church was a central part of our life.
When I was about 11 years old, I asked my family minister about the Resurrection and the Trinity. I told him that I didn't get it. He said "I don't think it's meant to be taken literally..." This blew my little mind and thus began my slippery slope... By the time I was 16, I was already reading about Eastern religions and New Age philosophies. By the time I was 18, I was fully embracing hippiedom in full flower and form - sex, drugs, and rock and roll (and much music that I really liked); I accompanied these hedonistic explorations with a keen interest in all things spiritual.
As I hitchhiked my way back and forth across North America, I danced with the Hare Krishnas and read their Bhagavad Gita As Is. I later read the whole Ramayana in English. I read the Vedas and the Upanishads. I read Pantajali's yoga sutras. I visited many communes including the Farm in Tennessee.
I studied "The Way," a very intense Fundamentalist Christian Cult. I meditated on the Guru MaharahJi the little fat Indian boy who was the Divine Light Mission, receiving the "secret" knowledge. I played with the Wiccans, learned about Druidism and danced naked under the Moon. I engaged in peyote and psilocybin mushroom spiritual rituals. I Sat with the late Chayom Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist Master at Naropa Institute in Colorado. I studied Tai Chi Chuan with Maggie Newman. I read all of Carlos Castaneda; Alan Watts; the Baba Ram Dass; Herman Hesse; Doris Lessing; Idries Shah, and everyone else... And the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tsu. I became adept at the I Ching, Tarot and astrology. I studied parapsychology. I learned Taoism and EST and Silva Mind Control. I learned the various schools of Buddhism and tried Zen. Sensory Deprivation tanks... Tantric Sex...
Probably a few other things that do not come immediately to mind...
After college, I joined a cult in San Francisco that studied the various teachings of Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Nicoll and Collins... A Fourth Way School as it were... I kept that up for about five years, studying everything under the sun from Homer to Socrates to the bible to the Koran to the Christian schools of monasticism and architecture to Shakepeare to music - all of the esoteric ideas behind all and everything...
And, one thing I took away from all of this was that we all choose to be born as what we are; who we are; and what religion we are born into...
And, that in order to fulfill one's spiritual destiny one should study and practice their own religion - go whole hog and pay the postage...
So I did.
I joined my local Episcopalian Church; was on the Vestry; was a Lay Minister; went to Bible Study every week; taught Sunday School; sang in the choir; and got involved in the church hierarchy and conventions. My minister was a young evangelical type who went on to "revive" various churches (*An aside - How utterly odd. I just Googled him to find out what happened to him and I find that he was "suspended" in 2006 in Florida for having a long time affair with, obviously, someone in my parish from back in 1986. The article described him as a liberal priest. Not the man that I knew... Life is strange...)
At the same time, my wife, who was Jewish, was doing the same in her Conservative Synagogue.
And I, being the ecumenical sort, would accompany my wife and son to the synagogue on Saturday.
As time went by, having again studied the new testament and inquired and read and learned and looked at everything from all sides, I began to give up on Christianity. It was obvious to me that Jesus was not god and that he never claimed to be. It was also obvious, with my very limited knowledge of Judaism, that the whole idea of Jesus being the Messiah bore no relationship to what Moshiach is or will be in Judaism. It simply didn't make any sense.
And, G-d pulled me to Judaism. There were countless "random" events that were clearly the Hand of G-d directing me (and my family) to be Jewish. It was "basheirt." (Meant to be.)
As the years went by, in 1993 I converted and we became ("ultra") Orthodox Torah observant Jews
And my children and grandchildren are all the same. It's a good life.
I explored many things over my young years and, it wasn't so much that I decided not to be Christian - in spite of my convictions that the Christian Church got it all wrong; Jesus is just all right by me.... - it was much more that G-d chose me to be Jewish.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
I was raised in a fundamentalist Protestant church, had plans to become a minister, but the anti-science position and the racism at my church soured me. I then went to a more liberal church that my wife belong to after we were married, but like Moshe above, I came to the conclusion that Jesus could not be God, was not the Messiah, and that just "believing in Jesus as my personal savior" for salvation's sake made no sense. Twenty years ago I converted to Judaism, and my wife and I attend both my synagogue and her church-- we need all the help we can get!
As for me, my I-version (I try not to use words which start with “con-”. It's a Rasta thing) was the product of a very long search. For what exactly, I wasn't too sure. From the non-denominational Christianity of my youth, I looked into Hinduism, Buddhism, New Age, was a Hare Krishna for some time, an Eclectic Pagan, was briefly into Islam and Sufism, was a UU for a few years, became a member of the Bahá'í Faith, and went back to Christianity......until I realized something (and y'all, try not to jump on me for this): the vast majority of it was spread across the world by white people, along with the various images of our God, as well as our Lord and Savior as a white man. This has especially been true for my people. That mental image, knowing what I know about my history, the history of my people, that truly angers me even to this day. So having utterly rejected the “white man's Christianity”, I decided to look to Rastafari. Praise Jah! I finally found a faith which speaks from our experiences as Black people, and it's based on an authentically African Christianity, that of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church! Now, I'm content, I'm set in the way I have chosen.
SSDSSDSSD3
The Great Sea Under!
Even though I answered "no", I do believe religious conversions are a lot more complex than a "yes" and "no" answer, it's more of a gray area because you're beliefs with or without a conversion constantly change as you grow.
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
My comparative study of religions started with just a (first) line from a book written by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad:
"It is necessary that a claim and the reasons in support of it must be set forth from a revealed book."
http://www.alislam.org/library/books/Philosophy-of-Teachings-of-Islam.pdf
It was in fact a lecture written in Urdu for the Conference of Great Religions held at Lahore on December 26-29, 1896.
It proved to be the golden rule of studying religions and the ideologies not attributed to religions for me .
I am happy that I am an Ahmadi Muslim.
Regards
Digital_Monk
Member
I wasn't religious when I was younger, and as I aged, I didn't have much use for religion. In the past 5 or 6 years or so though, I had gotten curious and I started looking into things. Religion found me, so I wasn't really a convert.
I suppose I started off as an agnostic.
Then I became an atheist, probably strong,
Then I became a weak atheist (in other words....an agnostic).
Quite the picaresque journey, eh?
Then I became an atheist, probably strong,
Then I became a weak atheist (in other words....an agnostic).
Quite the picaresque journey, eh?
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
"It is necessary that a claim and the reasons in support of it must be set forth from a revealed book."
How do you see your religion in respect of the golden rule mentioned in my post #69 ?Regards
The Emperor of Mankind
Currently the galaxy's spookiest paraplegic
So your "comparative study of religions" began with you accepting that religions could and should be held up to the arbitrary standards of a Muslim heretic?
I suspect you're not entirely up on what "comparative study of religions" is actually about.
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
In other words, any of the religion one has displayed as one's religion "Pagan - Greek polytheism; Zoroastrian philosophy"; none of them has a claim for being truthful nor reasons.
Right?
Regards
The Emperor of Mankind
Currently the galaxy's spookiest paraplegic
Yes, they do. They make sense to me as a way of explaining the world. Why on earth would I care about what some pretentious wannabe-saviour figure (or his followers) has to say on what constitutes a "truthful" religion, much less actually apply his nonsense against my own beliefs?
When I was very young, 5-7 years old, I began experimenting with polytheism and the concept of ritual and magic. I didn't know there was a name for it, I was just following my heart. Of course my Christian mother put a stop to it, and that was that. I decided to leave my church when I was 12 and went on to research and explore religions in hopes of finding one that I could believe in. I went through a few before I finally found Paganism. I realized that there was in fact a name for what I had dabbled with as a child and that same spark was re-lit in me. I know I am a convert to Paganism but honestly I feel like I always was Pagan, I just lost my way for a while, and that discovering it again was really just a coming home, a return to what I had always been.
The Mormonator
Kolob University
You were involved in black magic at age 7?
Firstly, "black magic" is actually pretty inaccurate in most cases of its use. Energy, and therefore magic, is grey. In Pagan philosophy there is no black and white, nothing is purely good or evil. But I think I get what you mean. No I was not involved in the "darker" aspects of the Arts at the time, I had very little idea what I was doing and so I certainly wasn't casting any big powerful spells, let alone hurting anyone with it! I was primarily evoking nature spirits and exploring my natural pull to polytheism and worship through ritual. My mom only stopped it because I would talk about how I believed there were multiple gods, not because I was doing anything that might cause someone harm.
The Mormonator
Kolob University
Ahh, I see. On my mission, I met a young prospect that was heavy into Devil music....Megadeth, Sepultura and King Diamond......and he told me that "the conjuring" by Megadeth was what started him on his path to Paganism. I was very hopeful that I was going to be able to show him the way to the gospel, but he just couldn't shake the demons out of him.