Originally Posted by
Jimbo
Good points.
Not to single out any religions or sects, but I was raised a Catholic (though not really hard-core), had to go to church every week, and had to go to catechism every week, too, until my late teens. In all that time, I can honestly say that I never "felt" God, nor had any concept of Divine Love. Besides being required to do so, to me, church was about accumulating brownie points for the afterlife. It instilled a sense of guilt and even fear of not going and paying the consequences. I went because I was taught I had to.
I had stopped going, but still believed that way for years until I got into SRF, which opened my mind. During that time and as a result, I also had a particularly powerful spiritual experience. Now I no longer belong to any religion, but that one experience, which was only seconds, trumped all those years of going to church. I didn't hope, I KNEW through experience that a Divine, loving Being is real. When you have experienced something, you no longer need a to believe or have faith, because you know. I no longer needed to carry any spiritual guilt, negative self-judgment, fear, uncertainty, etc.
Too often, religions place importance on the "ism" and the church leaders, etc., who in fact are no closer to God than anyone else. In fact, nobody is.