Confused

By LB ~

I was raised as a Christian, but it was the type of Christian that went to church, prayed, etc. I was never VERY religious. My dad died when I was only 14 and then things started to change for me. I didn't want to go to church anymore and kicked against God because he took my dad away. I did eventually finish sunday school because of my mother's pressure. I got married, had two kids, got divorced. I re-married, had three more kids. Through all this, I could probably count on my hands how many times I've been to church. My kids got christened because of pressure from the grandparents, but it never really bothered me.

Well, after my last child was born, I started to suffer from depression. It was so bad that I tried to commit suicide five times in a period of two years. I felt something was missing in my life (I even experienced with metaphysics for a while), it didn't work, so I turned to a church. Our whole family started to go to church on a regular basis. I felt it uplifted me, it made me feel whole and I felt like I found the place where I belong. I stopped using my anti-depressants and didn't have a bad episode of depression again. I became VERY religious and wanted to do all things good and tell people about Jesus and I did just that, but one thing I couldn't do was stop smoking.

I got baptised and wanted to change my life, be a better person etc. etc, but the smoking got me down. I started to question everything, like if it is really so bad that I will burn in hell forever! For months I felt condemned, I felt guilty, I tried to stop smoking and still want to, but until now, I just couldn't.

With this questioning,  I came across interesting things for example that some things in the bible is mistranslated. That Christianity was not the first religion.

Now I lean more towards the fact that Christianity was made up to control people. That the bible was written by people, and through the years it has been changed so much to fit what people MUST believe, or what they want people to believe.

At this stage, I am very confused, mostly because of the punishment that hangs over my head - not that I believe it so much anymore, but I am scared of the what if I am wrong. I cannot fully explain why I felt so much better belonging to a church and attending services. Maybe I looked outside myself to be healed? Maybe I believed that the healing must come from a higher power and so it manifested? Maybe someone can give me more clarity on this. I also wonder sometimes why people say their prayers do get answered if Christianity is fake?

I don't know what to call myself at this stage, but through all the things I have read and went over in my mind, I don't want to be a Christian - it just seems you can't enjoy anything without feeling guilty about it!

I do believe that every person has a soul, so I am not an atheist. I do believe there is life after death, but I also tend to believe that your soul goes through stages to learn lessons. I also do believe that there is a Higher Power, the beginning of it all, I believe there is other spirits around us, but how it all ads up, I still have to figure out.