Inspired by @chobani's post in another thread...
I have lived in areas where the majority of people were religious. Many institutions were as well. Interested in hearing people's best/worst experiences with religion--whether it's a specific person, a place of worship, a religious institution, etc.
GOOD: churches release the best cookbooks around. Fact.
Best: When I was growing up, we had a little neighbourhood church which initially involved going to an old couple's house, and there was a kid's group and an adults group, and the kid's got to go off and colour in pictures and shit. Nice excuse for the community to come together.
Edit: Also, got some nice meals from some religious order while in the likes of Lima. Those nuns were nice.
Worst: I'm pretty lucky, in that I live in a relatively irreligious society, so i haven't been at the receiving end of actual religious horrors. Catholic mass/school was boring/borderline-abusive, but relative to real religious persecution, that's not much.
i was forced to go to a chinese evangelical church for a long time, which has turned me off from christianity forever.
i will accept free food & meals from almost any religious institution.
We were married in my wife's church. Wonderful!
A friend's funeral was the worst but it had nothing to do per se with the church or religion--it was just so sad and depressing, and we were young. I just remember the church service so vividly.
Multiple denominations are represented in our extended family so we don't talk about religion at family reunions. In fact, when it comes to discussing religion and politics, I'm generally reticent. There's nothing to be gained, the subjects are fraught with emotion, and few are open to persuasion.
Although I was raised as an atheist, since my father was in charge of all things ideological in our upbringing* (catholic-raised mother handled day-to-day politics), I did turn to religion during a period in my teen years. It was a time when I was having what I can only explain now as hallucinations. My room was isolated from the rest of the house and I heard and felt weird things at night. I used to feel someone breathing in my ear, which was terrifyihng, once something furry brushed my arm when it was hanging over the bed, and once I felt something grab my ankles and pull me violently. I guess you could explain a lot of the things I felt (I always wondered if the furry thing was a bat, for example), but some of them were really just hallucinations. So I started praying, which made me feel safer, or something. It didn't last very long though, I got over it around the age of 17. I don't hallucinate anymore.
*"¡Me cago en Dios y en la Virgen puta!" was something I thought people said when things went wrong. Turns out it was just my dad.
Originally Posted by Hephaestus
Sounds like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis
Oh yeah, I have that (which involves hallucinations), but I wasn't suffering from that when I had those problems I mentioned. When I started having sleep paralysis in my 20s, I began using lucid dreaming techniques. Sleep paralysis and fear always come together. Lucid dreaming techniques help you overcome the fear, and the paralysis.
GOOD: the Christian-affiliated nonprofits that I've worked for (a few) are better than the secular ones. Maybe that wasn't a contributing factor, but the management, quality oversight, organization, quality of workforce, etc were superior. Maybe it's because they can take all that sweet, sweet WASPY church money? Who knows, the pay wasn't better there, even though the service administration was
(No, proselytizing/converting/preaching was not a part of it....was actually forbidden to try to attempt)
Good: attended catholic primary school for 6 years and I have an extremely positive view of mass / prayers / bible study / hymns
Bad: no real bad experiences, just a general disagreement with theology + that lifestyle
Best: gurdwara lunches, closely followed by music concerts in cathedrals.
Worst: getting picked on by other kids for growing up non-Catholic in a mostly Catholic neighbourhood.
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