This is where I think I should start.
I was going to title this: "My Childhood religion was the worst and the best thing that happened to me growing up". However, I think I like this title better because it more succinctly describes what most people experience the first time someone they love dies like their mother or father or brother or sister.
So, I suppose that Religion does have a purpose sort of like people believing in Disneyland who go there on Halloween dressed up as Cartoon characters that were important to them growing up as children.
How was my religion the worst experience of my life?
It almost killed me between 20 and 25 which destroyed my 20s for me. However, it also allowed me to walk away from my childhood religion and people in it and recreate myself as a better and more useful person so I could actually survive my life until I am presently 77 years old. At this point I can see I could easily live to 100 or more. If I had stayed in my childhood religion likely I would have been dead by 25 or 30. Why?
Because it wasn't practical enough for me to stay there any longer. So I left.
I think the really big thing that drove me away was the following:
My girlfriend (a member of this church) decided that she wanted to marry me and have a celibate relationship with me with no children. This was just too much for me because having children would be the ONLY real reason at the time that I saw getting married as useful to me. Why?
Because I found most adults incredibly boring simply because I'm extremely intelligent. Only Children seemed worth being around very much because everyone else was crazy and boring. This had always been my experience growing up during the 1950s when adults mostly seemed like the following statement:
"Born died 20 buried 60"
So, for me, not having children in my life made me want to be dead basically.
So, this girlfriend was asking me to go bury herself in the ground with me. This is exactly what I thought at the time. Born died 20 buried 60. And I was 21 at the time so I broke up with her.
However, I really loved her but was too practical to destroy both her life and my own and my future children's lives too by marrying her and dying at 20 and being buried at 60.
Was this a good decision? At the time this decision almost killed me between 20 and 25 but what did I know? I was 21 at the time.
However, in the long run this was totally the right decision for me if I could survive all this which I eventually did.
Many don't survive these kinds of things in their lives. I have noticed this a lot now I'm 77 years old and have watched people go through all kinds of things and watched people die really young.
So, I'm grateful I had the strength and wisdom so young to have survived all this.
How was my religion the best thing that happened to me as a child and as a young adult?
It's not so much the religion itself was the best thing that happened to me it was the people I met growing up who had a positive influence in my life. They taught me many things I wouldn't have known otherwise.
Was it perfect? No not by a long shot. But, what it was most like was a White ONLY Country Club I belonged to with my parents (especially Shasta Springs) which for me as a child was heaven on earth up in the mountains in the summer time. So, I was safe when I was there mostly and no one was going to kill me which was great by me. and the trees and the sacramento River was Beautiful and the people were all nice to me then. I didn't have to worry about anyone killing me or physically harming me while I was in Shasta Springs in between Dunsmuir and the little City of Mt. Shasta then for those 2 weeks or more each summer I spent there most years between age 5 and 21.
So, this part of my religious experience was like going to a very safe summer camp every year mostly from age 5 to age 21 years of age when I finally left.
So, what's a person to make of all this?
Somehow I survived most of the good things and bad things that happened to me and I survived now to 77 years old and there will always be a place in my heart for the area of Mt. Shasta and Jesus and Saint Germain because of all these years I have spent now in this area.
This is the paradox of religion in our lives because I don't think I'm alone in all this. Do you?
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