One of the reasons I'm still alive at 78 is that I left my childhood religion. Why is this?

 The one quality I find that encompasses all churches and religion tends to be hypocrisy. 

In other words there is what people say and then there is what people actually do. So, a religion for many people is more like a Country Club and. less what they believe in.

I couldn't live this way. I needed to actually believe all the tenets of whatever church I lived in so I tended to be more honest than most people about this as a young person because I didn't want to just be another hypocrite like most church goers are on earth.

The problem is that when people lie to others or to themselves it creates a whole chain reaction of problems for everyone including themselves ongoing.

It greatly can shorten people's lives too.

I saw this quite clearly as a young person watching people in our church die from not going to the doctor.

I remember being 8 or 10 years old and asking my parents (who were ministers at that time of this church) why people didn't just go to doctors and maybe live instead of dying like Flies?

There answer usually was something like:"This is what they believe!" Which made no sense to me at all. Because logically if you believe something that gets you killed: "What's the point of that?" Because you are just stupid and dead and that's all?

So, obviously being religious in this way was not logical at all to me and I tend to be a very logical rational person and very pragmatic by nature.

After all, my ancestors first came to the U.S. from Switzerland in the early 1700s and my Great Grandfather was a Captain in the northern Army during the Civil War! 

So, in the end, leaving my childhood religion kept me alive this long because I didn't have to become another hypocrite like most people in my church living a lie.

However, I just invited someone who is a friend since I was 7 years old (71 years now) in my childhood church to my birthday party in Mt. Shasta. And I said to him: "You know, Jimmy, I think our childhood religion has served you better than anyone else I have ever met. He just smiled and nodded his head.

Somehow he made it work for him his whole life and this worked for him.

But, most people I grew up with it tended to kill them before their time (the hypocrisy of it all).

So, even though it was very lonely sometimes in my 20s without the thousands of friends I had all over the world I didn't have to live a lie. I didn't have to become a hypocrite and so I was free to be whoever I wanted  to  be in the Sight of God.

 By God's Grace

My Covenant worked for me which reminds me a lot of Moses in the Bible. I had a similar kind of experience in many ways to him (even seeing the Burning Bush on Mt. Shasta in August 1970!