I am spiritual, but I am not by most church standards religious.
That is I believe in God, but I do not believe in churches. Churches are a control device to keep the peons in line, and they always have been.
I have been in a Catholic Church a couple of times in my life. The greatest impression it made on me was with their chanting / their ritual. It is cult like at best, and every single Catholic that was in there was an indoctrinated cult member. I was raised Baptist, and my impression of the baptist faith with their ritual of baptism is it is cult like. Its members will insist if you don't let the preacher dunk you in the water you are going to hell. I lived next door to one of the Pentecostal churches. You could hear them speaking in tongues, rolling around the floor as if possessed. It was a cult.
I talk to God almost every day. Sometimes he shows me the way, but often he doesn't. I pray to him often, and most of the time my life is blessed for it, but sometime it doesn't seem so. I have learned to pray to him to do what needs to be done, and not what I want to see. I do ask that if it is possible the outcome go as I want it too. Often it does not. I don't need a church for any of these conversations nor prayers. I don't need some pastor, preacher, or priest to intervene on my behalf. Their results would be no better than my own, and in the end they would tell me the same conclusion I have come to of my own accord. It was God's will.
I am spiritual, but I am not by most church standards religious.
That is I believe in God, but I do not believe in churches. Churches are a control device to keep the peons in line, and they always have been.
I have been in a Catholic Church a couple of times in my life. The greatest impression it made on me was with their chanting / their ritual. It is cult like at best, and every single Catholic that was in there was an indoctrinated cult member. I was raised Baptist, and my impression of the baptist faith with their ritual of baptism is it is cult like. Its members will insist if you don't let the preacher dunk you in the water you are going to hell. I lived next door to one of the Pencostal churches. You could hear them speaking in tongues, rolling around the floor as if possessed. It was a cult.
I talk to God almost every day. Sometimes he shows me the way, but often he doesn't. I pray to him often, and most of the time my life is blessed for it, but sometime it doesn't seem so. I have learned to pray to him to do what needs to be done, and not what I want to see. I do ask that if it is possible the outcome go as I want it too. Often it does not. I don't need a church for any of these conversations nor prayers. I don't need some pastor, preacher, or priest to intervene on my behalf. Their results would be no better than my own, and in the end they would tell me the same conclusion I have come to of my own accord. It was God's will.