I’m a 21 year old college student born and raised in the USA to a Protestant Christian family. I grew up going to church and private Christian school till I was in middle school. However around the age of 15 I decided to think about my religion in a way I hadn’t before. I in many ways blindly followed my faith without much effort or thought going into it. In reality I was very ignorant of major Christian beliefs in terms of understanding their doctrine. Within 6 months of turning 15 I had been looking into Islam after at first becoming somewhat agnostic. After a long amount of consideration, learning, and so on I converted. After awhile I ended up telling my parents which somewhat hurt our relationship even though it remained strong. I remained in this state until the beginning of 2017 where I ended up questioning a lot of the beliefs that I had once held or defended in Islam. Many of the shariah law punishments for example, the “scientific miracles” in the Quran, and some other things. I became an atheist till about mid 2018 where I realized my atheism was making me less moral. I have more or less been a conservative for most of my life, but I felt it was hard to keep ahold to some of these beliefs as an atheist. Things like abortion are almost unanimously viewed as pro-choice in atheist circles for example. So for someone who pretty much had a absolute pro-life viewpoint this was difficult to deal with.
What really caused me to change my view on religion was things like the prevalence of things both Islam and Christianity view as sin in society. There are also sins on my part I am ashamed of and feel stain my character. I’ve realized that religion is inherently good and important to society. I then found out about classical theism and the arguments made by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas for the proof of God. These arguments along with other classical theistic arguments opened my eyes to serious fallacies and issues atheists have when trying to ultimately disprove religion.
Due to the predominately heavy catholic influence found in classical theism as Thomas Aquinas is a saint and doctor of the Catholic Church I looked more into Catholicism. I started to learn a lot more about Catholicism and liked it generally speaking. However, when last summer I attempted to join the Catholic Church I didn’t feel I was ready to make a commitment like that. As the class I joined was very close to Easter, which is when new Catholics are technically initiated in. Despite this I learned a lot about Christian doctrine from Catholics specifically about the incarnation and Trinity. This made me realize my lack of understanding of Christian beliefs.
During most of this time Muslim friends attempted to help my issues with Islam. In many ways I’ve sorted a lot of them out. However, many still remain. For example, I have issues with the claim the Bible is a corrupted version of what it once was. To me this claim is hard to prove or disprove due to the two oldest transcripts of the Old Testament being the Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls being written before the time of Jesus. Despite this I am willing to change my views. Nothing I believe is set in stone.
I currently don’t really know where I am at in terms of religion or anything. I fear the duties and responsibilities of religion as I’ve grown to enjoy not having to deal with them. Islam is more difficult than Christianity simply because Christianity is accepted in my family. Islam is viewed negatively, and that would make practicing Islam harder. I often work with my dad for example and having to pray would become an issue as the two would interfere with one another. I’m not at the point where I want to come back to Islam as I’m taking my time and learning before I make any choice.
One thing I’ve felt very different about with Christianity is that the doctrines I’ve learned are from outside sources other than the Bible. While certain parts of them like the basis are found in the Bible these doctrines are not found in the Bible itself. An example of this is how the basis of the trinity is mentioned by Jesus, but the explanation of how it works, why it is, and how it works that I learned from Catholics is not involved the Bible.
I’m a person who enjoys their free time and freedom. I currently do things like drink and smoke as well which I don’t think is necessarily a wrong thing. Which is not seen as completely forbidden.
I understand religion should be a personal choice but not chosen lightly. I want to develop a personal deep relationship with God. Though currently this is very hard as I don’t have a drive to ask for help. I’ve been reading the Quran recently and a bit of the Bible. Too many people I might seem as if I’m not genuine with my choices or I am naive. The latter might be true but I truly want to find the truth as I feel there is no real purpose in my life.
If there is any advice, help, or anything you can give me I am truly grateful for it. If you have any questions please feel free to ask or send me a personal message.
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