religion

I used to believe…

As a young child I attended church with my parents. We used to sing a song which had the words "Victorious Christ" in. I always wondered why He was Victoria's and not anyone elses. My dad did an amazing job of keeping a straight facee when I asked him!

I used to believe…

when i was about 12 or 13 my parents out of the blue decided that I had better start going to sunday school.

the friday before I had a Physics lesson at school where we were taught about gravity and did experiments on floating objects - anyway the following Sunday my sunday school lesson was about the miracle of Jesus walking on water to which i started up a scientific discussion about how impossible this would be and how it was all a lie - I then proceeded to go through all of the miracles and denoucing them with my new found scientific knowledge - the teacher had to send all of the other children out of the class so they didn't have to listen to the voice of a non believer and the priest was called out of service to telephone my mum so she could come and get me - there you would think the embarrasment ended but no to my horror my rather firey mother turned up in the front of the church where she proceed to hurl abuse at various members of the congregation, who had come out to see the spectacle, and defended my arguments with the priest down to the last.

I never went back and shortly after that my family moved to another parish !

I used to believe…

My brother is three years older than me. The only memory I have of the "Oh, God!" movies is thanks to him. I remember that my brother thought that God must look like George Burns. I guess I misunderstood that as "George Burns is God." I was so young that I barely remember the pictures.

I guess I also believed that all angels were blond and that the Saints had never been real people, because all the Sunday School teachers kept telling us they were dead and most had lived centuries ago. Now I know that the Saints were indeed real people and love them dearly. (Particularly St. Patrick.)

I used to believe…

When I was about five, I was told that God was everywhere, watching me all the time. This, of course, made me connect him to Santa Clause, and I used to think that Heaven was Santa's summer home, and God went skiing at the North Pole, because they were best friends. I was rather confused as at why Santa wasn't ever mentioned in the Bible.

I asked my mom where Jesus was because I wanted to know why I had never seen him. She told me he lived in my heart. A nice thought, but I was quite disturbed picturing a little man with long hair in robes living inside me.

I used to believe…

This is actually my dad's belief. When he was little there was a dry cleaners near his house that emitted alot of steam out of the back. He was convinced that this cleaners was pergatory and that they were cleaning souls in there.

I used to believe that if I just prayed hard enough, God would give me a special glimpse into what Heaven was *really* like in my dreams at night. I thought he would come down and literally take me up to Heaven and get me back down to my house by morning. I could never figure out why this didn't happen.

I used to believe…

We were praying for somebody close to us that was sick. My daughter (at the time 6yrs) proceeded with "Dear Lord, abra cadabra..." whereupon we collapsed into hysterics.

I thought all angels were named Harold, because of Hark, the Herald (Harold??) Angels Sing. This really confused me because my best friend's father was named Harold and he was no angel. He drank beer and used bad words.

I used to believe…

We used to sing 'there is a green hill far away without a city wall' at school. I thought it meant that every hill should have a wall built around it! By the time I'd become a Christian as an adult the words had been changed to 'outside a city wall' I understood then that Jesus was crucified on the grotty bit of rubbish dump that no-one wanted to live on - quite a revelation.

I used to believe…

when i was about 6 and my family was still quite catholic, my mum told me about how "God is always with you," and that sort of thing. i took this very literally, and believed that god was hiding under my bed. so rather than checking the bed or the wardrobe for monsters before bedtime, i checked to see if god was there

I used to believe…

When I was a kid in the 80's, I watched a lot of "Family Ties" and the "Back to the Future" series.

Like any being that I was not able to physically see, such as a character in a story, I used my imagination to create an image of what I though they looked like.

I envisioned (and believed) God as having the face of Michael J. Fox.

I used to believe…

At church, after (or maybe before??) everyone had taken their communion and you'ld turn to people around you skaing their hands saying 'Peace be with you', I misunderstood....as a child I used to shake people's hands and say 'pleased to meet you'. Thing is, my parents would encourage me to do it more for comedy value, and i didnt understand for ages what was so funny.

I used to believe that Jesus was born on Christmas (December 25th) and died on Easter, and was really, REALLY busy getting all the stuff in the Bible done in the 100-150 days between the two!

It wasn't for quite a while that I realized that he lived a little bit longer than from Christmas to the next Easter Sunday!

I remember a series of questions that I asked my mother about god when I was two years old... things like, "Was god there when I was born," etc. The first and only image of this god that I had for some time was a man wearing a purple dress shirt, a black vest, black slacks, black dress shoes, and a wide brimmed black hat. He had fairly short, straight brown hair, blue eyes, and a well-groomed beard of the same color as his hair. And there he was, just sort of standing there in the delivery room as I was being born.

I used to believe…

When I was a small child I could not understand about God and Jesus, so I believed that God the Father was my Grandad(the kindest man I knew) and that Jesus was my Dad.

I used to believe God lived in the altar, because ordinary folk were never allowed beyond the altar rail. One night I crept into the church and peeked under the altar cloth to find a very ordinary looking table underneath. That's when I started to get very suspicious about religion.