memoir prohect

CRISIS OF FAITH.

Before I started my first years at Will C. Wood middle school and moved my way up to Alameda High, I had gone to a private school in San Lorenzo. The school I attended was Calvary Lutheran. We had just about all the same classes as all regular middle schools do, and we even went back and forth between teachers just like any other middle school-er. But in our schedule we had a class called religion. We would just whip out a bible and our teacher would make us turn to one of the beginning proverbs that told of one of Jesus's stories. We would then read about half of the story and then go home. It wasn't just all reading, we also had test on the new and old testament and had bible races, where the proverb would be written on the board and the fastest person to find the proverb would stand up and read it. I remember that on Wednesday's we would have to go to chapel and sit threw a service,we had a huge wooden cross right in the middle of the end of the room, and of course we did the Ren-enactment of the birth of Jesus. After that, we would return to class and continue our schedule. Week after week i started to think of what i was being taught had been true or just a lie. Would there really be white pearly gates,and in front i would be judged on my actions. Sometimes i had wondered what it would be like to float up to heaven, with a halo and a pair of wings, I had thought that god lived on top of clouds and looked down upon us and watched over each and every single one of us, like a hawk tracking its prey.

 

 

I did not start to question the ideals of the bible till I got to fifth grade.That's where I had started to take stories of the bible and try to break them with pure logic. One of my first questionings was the story of Noah and the ark. The story says that there were only one pair of every single animal on the ark, one male and female so that they could re-populate. In Genesis 6:1 it says that Noah had started to build the ark when he was five-hundred years old. Five hundred! He entered the ark when he was six-hundred years old. Of course there is so many flaws in this story to make me not want to believe in the story of Noah and the Ark. By the physical capabilities of a grown adult man, that is physically impossible,and how is there enough food for all the animals and for Noah's family to last forty days and forty nights? And it wasn't just the bible i used common sense on to convince myself if things were true or not. When I was five I had asked my mom if Santa really exists. She asked " why dint you think he exists?" and I replied" I don't know" and she told me "no". Just my nature to question brought me the truth of Santa. So I started asking my self more and more questions on the birth of Jesus and if earth was really created in only seven days?

 

After starting to question the teachings of the bible, when I wet to church on Wednesdays, and sung the hymnals, I started to feel a guilt creep upon me, just something that dint feel right. It felt as tho god had been watching me and he felt really disappointed in me, it had felt as tho I had committed a crime and got away with it, and now i had to bear such an immense guilt. Days soon passed and became weeks, and soon i unwarily just went through the motion of religion class. Just reading the scripture, reading, not actually sucking in the meaning or value of the story. One day i went home and asked my mom if she believed in the stories of the bible, knowing that she brought up by the christian faith just like i was. had said " I don't necessarily believe in the stories like Moses freeing the people of god from Egypt", " But i do believe in the overall idea of the bible". With that i was even more confused of what to think of it. I sat for a while and came to my conclusion that I have to listen to the teachings of the Bible, and that's up to me whether i believe in it or not.