Poll Did Your Trauma Effect Your Religious Views?

[Girl3]

PTSD Sufferer - you have said so well, the things I believe.

For ages, I felt God was punishing me, and the one facet of me - the virtuous, successful one - couldn't understand why God had forsaken her, while the the awful, vengeful, sociopathic one knew that God was punishing her for her sins and didn't care.

It is what I do - DO - that counts. Not what I think, not what I believe.

As someone so brilliantly said: sitting in church doesn't make you a Christian any more than sitting in a garage makes you a car.

 

[mamachick]

As a young adult, I was still very christian although I did not prefer organized religion. With each major traumatic event, I have come to believe there is no God or that I have been forgotten. I wish that I was a believer, but he is right there with Santa. I agree -not what I believe, but what I do that is important.

 

[Mercy]

The years of working on my trauma have challenged and deepened my faith. The Bible says that being a follower of Jesus isn't going to be easy. We each have our own crosses to bear. Just remember, the Romans picked a man out of the crowd to carry the cross of Christ the rest of the way to Golgatha. We are not alone. God is with us. And we are here for each other.

Another New England phrase us, "It doesn't make any sense to warm a pew for a few hours when there is a person who is cold standing outside." As St. James puts it, "Faith with works(Helping your neighbor, etc.) is dead." There should be some evidence of a heart overflowing with gratitude to God however He brings that opportunity to you.

 

[Marie E.]

It actually made me stronger as I take my pagan religion as family values and used it as a way of coping with life and I taught this to my children as well.

 

[Justmehere]

It caused me to search out what is and isn't true about religions and spirituality a lot more deeply.

 

[Ocean5]

You mean like during family counseling senior religious leader telling you and your mom. "You have to Obey your father - even if he is physically and emotionally abusing you." WTF

Spiritual now.

 

[Justmehere]

Oh that's awful @Ocean5 :hug:

 

[joeylittle]

I was raised to believe in God. And I prayed a lot when I was a kid. After my trauma, I could not believe in that god anymore. I'm very envious of people who have any kind of spirituality, because I do think that being able to believe in something larger than ourselves helps life not be so scary or painful. But I can't believe in anything. And if there is a god, I don't know why they hate me so much.

 

[Deleted member 29920]

It just made me even more atheist but now I don't know what to think or believe. I've been reading a lot of existential topics... Camus, sartre, heidegger, kierkegaard, jaspers. I'm not convinced there's any such thing as love anymore, it looks more like just attachment..relying on someone, avoiding our essential disconnectedness. We are always separate from one another except for during one act, which I don't view as *loving* at all *sigh* :(

 

[Zef]

My trauma was so tied up with religion, that there was absolutely no way for me to maintain religious beliefs and heal. One of the few strong memories I have was lying in bed when I was 14/15 and making the final decision that I would rather God kill me than stay alive under the conditions he demanded. At the time, it really was a life-or-death decision. .. I chose death and it was the best decision of my life. :)

 

[Ed Norton]

I had a period of delusions of religiosity due to trauma, in that sense they where greatly altered but after that ended. I went back to my usual beliefs. I am a Catholic convert because of my dad's passing but identify more as just a Christian.

Few things were able to truly alter my belief in God. The one thing that really changed it, in the sense of reinforcing them was hardcore science. Both biology, including courses with a heavy molecular and cellular basis and it goes without saying evolution from a molecular level is very convincing and chemistry which included quantum mechanics and a heavy dose of physics and math. My senior thesis was on two recently diverged Drosophiladae. Although the lab work was a structural elucidation of the fatty acid methyl esters on the cuticle ie locating the double bond position using a crazy mass spectrometry method*, the defense was heavily immersed in evolutionary biology. I've come very close to seeing the limits of science but not just that, the wondrous complexity of nature had strengthened my belief in God. And one important lesson from my more mathematical courses that "Nature laughs at complex mathematics!"



*Acetonitrile chemical ionization tandem mass spectrometry

 

[Ed Norton]

I only majored in chemistry to understand the fireworks books