The only differences between a 'religion' and a 'cult' are the number of 'believers' and -- marketing.
And it never occurred to you that these things happened because of what you did; because of your effort and work?
I gave myself a few days to mull over your comments here. The first thing that stands out to me is your rather aggressive response...as if my TRUTH offended you somehow. Bottom line, dude...it's my truth, my life, my testimony. You weren't there when my mother put my clothes in paper sacks and kicked me out of the house because her then-husband said I wasn't good enough to be his daughter. I was seven. He was a drunk, an abuser, a wife-beater, and (being her 3rd husband so far) made several attempts to kill my siblings and myself.
You're literally proving here that what a lot of us know about followers of the 'bible' already: it makes you weak, and it keeps you weak.
Let me correct you: I don't follow the Bible. It is a source, a tool, but not WHO I have my relationship with. That book wasn't there when I was seven and didn't save my life either. It didn't push me up the other side of a frozen gully that I had fallen into, it didn't dry my soaking wet frozen clothes, and it didn't clear a path in the snow to the next ranch where I found safety. That book wasn't the song that the rancher heard being sung in that dark frozen night that lead him to me in the cattle field. The Bible didn't tell him to wrap me in a blanket, carry me into his house and cry over me while he rocked me to sleep.
God was.
You can call Him anything you want. I call Him Rescuer, Savior and Lord. When I asked Him why that man had said I wasn't good enough to be his daughter, the Lord replied, "Because you are Mine."
I am not weak. I used to be...a big coward, bullied all the time, beaten, frightened, scared of my own shadow. But the Lord kept talking to me, kept telling me I was strong, smart, that I could do amazing things. I didn't believe Him at first because the people that were supposed to give a crap about me didn't, and they kept saying I was horrible, a loser, would never amount to much, blah blah blah.
"When will you believe who I say you are?" THIS is what saved my life as an adult. It got me out of an abusive marriage, away from toxic family members, and free. Free, Strong and doing amazing things with my life now!
If I had not heard the Voice of God, I would never had escaped that abusive, toxic culture of control. And I WAS strong! I CHOSE to believe who God says I am. I CHOSE to walk away from the abusers. I CHOSE my own path of TRUTH.
The only 'people' that I have ever heard speak like this have names that end in -stein, -burg, etc..
And as for your final statement about my last name likely being -stein or -berg....you showed how narrow minded and uneducated you have chosen to be, not to mention how apparently angry you are over whatever hurt. Who is being weak now? Who is letting their hurt OWN them and force their life choices, instead of being free from stereotypes and believe systems based on lies?
Lastly, you wrote your comments as if your opinion has some validity. I don't know you...you aren't a part of my life, or my journey. Therefore your opinion doesn't matter. Please consider that the next time you try to vomit your negativity and narrow-minded judgmental nonsense on someone's post.
It really is difficult to let go of. Truly it is. That's what happens when the people that are supposed to love you the most spend the first 15-20 years of your life telling you to 'believe in this horseshit or burn in eternal literal hellfire'.
It's total psychological abuse on a nuclear scale.
Well at least you understand that part.
WIll is all. Faith is strong as well - but only when applied to ones fellow man. Faith applied to 'religion' or 'spirituality' is totally and completely hollow.
This reads as if you are saying we are supposed to have faith in our fellow man? Did you not just prove my point about how my "fellow man" was an abusive POS that didn't care about me? That my own mother abandoned me? That NO human in my life has EVER done any more for me aside from abuse, use and condemn me?
I will put my faith in the Creator, the One who made me, Who knows me better than anyone else. The rest of humanity can walk their own path. I will not be following them.
God knowing what its creation will do is absolutely the definition of predetermination. By virtue of it knowing, events MUST follow accordingly. There is no free will left.
IMHO God is not something you can even name, never mind understand. Wrap your intellect around infinity (you can't) which is akin to discussing God. It's something that is imbued in all of creation but also something that doesn't know of itself. Humans are created with an ego that needs to be uprooted if we are to "see" God. In other words God coming to know of itself, it being pure awareness and not a self referential system.
Thinking it (reference to God is "it" in my lexicon because it contains both the divine masculine and divine feminine) is so small minded that it put codes in the bible (a group of books arbitrarily chosen by men) to "prove" its existence is like imagining you've wrapped you mind around and corralled infinity.
What I'm saying is God (whatever it is) is beyond anything you can think. Believing codes are planted in the bible to satiate the mystery of existence is equivalent to a belief in Santa Claus. You can't think your way to God - you can only experience God by ego annihilation. Just my 2 cents.
Genesis 1:26 And God said:
'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness..."
God's pronouns are "They, Them, We, Us, and Our"
We are made in God's image, not the other way around. So applying our knowledge, our limits to the Creator of the Universe is absurd. And because He is God, the Creator of all things, He can do anything He wants....including put clues in a book for someone to find that will strengthen their faith, lead them to TRUTH and give them a thirst for more! It is man that is limited by his own bias and prejudice, his own limited education. Every man is different. God is the same...yesterday, today, forever and always.