I've seen and participated in many debates, and god being my passion, most of them fall under religious context. This, on the other hand, has nothing to do with debate or a religious flame war of any kind. This is not out of contempt but out of my will to make known what it's far to easy for nonbelievers to assume. Christ is mighty to save. He is my redeemer. He is the author of salvation and he is the only path to the father, and as such, I will not sit idly by watching this presumptuous assertion that Christians need to be raised in that fashion to reach any amount of faith. It's your heart and your faith, and until you acknowledge that it exists dependent on the father and independent of other beliefs, you will continue to fall into the snare of contentment, while I strive to honor his name and share his love with the people of this kingdom and allow his will to consume my life with his purpose. Anyhow, my story goes: [quote]I wasn't brought up Christian. Actually, quite the contrary. With my biological mother deceased a year after my birth, and my father in prison 95% of my life. my guardians, my mothers eldest sister and her husband cared for us without ever mentioning or imposing the need for faith. My mother lived by example, although she wasn't an avid churchgoer, her faith and trust that his hand was on us was more evident than most people's. As I said, she never mentioned that I should believe, rather she forced me to question myself and the religious implications of all sorts, but not out of spite. I came home after one church service, that I decided to go to because of a girlfriend I had and not bc my parents told me, and I told her I wanted to be baptized. Her response was astonishing. "Are you sure? Do you know what the purpose of a baptism is?" She said nothing further. She didn't say "that's a great idea" nor did she say "I don't think you should", she questioned my incentives behind openly desiring to participate in a ritual that was far more significant than the church has ever led me to believe, with approximately 5 years of church under my belt, accumulatively, not in continuation. She caught me so off guard that I could not reciprocate an answer, for I had not understood the significance well enough to convince her I knew what I wanted. Her husband on the other hand is most probably agnostic. Maybe my she is too. As they've never asserted any religious affiliation into our lives, I tend to respect that their affiliation was irrelevant to my upbringing. Their spirituality does not define mine, if it did, what kind of robot would you have me be, then? As I just said, I was forced to question everything because my parents have not lived the "Christian" lifestyle. you've envisioned that all parents of Christian children must have directly influenced their decision to accept it. I'm 21 now, when I told my mom I want to be baptized, (even after I took it upon myself to be saved), I was about 17. My littlest brother was adopted by my dads brother and his wife. Christianity was directly imposed on my youngest brother, as he was also enrolled in a private Christian school his entire life. His "mom" forced him to come to church as often as she could get him to, sometimes his tantrums were so bad that she had to stay home to deal with his unruliness. He still went to appease his mother, on occasion, but she knew not to make thing out of it. You are all so curious about "god" but you fail to share compassion for other life, making it difficult for anyone to speak to anything other than all of the preconceived notions about a presumptuous life that only applies to yourself. If you learn to respect other people, maybe you would get more from them than lunacy, bc nothing bothers a Christian more than someone else telling them HOW they came to believe or why they believe in the first place. It's not your place to make that judgement. Especially when you're still questioning your own life.[/quote] Tl;dr If you think I'm faithful to god because I've had a terrible life or my parents prolly raised me up christian, think again. For any who accept this falsehood and preconceived notion is being deceived.