Is it normal to be unsure about religion?

I was raised with religion, but my parents didn't care what denomination I attended. If I wanted to hang out with friends at a church that wasn't ours, so be it.

I remember going through the motions. I memorized all the prayers and learned the rituals. But it never made sense to me. They were good stories, but not logical to me. This concept of god was too limiting and inconsistent. Even at the age of 8 I saw the ego trip behind this idea of god. And I had no clue as to what an ego was. But I loved reading stories, parables, and myths from other cultures. At some point it clicked, it is all myth. And only I can define what god means to me. My life as myth. What lessons do I need to learn?

I can understand where you are coming from. I married into a conservative christian family with a couple Pastors. When I was younger, I think my heathen ways concerned them. But the fact that I am a genuinely good person and a kinder person than their average flock member has made them stop preaching at me and my beliefs. Although, in their eyes, I am going to hell. But I like to think I leave them feeling conflicted over their blind judgement.

Growing up in nontheistic house gave me the freedom to take my time in searching for and understanding god. I'd always believed in God but didn't have a name or convenient box for him. When I found him it answered a lot of things in my life. It gave me a cause, a purpose, something to fight for. It helped me believe that I could forget my past and have something to look forward to, mostly it just helped me feel not so alone. I knew my faith had some bad followers and there were many inconsistencies in its text but the message was true and I'd seen all the evidence I needed to start believing.

I'm still not entirely convinced but so far it's the best thing going. It has never lead me to be anxious, only cautious. It has stressed me out, but only when my heart was set on something selfish. I don't stress about the after life and I've come to accept that I'm not perfect and that my soul as much as my character is a work in progress.

Above all else I follow love, but I understand that with love should come discernment and that love is not blind, but should still be ministered to all. Mercy is greater than justice. That yes we live in a cruel world and I will do my best not to turn cruel with it.

Why do you have to believe in a religion to follow something it teaches? I do not follow any religion, nor do I believe in a god, but I believe that murder is wrong and stealing are wrong. If there are life lessons in a religion that ring true to you such as love they neighbor by all means follow that teaching. And if there is something a religion teaches that you feel in your heart is wrong, like putting adulterers and gays to death and forcing rape victims to marry their attackers, then don't follow that teaching.

Remember that religions are created by man as are their teachings. They were basically laws created by men to govern societies that no longer exist. God was just used as a way of legitimizing those laws, to control the people into blindly following them without question. We as people are just as capable of determining what make sense for our own societies today as they were back then, and we don't neet to pretend that some god justifies our decisions.

So, follow your heart, follow the laws of the society you live in, follow peaceful means of changing laws yoh may not agree with. If believing in a higher power brings your comfort, feel free to do that as well. But don't feel like doing so requires you to believe in a specific organized religion, or that you are required to believe a religions doctrine to the letter.

You have your own mind, given to you by god or not, use it.

I've always been more drawn to the spiritual side of religion. Many religions tell you to follow God's law blindly, without question, but I don't think that's really what faith is about. I don't believe any harm has ever came from me questioning religion, but in fact has made my faith stronger because I actually thought about it and decided what I believe myself.

I never went to church regularly, not since I was 5 or so, but my dad talked to me a lot about the bible. I didn't agree with everything, but I couldn't really express that to him. Still, we had a few interesting discussions and some of it was pretty reassuring. I didn't live with my dad, so I had the freedom to explore what God and religion meant to me and then I could still go to him to fill in some of the blanks. I did a lot of discerning, deciding what felt like truth from my dad's teachings and things I was learning about other religions.

Eventually I decided that God is real, but most religions are twisted. I started praying, reading the bible somewhat, went to church occasionally and actually got results...and since then, I feel like God has always been there for me when I needed him the most, whether I kept praying while things were good, continued reading the bible, went to church or not. I was so upset one day that I stepped out on my porch and cried out to God, looked up at the sky, from which a little rain started to pour over me until I felt comforted. I do try to stay on top of giving thanks for my blessings, but I don't even do that as often as I should.

In summary,I think in some ways religion complicates God.

Absolutely nothing about religion makes sense. They demand 'faith' without offering you any reason to believe.
The majority of the clergy (for lack of a better all religion word) are total hypocrites, telling YOU to live one way, but doing the opposite themselves. They have holy books that they pervert for their own reasons, most often to get their followers to slaughter those they don't believe they can manipulate.
Religion is a crutch for the weak who will not take responsibility for their own actions; gawd's will or Insha'Allah in Arabic.
Religion is the greatest sin of mankind.

Religions are all lies.

I grew up in a household with very strict rules and beliefs. I grew so tired of it all that i eventually started to hate the idea of religion and God. But i still do hold certain important principles that religion teaches, such as giving to the poor and needy, not compulsively lying like a sociopath and not killing anyone and so forth. I think that's the most important part.

In terms of spirituality, i never really thought about it. Though i always believed that everything had a spirit, whether living or inanimate.

That's why I made up my own religeon that makes sense to ME. I don't need a billion other people to do it too to make me secure in the fact that my life has purpose and not to be afraid of the dark at night.

Religion was a strong source of anxiety during childhood. In high school, I realized that cultural pressures work under the same dynamics as natural selection. That is, the more effective cultures push the least effective ones out of existence.

The Pharaohs of Egypt conned the slaves into thinking the pyramids they were building were Resurrection machines. Stupid ass creation stories were comforting to the masses. And, civilization needed agriculture, markets and business ethics. Christianity used the best of the best ideas so that even today, religious believers are so conned that they deny scientific truths.

Yes OP.