Grew up not supposed to eat meat on Friday during lent. It was a big nono. I don't remember the year but one Friday during lent the church said they made an exception and you can eat meat that friday.

That began my journey of realizing Church has nothing to do with G_d.

Same with School. Felt like teachers were making up history on the fly.

The only true answers I could find were within my gut.

Trusting yourselves = Trusting G_d

Eating crackers and grape juice pretending it's supposed to be Yahs body and blood never EVER sat right with me.

When I was a kid sometimes we had to go to my grandparents Church of Christ!
It would scare the shit out of me when they would have that and ALWAYS tell everyone there, " If you have not been Baptised in the church and take of the wine and bread you will go straight to hell"
Fear based bullshit!
I have been in God's presence twice in my 65 yrs and the God I met would never say such a thing!
Humans made that shit up to keep ppl in fear!

Yep alot of the church does is bs but there are also some good genuine people there we have to pray in time they too will have there eye opened

Nana would totally agree with that too. I belong to a one room country church that usually doesn't have but maybe 25 ppl but I have never been there that I did not feel God.

I am not sure the previous experience of all the people who trash churches, but I feel bad for those folks. Our church is also small, but they are caring folks who worship Jesus, feed the poor and love our community. I'm sure there are plenty of shams out there, but I personally don't know any church group in our community who are scammers or false in how they function. Our community is so much better off because of the churches here who love, serve and bring light.

Oh my goodness so sorry you had to live with that.

It is like everything else in this world, imho, there is good and bad in every group.