What are the most important choices you will ever make in your life? You may first think of the big-ticket purchases you make. A house is probably the most expensive purchase. Replacing your car every few years is another major choice. But several other decisions have a far greater impact on the quality of your life: your choice of spouse, your decision not to marry, and your choice of career.
Other crucial choices may not even appear to be choices at all. Your choice of which community to call home is a choice that has great impact on the quality of your life, yet many people never approach that decision in a conscious fashion. Many people simply remain in the community of their youth without making a conscious choice among all the towns, cities, states, and countries in which they could live. Perhaps the town in which they were born is the optimum location in which to spend their entire lives, but should that choice just be abdicated to habit?
As with the choice of a hometown, the choice of a religious home is often left to habit. There are people who choose communities far from their place of birth to call home, and there are others who carefully consider such a move before consciously choosing their birth town as their lifetime residence, but such people are in the minority. Likewise with religion. While a few choose a new religion, or carefully compare religions and consciously choose their birth religion, most remain with the religion of their childhood out of habit.
If you were to move past habit and decide to consciously choose a religion, what would your criteria be? Let me suggest several questions you might want to ask.
Article comments
1 - Becky
I have been a member of the same religion that I was born in. I have looked around at other religions, just to verify that the religion that I am currently in is where I should be. So far I have yet to find another religion. I do have to say that M.A. Curtis' latest book "Dominance & Delusion" has really showed me a unique way of looking at religion and in critiquing them.
2 - Pregant woman
A person must have reached a level of maturity, success and independence to be sure that they can choose a religion for the right reasons. When a person feels a desire to be spiritual and believes that religion is the best path for achieving this then the following informal methodology might be of benefit for making a sensible decision.