Church

My family has never been religious and therefore I have never really gone to church other than for weddings and funerals. In my house we do not pray before we eat nor do we go to church for religious purposes. In fact, my parents read books like The God Delusion and other books about different religions and they work. Before Sunday, I cannot remember the last time I have been to church. I have always found that most religions discriminate against homosexuals and having an openly gay father, I take offence to that. So going to church, I tried having an open mind and accept what the reverend was going to preach. As my roommate goes to church regularly, I decided to tag along with her so we woke up around 10 am so that we could make it for church at 10:30 am. We sat down at the table, she, Chelsea, ate her cereal, and I sat and ate my oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. We then got dressed and headed off to church; when we arrived the parking lot was pretty full so we found a spot on the end and walked to the doors. The church was filled with mostly older people; they all seemed to know Chelsea because she had been many times before. They all asked who I was and what church I usually go to and what I was taking at Brock, all the people seemed very nice. We then walked in and sat down on a phew in the middle row. The service then began and the revered, who happened to be a woman, started talking about god and reading from the bible. The passages she talked about did not mean much to me as I do not fully understand the concept of god and how he works. She continued with the readings and talked about how these passages related to life. After a couple of passages, she got us to stand up and sing a song or read something out together. Then she started talking about homosexual suicides and how high they are especially in the GTA as a couple weeks ago a male homosexual committed suicide in Toronto. To myself I was thinking about how horrible the church experience is going to be because they will be discriminating against homosexuals. Then the reverend started talking about how horrible these suicides are and how she thought, we had passed this and that homosexuals should be accepted and not discriminated against. It turned out that church was a great experience because they believed what I believed. I had judged them before I knew much about the religion. However, there are many branches of Christianity and some of them do believe that homosexuals are horrible people.

This was a great experience and has taught me more about the church of transfiguration and how they think. I have learned that women can be reverends and that not all Christians believe that homosexuals are horrible people. I learned this when I went to church with my roommate, Chelsea, and listened to the reverend talk about how horrible it is that people discriminate against homosexuals. This learning matters because I have never been to church before this Sunday and now I know more about Christianity and the different branches. In light of this learning I will nt judge a religion before I learn about it and better understand it. Although church is not my thing and I will probably not go anytime soon I still think it was a great learning experience. I really like how much of a community they were. In the service a woman came up to talk about how a woman she knew had died earlier that week. As she was telling the story of this woman and her struggle to battle cancer, she was crying and the reverend, along with other people in the congregation went up to hold her hand and support her. After her story, she asked that everyone prayed for the family who had lost their mother and pray that she had found her way to heaven safely. I thought it was amazing that even though these people did not know this woman they still prayed for her and her family. I thought this was amazing because at a time like that, when someone dies, you do need support and she got it from her church.I would probably not go to church again because it is not something that I enjoy doing on a regular basis. However, this has opened my eyes to religions and the different ways that people warship what they believe god is. My family believes in science and that is what we will always believe, facts and theories. Everyone has different beliefs and can choose to think what they want.