What's your religion? What's crazy about it?

I guess I fall somewhere in between Protestant Christian and Agnostic. A year ago, I would have said "Protestant" without question, but I've recently been rethinking my faith some. The Bible is still the root of my values and Jesus is still the God I worship, though my version of worship is more trying to follow His example and less singing about Him and praying daily. I'm trying to have an open mind about everything now, but not so much that I don't have a foundation of beliefs anymore, if that makes sense. I'm not a "religious" Christian, I'm not a "churchy" Christian, but if my faith is visible to others and it leaves a positive impact, that's cool.

What's crazy about Protestantism? Boy, I could make a hefty list. But I'll pick something personal for me. Part of what influenced me to start exploring other spiritual possibilities was the general contemporary Protestant church community. I'm talkin' everywhere I went people were exactly the same. My first college church group started off nice and welcoming, but it didn't take long to see just how mechanical and just plain unpleasant everybody was as a whole. It was discouraging. Basically, it felt like I could be part of the "cool kids" as long as I did exactly what they did and acted the same and never spoke my mind. You want to get to know people? Do what they do, say what they say, and plug your ears to the rest of the world. It was like being thrown into an android factory. I didn't feel God's presence among these people at all; it's hard to describe what I felt, but it wasn't anything good. So I graduate, come home, visit a few other churches. All the same. All the same tasteless, heartless "worship" habits. You could hear it in the way they talked to each other, you could see it in their smiles. Nothing felt real or genuine. And, of course, only a few of my church buddies seemed to walk the walk and talk the talk to begin with. Most others seemed like parodies of the few "real" Christ followers. In the end, I found it hard to trust anybody and didn't want to be around them anymore.

TL;DR: Contemporary Protestant churches have the tendency to come off as stuck up and robotic. That's what makes my religion --or what's left of it-- crazy.

/r/CasualConversation Thread