A single moment can confirm your faith — but it can also shake you to the core. When we experience something that challenges our spirituality, we have to make a choice. We can change our faith or change our beliefs. This is, by no means, an easy decision, but it's one that many of us have faced.
We took to Reddit to get a better idea of what can truly "shake" someone's faith. From taking issue with something in a religious text to suffering a grave personal loss, all sorts of things can force us to question our belief systems. We always have the choice to redefine our spirituality, but we may also choose to walk away from it completely.
Ahead, the people of Reddit share what changed their faith, if only for a moment or for good. Please feel free to share your own story in the comments.
"There was a real a-ha moment for me in seventh grade at my Catholic school.
"One of my classmates asked if pets went to heaven. Common question for a child, right? Everyone else instantly gave our teacher our full attention.
"He answered truthfully. 'Well, according to the Catholic Church... No.'
"Everyone recoiled in horror. Murmurs of disgust swept through the classroom.
"Our teacher saw this and made a nervous face. The church was at risk of losing followers because of this! Better change the doctrine to keep people happy! 'But--' he said, 'I think pets become part of your soul, you know? So they go with you.'
"The class was satisfied. I was not.
"I watched him change the church doctrine right before my eyes for the sake of popular opinion. He effectively lied to all of us. That's the day I realized religion was politics, and I was out the door from there."
-Reddit user motorholm70
"I recently came out to my family as being on the sexuality continuum — that I was attracted to a person of my same gender at one point in my life.
"My so-called Christian family were the first ones to condemn me — one even stated that I should be committed to a mental institution."
-Reddit user dereksmalls1985
"The doctrine of eternal hell for people that don't repent [has shaken my faith]. Really hard for me to stomach (still is) but the more evil I see in the world, the more I am convinced that some people will never renounce evil."
-Reddit user cashcow1
"I was adopted into the Jewish faith.
"My father passed away when I was 8 and my mother when I was 19, and I literally lost all faith in religion."
-Reddit user xplosyvlykerosen
"August 1998. Three days before her birthday, my friend Kelly's 4-month-old son died due to the negligence of his babysitter, a woman who had been a close family friend for 20-plus years. Despite the fact that the autopsy showed the woman lied about how often she had been checking on him (she claimed she had checked on him every 20 minutes, the autopsy showed he had been dead for several hours before the police were called), nothing happened to her other than losing her license to provide daycare. Then at his funeral, all of those useless platitudes: 'God works in mysterious ways,' 'Everything happens for a reason,' 'He's in a better place.'
"Yeah, that was the beginning of the end for me."
-Reddit user quiqonky
" At the age of 13...I went through a phase of reading about cults like the Manson Family, Heaven's Gate and others. I found their use of chanting and their beliefs in aliens, a living breathing messiah and their general belief systems ridiculous and laughable.
"I was in Church one Sunday and it came time to say the 'Our Father.' I got two lines in and for some reason I stopped and listened. I was completely freaked out. I was listening to 300-plus people chanting in unison. It was a prayer I'd grown up with. One so familiar to me I can still recite it verbatim and yet I couldn't help but compare it to the chants I'd scoffed at. Needless to say I was very quiet that evening. My faith was shaken to it's core. I'm 25 now. I realized I couldn't believe in a God anymore at the age of 20."
-Reddit user Duncandisorderly271
"I am Jewish. I grew up in a non-practicing household. When I got to college, during the club open fair I met a rabbi and some members of the Chabad on Campus group. I clicked with the rabbi and with the students and I started to practice. I built up belief and faith until I got the call that my mother had cancer for the third time.
"I can't believe in a G-d that would just destroy my family and my mother like this. She has been promised remission twice now (after first and second bouts) which has never been fulfilled. It's terminal now, and I can't understand why any G-d would make anyone suffer through this. I haven't stepped foot in a synagogue since I got home. I can't."
-Reddit user designosaurusrex
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