Self discovery

[Guilherme]

I found this community yesterday, and I liked it very well, so after reading some threads, I read a post from a person and he says about doing a self discovery, "to look deeply into all faiths and all beliefs" and I liked it, but I feel a lot of pression and fear of doing something like that, I do believe with all my heart God exists.

I feel like reading into all or at least some of them to know it better, to decide better in what I believe, to know better what I believe. But I have tremendous fear of doing something wrong if I do this and I always have in my head about punishment.

Since I was a kid I always believed in God, have been raised in a christian family, an ex-girlfriend gave a Bible to me so I started reading after a while, I liked it so everyday I read it a bit, after a while I started having doubts about certain things which are either prohibited or allowed in the Bible and sometimes I do not understand the reason for that and I feel like I can't think otherwise than follow it just like it's written and if I don't understand it the way it's I feel like I'm doing something wrong so I barely try to question it to know deeply and understand it.

There're so many religions out there, so what you think? If I do that, assuming I can, am I doing something wrong?

[Ralph]

I'm basically Christian (progressive Christian FWIW) and I don't see any problems with looking into multiple faiths and beliefs. There is a difference between putting other gods before God and just learning about other faiths so that you won't be ignorant. James 1:5 says if you lack wisdom, ask of God who gives freely without reproach. To me that says He wants us to seek answers rather than feeling afraid of our doubts that they might undermine what we believe. If our beliefs cannot stand up to scrutiny, perhaps they weren't all that accurate in the first place.

I find this edifying as you can see that at their core, all major religions teach similar concepts. They may differ in how to apply it, but there is wide agreement on what the basic principles are.

It's normal to have doubts. Even Mother Theresa had doubts. This is part of faith and any deeply spiritual writer such as St. John of the Cross writes about going through periods of doubt. Usually these stages precede a deepening of one's faith practice, as long as they are attended to mindfully. You cannot know deeply and understand your faith unless you do ask and wrestle with the difficult questions.

[Darkness]

Ralph, as I ahve looked into other religions, I can only tell you that is true for mostly abrahamic faiths. A lot of faiths out there are A LOT different from eachother.

compare for example, Hinduism and Islam, or Satanism and voodoo. Both sets I gave as an example there are VERY different, actually all four are extremely different.