Do You Ever Miss God?

[Kernel Sohcahtoa]

For those of you who have a history in a particular religion and moved away from it, I mean do you ever miss the feeling of believing you had a personal relationship with god?

I would say no.  My father is a practitioner of Judaism (though he was never really strict with me about it, nor is he a strict practitioner himself) and he brought me up in that faith via Sunday school and various Synagogue services on Friday nights (the Friday night services were a requirement for my Bar Mitzvah along with some after school Wednesday classes).  However, during this entire experience, I could never really say that I felt a special relationship with some other life-form in our reality.  At best, I observed a community of people who seemed to derive happiness and meaning from something they believed in, which gave them a unique path to follow in their lives; however, this path was not my own and by continuing to practice it, I was only letting others think for me; I was not being myself.  Hence, I do not miss my religious upbringing and the god concepts associated with it: if this chapter in my life had any meaning, then that meaning was brought forth via social conditioning and norms, which were not a true reflection of how I felt or thought.