i came onto something...

[abaris]

Who taught me how to use the reference material?
before Marv became the director of Zion's hope he taught a weekly class. It was free and I attended for 1 1/2 years. http://www.zionshope.org/index.aspx

Then where they left off my best friend's dad at the time had a doctorate in theology, and was a minister at a church down town. He gave me alot of material to read and some of my first references along with a list of others.. Of course now all of it is on line... With it I started to take apart our 'religion' with a ton of questions he could not answer.. Just as he began to think he made a terriable mistake and destroyed my faith. God gave me those answers he could not.

I went through a few big trials that further changed my life and shaped the way I thought especially on the topic of forgiveness. Then in my darkest hour, I turned to a christian forum, to bring my burden to them in an effort to find out why I was going through what I was going through... They gave me a range of responses from pitty to 'that's what you get when you dont follow God's plan.'

While i was there i saw alot of questions I had asked myself, and got answers to..

Long story short i sorted out my issues, and spent the next five years answering their's. Then moved to atheist websites because the questions were better..

So you took the guidance of others as all of us did at some stage. People just draw different conclusions from what they are told or taught.