RE: Christians mistakenly praying to bones of beasts
March 6, 2015 at 1:10 pm
(This post was last modified: March 6, 2015 at 1:51 pm by Zenith.)
(March 6, 2015 at 11:42 am)Losty Wrote: Wow, and here I thought it was pretty universal among Christians to believe praying to idols is a terrible sin.
This reminds me of the old times, back when I was a child, ~12 years old. I grew up in a pentecostal family. In my school we were roughly 10 children of pentecostal families, and we were holding the Religion class separately. However, the Orthodox Religion classes usually occurred amidst other classes, and having a free class that hour but having nowhere to go, I was also assisting to the Orthodox classes. At each religion class they were turning eastwards and praying in front of the icon of Mary which was in front of the class, above the blackboard. I was also praying at that time (I was feeling it compulsory), but I was praying in a different direction so as not to pray to the icon. It was obviously ridiculous and my colleagues were looking ugly at me and laughing.
When they found out that I was not orthodox and that I was "pentecostal", I started to be asked questions like "Do you believe in the Virgin Mary?", "Why do you not pray to the Virgin Mary?", "Do you worship the Devil?", "I heard that you pentecostals worship the Devil, is it true?" by my colleagues.
I was always looked bad at, for being different and for stating that I worship God only, and not saints. It was like, "What, you do not give respect to the Virgin Mary??" as if not praying to her meant that I was thinking about her like "What a bitch and a slut! Fuck her!"
I remember, one time when I was in the school yard, a colleague of my class opened up the window (he was in the class) and shouted at me, "You sectarian!!"
In private discussions, this is how the orthodox people were calling the protestants (and I'm sure, there are many to this day that still do). It was not a sin to be catholic, even though the Catholic church is a small minority in Romania, as well. It was a shameful sin to be a protestant.
Ah... now that I think about it, I heard the word "atheist" and what it means, for the first time when I was 19 years old, my last year of high school. lol.
