Michael

The following story was a turning point in my life. I also want to illustrate how something that may appear to be negative can turn out to be good in the long term.
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During my senior year while I was heavily involved in the Episcopal Church Youth Group, I experienced a turning point in my entire religious belief system. I had a friend who was having some emotional problems during that time. I had the idea that maybe my friend could benefit like I had to be around a group of people that had good hearts, were caring, didn’t judge and could possibly be a wonderful support mechanism. I talked to my friend about the idea and they agreed to come to some of our informal meetings.

It was a match made in heaven. My friend responded quite well. They were liked by the group and after several months you could see marked improvement in my friend. Their attitude was up, hope was a common feeling in their lives and the mood swings were less. It was a fantastic feeling to be involved in helping this person.

One day I was called into the priest’s office for the church where my youth group was based. He had done some checking on my friend and had heard some very colorful stories of their antics and behavior before they had joined the church youth group. The priest told me that this kind of behavior was not welcome in the church. In fact, it was so unwelcome that he told me that my friend had to leave.

I was astounded and extremely angry. I asked the priest, “What about the church helping people in need?” “Wasn’t this a hypocritical act on his part?” “Did he not understand how much better my friend was because of the church?” Nothing I said seemed to matter to the priest. He continued to stay focused on the fact that the church didn’t condone their kind of behavior and he didn’t seem to get what I was saying. At first I saw him as incredibly superficial and hypocritical.

I informed my priest that if he was going to force my friend out of the group, then I would not only leave the youth group, but I would leave the church also. The priest rejected my friend. I left the youth group and church feeling that religion was hypocritical and false. My friend took the news very poorly and within weeks of being forced to leave the church youth group, they were back to having troubles in their life. It was a very sad story and I was angry for years about it. In fact, I never went back to organized religion because of this incident.

What happened instead was that I started a search for spirituality in other areas and went on a wonderful journey that continues to this day. I discovered inspirational messages everywhere I went and became more spiritual (less religious) as the years went by. I’ve always had a deep seated belief in something greater than myself. That never went away.

So, now when I look back on this incident in my senior year of high school, I don’t have anger anymore, but many thanks instead. Because without my priest acting the way he did, I would not have discovered all the wonderful things outside of mainstream religion that I’ve been able to experience. I’ve also been able to develop a respect for all religions and spiritual beliefs. I no longer judge one over the other. I also became more fascinated by the similarities between all spiritual and religious beliefs than their differences. I fundamentally believe this has been important because it helped me to develop and cultivate tolerance for differing belief systems, cultures and opinions.

So, for me a seemingly negative event turned into a positive life experience.

Michael