Being a scholarly person, I read the Bible completely for context so I could hopefully understand sermons when I was younger (always been a nerd-azz ninja...). One day during sermon the brought up how god had already created our life’s path and some other stuff. So, after the sermon we had bible study (torture) but I decided to bring something up that I was curious about: according to the book of Jerimiah, it was written that:
“Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee;”
Ok, cool...
As a result I argued that I found myself questioning many of the things being preached about and my faith overall, but I should not be judged because since “god made me,” he knew that I wasn’t doing this out of defiance, this was all already foreseen and could not be held against me. For that matter, where ever everyone ended up was known by god because he “knew” us in the womb.
The class was stunned and the Sunday school teacher was honestly without recourse. Their best retort was about serving god and trying to walk in gods image and grace.
So, since that Sunday in the very early 90’s (middle school) I realized the inherent flaw with religion and have simply been decent - not out of fear - but because it has made life much easier.