Examples Of Spiritual Autobiography Essay

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My Spiritual Autobiography
Each and every individual holds a certain set of beliefs that guide them through their life decisions. Simply put, everybody has a faith. This faith defines people by separating them into different religions based on similar beliefs. Similar beliefs shared by a population that get passed along through generations make up the spiritual climate of a certain place. I have examined the spiritual climate of America through readings in the IS 101 Reader and through my personal observations from the news and social media. I have found that traditional beliefs and ways of practice are sometimes confronted by new discoveries, such as evolutionary studies, and changed as new generations hold different values. America has always …show more content…

As a young boy, I attended Sunday School for many years. I learned about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit once a week and was immersed in a family that was religious. We never missed a Sunday, prayed before every meal, and talked about God in our lives. I was baptized and began attending a Lutheran church up until the end of middle school. Our lives became busier, and our attendances to church became fewer and far between. In school I began learning about evolution and how humans came about. I remember that I did not understand how school could teach something different than what I learned my entire life. At first I did not know what to believe. I became skeptical about many ideas in the Christian faith. Is there one almighty God? Did he create man as told in the story of Adam and Eve? I thought these bold ideas were far-fetched. For a short while, I did not believe the teachings of the Bible or of God. I had many of the same thoughts as doubters of the Christian religion. How can the idea of one God or Heaven be real if no living person had ever witnessed it for themselves? Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? The absence of God and the theory of evolution seemed like the reasonable explanation to me. As time went on, I continued to attend church sporadically and did a lot of thinking about my faith. Every so often, I would find …show more content…

However, I did not choose this college because it identifies as Lutheran. In fact, I was not entirely sure what made a Lutheran College different from any other college. I have found myself reading in the IS reader about the purpose of a Lutheran college. As Hanson put it, the purpose of Lutheran Colleges is “to plant deep within students a lifelong unquenchable curiosity about God, the meaning of life and being human, and the centrality of faith.” This did not fit with my original thoughts of a Lutheran College. Personally, I believe that the purpose of Lutheran universities is for people to discover their vocation. Previously, vocation was used exclusively to describe religion, but society today views it as the calling to serve one’s neighbors. This seems more fitting because it is not exclusive to only Lutheran Christians but to all students who study at the college. My goal is to discover my vocation here at Wartburg College. Along with that, I want to extend my knowledge about the Christian faith and deepen my understanding of the ideas within the Bible. Because I have doubted the Bible before, I want to look deeper into stories from if that have no logical scientific explanation such as Adam and Eve or Noah’s Ark. I personally believe that many of these stories have a deeper meaning and cannot necessarily be translated literally. This exploration can be accomplished both

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