Self Perspective

Asking yourself WHAT questions brings to the surface of your mind ideas, beliefs, and assumptions that you have, that may need to be evaluated for possible, misunderstanding, misconception, or erroneous social ideologies.

I believe religion is man's attempt to please or have pleasure in: a spiritual deity, himself, or God according to his own philosophies, ways and or traditions. However, this belief may be in error, so we can go to find answers using reference resources, like the dictionary, the Bible, or an Internet resource like the Wikipedia Encyclopedia. If you want to find right answers you need to use resources that are reliable.

"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." James 1:27

Asking WHY takes your questioning to a deeper level. You find out that you have believed something for many years, and never really new why, until you asked. This process will help you determine what you really know through experience and what you may be believing without any experiential foundation. That will most definitely bring up more questions that should propel you to looking for right answers.

Say you use "Finding Ephraim" as a resource for defining religion. If your resource isn't a Dictionary, A Bible, or an Encyclopedia which are three very reliable resource to finding information to support why you believe something. Finding Ephraim isn't any of those things, so if you choose to use this information to support your belief, you need to have tested and proven the resource so that you can know why you agree with this resources view. This is called experiential knowledge. Below is Finding Ephraim's understanding as to why we are drawn to religion.

Why am I drawn to religion/spirituality

Whether you want to believe or not the fact of the matter is that we have all been created by a Spirit; of whose depth, knowledge, age, and power is beyond our comprehension. We are by nature, spiritual beings, living in a realm called "the creation," the physical or natural world.

To break it down more simply, mankind has two natures: the natural man, and the spiritual man. The natural man wants a nice house, money in his bank account, and pleasure related to the natural world.

The spiritual man desires spiritual pleasures like: peace, joy, eternal life, and a relationship with his god. Why are you drawn to a religion or to spirituality? Because there is a desire in us for spiritual pleasure. It doesn't matter if your a Buddhist monk in Tibet, a Native American in a Taos pueblo, a Hebrew in Jerusalem, a Christian in Louisiana, or even an atheist in Salt Lake City.

Every human has this dual nature. And any of us at anytime can choose to pursue to live in one or the other. Most of the time we weave in and out of both everyday.

Asking HOW is the last line of questioning before action. How leads us from questioning questions (WHY) to interpreting answers, and proving information. HOW turns information into Knowledge. There is a big misconception concerning information and knowledge. We humans can hold a lot of information in our minds, but is that knowledge? No. Knowledge is information that has been personally tested, and proven thus becoming something a person knows by experience.

How can I determine what religion is right for me?

This can be a very complicated question to answer. Depending on your doctrinal background and interpretation of the Bible there is any number of places you could be in the religious world right now.

If you have come to learn about God through your own personal searching and studying of the scriptures your chances of being erroneously indoctrinated are greatly minimized. If you have learned about G-d through a church chances are your doctrine (understanding of the scriptures) may be in error.

I believe that in most Christian organizations there are preached and even practiced some basic biblical principles. One could literally group certain denominations together from low levels of truth being preached/practiced to medium, medium high, high, very high, and so on. Just like when a child graduates from one grade level to a higher grade level, sincere believers should also graduate from one level of truth to another deeper level of biblical truth; it's an awakening.

Some peoples longing and/or desire is so strong that it propels them into higher levels of truth in there lives faster. Some lag behind in a certain level because they are doubtful or just less inclined to question the status quo or the established paradigms being fed to them.

In this country (America), just getting people to enter into the spiritual realm is a monstrous task, because our culture has socialized us to only see and cater to our carnal nature. Our whole being that includes our spirit, and our soul is being completely dictated by our body, our flesh. When it should be our body being ruled and in subjection to our soul.

Determining the religion that is right for you must first begin with prayer. If you want to know the right answers ask the righteous God. To many times we turn to men for answers that can only come from God. The scripture teaches us that if we ask we shall receive, seek and we shall find, knock and the door shall be opened to us. It's that easy.

Asking yourself, "What am I going to do about it?" Is the last step in self examination. It is where you take your Experiential Knowledge, derived from your personal WHAT, WHY, and HOW questions, and apply it to your life. Saying to yourself, "Now that I know this or that, what am I going to do with this knowledge." You take action.

No matter where in your life your are, whether you are lost inside of yourself, or trying to find answers to problems, feeling alone, dealing with loss and pain, or just trying to find your way to God you must A.S.K. Him.
Ask and it shall be given you,
Seek and ye shall find,
Knock and it shall opened unto you

Once you have the answers you need the next step is figuring out what your going to do about it. G-d does give us answers, but the answers in themselves are not enough. the Almighty requires of us to act.

Ecc 9:11 I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race [is] not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

For those who want to be a child of the covenant keeping God you must enter into the terms of the covenant. Speaking of the the Old Testament (Covenant), and the New Testament (Covenant). An intimate relationship with God means more than just being a member to a religious organization. It means knowing the Creator, and the only way to know Him is through the study of his word, his ways.