Hi, since I’ll be going home this afternoon I won’t be blogging until I get back to school on Monday. However, if you’re in the US, hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving. For the rest of the world, hope you have a great week.

First of all I want to thank everyone who commented on my first post. I’ll be spending the rest of the week studying for two exams and hopefully finding out who my new roommate will be. I’m moving into a cheaper dorm in Jan.  and looking for a job to alleviate the already high costs of my education. Changing my major from criminal justice to nursing is also going to keep me in school longer than I had planned.

Why do I bring this up? At the Bold Grace blog there has been a controversy over the role of giving and selling in the Christian faith. Growing up I was told that we were required to give 10% of our income to the church and any extra was an offering. However, when I started attending church youth group in my early teen years the pressure to give became greater. I explicitly remembering hearing the phrase “give until it hurts” from adults saying God expects sacrifice and the guilt trips.

Although this attitude made a lot of money for the church, it also left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths. The pastor and assistant pastor at my former church earned salaries higher than the majority of the people in the county and my dad really got ticked off when a representative from the South Carolina Mission Board told the congregation that our tithing and giving paid for his health insurance when most of the congregation including my own family can’t afford health insurance.

Obviously my view of giving anything has been soured by this. However, does this mean that asking for money is always wrong and evil no matter what? What about selling Christian books and CDs? I’ll give my own evolving thoughts on this on another post. Please give your own thoughts but keep them civil. I will delete rude comments.

I never thought I would get into the blogging world but here I am. This blog deals with the journey of leaving my fundamentalist faith while still pursuing a relationship with God. I’m going to warn you now that if you’re easily offended at differing viewpoints of God,religion, and other sensistive issues, then you probably won’t like this blog. But for people interested in sharing their thoughts and friendship, your input is more than welcome. I know this blog is not very attractive right now but I’m working on it. Have a great day everyone!