Many of my initial beliefs I learned from my family and the communities in which I interacted (school, church, neighborhood, friends, etc.). I was always a curious kid who read a lot, I loved reading biographies. I need to understand things, so they made sense to me. Eventually, I began tweaking these initial beliefs based on my understanding of the world.

I began tweaking my beliefs thanks to Sister Maggie, a nun who taught religion at the parochial school I attended for a few years. It started when she taught the concept of free will. I thought this is a great thing… but then she made a comment something to the effect that we needed to choose correctly in exercising our free will to get into heaven. This immediately confused me, so up shot my hand. Sister Maggie called on me. I forget my exact question but, it had to do with how can you call it free will if there are major consequences for choosing wrong? And so, it began my questioning things that seemed inconsistent to me. Thankfully, Sister Maggie continued to let me ask questions about what I saw as inconsistencies in the religious doctrine she was teaching. I can picture her in my mind, taking a deep breath and rolling her eyes up, as if to brace herself and tap into a little divine guidance before she called on me. She always ended with saying you just need to have faith. I never asked what I was supposed to have faith in, because in my 13-year-old mind I took it to mean faith in myself to figure it out.