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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, I find that many people here enjoys excluding other people just because they weren’t born here and speak with an accent. The social environment changed negatively in the last decade. I’d suggest you try joining a hobby club and let things flow.
[/quote]

Or a religious organization.[/quote]

+1. Best advice by a mile. Even if you're not super into whatever religion you and your husband were raised with, give it another chance, be positive, and I guarantee you will make some new friends. If nothing else, you're going to be surrounded by really nice people an hour or so every week.[/quote]

I completely agree with this suggestion.

I found myself in a very similar place in 2022.   I had a very successful career, money, lots of stuff — but very few real friends.   My wife and I do not have children.   Our friends from when we were younger all had kids and it was just incredibly hard staying connected with people who were just in a very different place in life.   To the extent I had “friends” — my relationships with work colleagues always felt shallow and transactional to some degree.

I want to be clear too — the lack of friends was a BIG problem.   I felt like I couldn’t really connect with another human being — even though I was technically more “connected” to people through Facebook, LinkedIn, etc than ever before.

Anyway, a series of very unexpected circumstances led me to start going back to church in May 2023.   I had basically considered myself an atheist at that point but decided to give religion another try due to a personal crisis (which was exacerbated by a lack of friends).   I had been raised in a Catholic Church that was very rote — go to church, sit through the rituals, try not to fall asleep when the priest talks, never really understand what any of it means.   I decided to go to a church that was completely different — a mega church in the suburbs with Christian rock music, all that jazz.  It was like going to a foreign land.

And you know what?  I tried something different and I liked it!  The music was actually quite good, the pastors were very engaging and gave fantastic sermons that had a lot of relevance for my life — and the personal crisis I was experiencing.   And then I started to understand some of the serious theology behind Christianity and was blown away by what I was hearing.  It was about as different from my experience growing up as I could imagine.

After going there for a few months, I joined a mid week “church group” — it is basically one half Bible study, one half support group.  I didn’t know anyone and yet these strangers welcomed me with open arms and tried helping me with my problems in life.  It was surreal in some ways — I had been so cynical and jaded about “friends” and now I was meeting the kindest people I had ever encountered in my life.   And before long these people introduced me to other people in the church and those people introduced me to other people and so on.  Moreover, our church is very diverse and I felt like I was meeting this incredible cross-section of people — people from different countries, different races, different socio-economic backgrounds.   In a matter of a few months, I not only had more friends but they looked so different from my prior friends.

Now, I have an entire group of friends, we check in on each other, we bear each others burdens, we celebrate our successes.  We also have real conversations all the time — not the surface level stuff that consumes my work friends (“what fancy city did you go visit this summer?”  “what new television show are you watching?”).  Having a true group of loyal friends like this has improved my mental well-being more than any drug or therapist, changed me as a person, and led me to have so much more happiness, satisfaction, and fulfillment.  It’s also led me to want to be a good friend to new people I meet at church.  And so the circle is always expanding.

Whatever people say about religion — there is a reason churches and houses of worship have been popular for thousands of years.   The community that you can build together is a major factor.   Not too long ago, even in this country, it was incredibly common for people to belong to a church, and the community element was a big reason.  When you all believe in something bigger than yourself — together — it forms an intense bond.

Again, I was basically an atheist.  Three years ago I never would have imagined typing this post.   But here I am.   My advice is that more people should give it a shot.   You might be surprised at the wonderful people that God ends up putting into your life.  
[/quote]

I was wondering how this PP managed this long well written post -- until I got to the Mega Church part. Posting PR like this is sickening. It's lying.

OP if you want to go to a church and you are an atheist, you can go to any multi-denominational church or a Unitarian church (where you don't even have to believe in God). These Mega Churches are for being brainwashed and conned, as the fake post above confirms.[/quote]

Oh do shut up. The PP did not mention their church by name there are probably nearly 50 in the DMV area. They are not recruiting if they don’t even say the church name.

Obviously if you don’t want religion then you should avoid mega churches.

What is even the difference between a mega church and a “multi denominational” church, your post makes no sense. If you want to avoid Christianity you need to stick to the Unitarians or some type of humanism group.

-an atheist

[/quote]

So I was the person who wrote the “religious” post.   Thank you atheist friend for your support!

This is no PR or fake story (why would I take an hour on a Saturday night to write something made up? Do
you think I have nothing else to do?)

This is my life.   Maybe if it hadn’t happened to me I wouldn’t have believed it either.  But it did.

BTW, my wife is still not a believer. But she appreciates the many changes that she has seen in my life.   And she has also seen first hand the kindness from people from my church.   She opened a small business this past year.  Even though she never goes to church, a big chunk of my close church friends all showed up on opening day to give her moral support — and also bought some stuff too.   She was blown away.

I never said in my post that you have to join a mega church to have the same experience I did.   I do not believe that — at all.  I was merely describing what has happened to me.  But I could imagine many houses of worship providing the same type of experience.  I am friends with Orthodox Jews who describe a similarly strong sense of community within their houses of worship.

The point is that religion offers common bonds over something that is much larger than the temporal world — and can result in strong friendships as a result.   [/quote]

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