I know instances like the below article are fairly rare on the grand scale, but damn. https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/woman-says-god-told-her-035718911.html
You only have to do a brief search on Google to find a whole lot of people doing some horribly crazy shit because they believe that their God told them to. Even if you take out the big events and just focus on the folks with possible/probable mental trauma, it’s a shit ton! And even if you just narrow it down to your average religious person making some bad life decision because they feel like their God told them to, it’s still probably a crazy high number!
After attending a state university and getting a bachelor’s degree, I wound up going to a Bible college in the Tulsa, OK area. I heard many “testimonies” of people who left jobs and situations because God was leading them to go to this Bible college. At the time, I was drinking the Kool-Aid by the barrel as well, so I was like, cool. God told them to leave their situation and He would take care of them. A couple that stand out were people who were just a few months away from being able to take advantage of their military/police/fire/company pension… but God had other plans. So instead of hanging in there and getting their pension and going to Bible school later, they trusted that they were being led by the Lord to leave all that behind and go when they did. The last time I heard from any of these folks, they had either gone back to school or gotten some kind of skill training so they could get a job that paid them a living wage. And every one of them regretted leaving the military/police/fire/company when they did. It’s all fun when you are caught up in the hype. God will provide! And all that bullshit. But it short circuits a person’s good judgment, that God gave them, to do some stupid stuff. Sometimes even crazy, illegal stuff that hurts a whole lot of people.
Yep, just doing some venting. I hope you all are doing ok.
Shifting Beliefs 