"People act like you're lazy if you're playing videogames for four hours, but if you're 'praying' for four hours, that's cool?" comments my wife.
Nearly everyone here is baptized and pretty much everyone does a confirmation but practically no one "seriously" believes in Christianity, you just do these things because you think it's a nice ceremony or because you get presents or because everyone else does it. And (as far as I've heard) they don't circumcise kids, that's seen as a barbaric practise kinda like child torture (meanwhile it's apparently basically the standard in the US, though they claim it's for "health reasons" or something).
The end point is that if they enjoy the message that the religion gives you, then they may call themselves religious. For example, Christianity's message is "You can make mistakes in life, as long as you try to do good it's okay" "Someone out there loves you even if you hate yourself" and it focuses more on people's emotional well-being and the social aspects of life. Meanwhile stuff like Greek or Norse mythology is more about how you fit into nature and how nature works together (and how humans are puny beings in the face of nature), but it doesn't talk so much about your own emotional struggles etc. So someone can believe in both, because the overall message doesn't clash.
Most people even if they're religious however, are doubtful about things and some of the old beliefs still peek through. I'm very sure that more people believe in ghosts than they believe in Jesus. In the past, all this stuff that's nowadays attributed to ghosts was once attributed to gnomes, elves, demons, old gods and so on. And the "go into a haunted house" tv shows here are taken very seriously, as in it's not some kind of show where you're supposed to be screaming and frightened and whatever but they try to do real research about the house and so on.
In general everything is more secular but sometimes in a weird way. They teach you about different religions in school (not just Christianity), and you even go to church as a school field-trip. Politicians are not exactly going to talk about god (unlike American politicians) and no one is going to say something like "Sweden is the land of God" (as Americans say about America in various ways) : l
Even the confirmations aren't serious, like my wife says that in hers they literally just played games and joked around the whole time and then when they were supposed to recite something from memory (otherwise you're not supposed to be allowed to be confirmed) they were actually allowed to just read from a piece of paper. In general church and religion is not at all serious, but it's still a part of normal life in a way. When you watch a Christmas TV special they're going to show religious singing and there will be a passage from the Bible read aloud, then there will be a bunch of stuff like old Disney cartoons. Or everyone will interpret a Disney song as being religious even if Americans don't (modernly) see it that way (ex. "When you wish upon a star").
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"People act like you're lazy if you're playing videogames for four hours, but if you're 'praying' for four hours, that's cool?" comments my wife.
Nearly everyone here is baptized and pretty much everyone does a confirmation but practically no one "seriously" believes in Christianity, you just do these things because you think it's a nice ceremony or because you get presents or because everyone else does it. And (as far as I've heard) they don't circumcise kids, that's seen as a barbaric practise kinda like child torture (meanwhile it's apparently basically the standard in the US, though they claim it's for "health reasons" or something).
The end point is that if they enjoy the message that the religion gives you, then they may call themselves religious. For example, Christianity's message is "You can make mistakes in life, as long as you try to do good it's okay" "Someone out there loves you even if you hate yourself" and it focuses more on people's emotional well-being and the social aspects of life. Meanwhile stuff like Greek or Norse mythology is more about how you fit into nature and how nature works together (and how humans are puny beings in the face of nature), but it doesn't talk so much about your own emotional struggles etc. So someone can believe in both, because the overall message doesn't clash.
Most people even if they're religious however, are doubtful about things and some of the old beliefs still peek through. I'm very sure that more people believe in ghosts than they believe in Jesus. In the past, all this stuff that's nowadays attributed to ghosts was once attributed to gnomes, elves, demons, old gods and so on. And the "go into a haunted house" tv shows here are taken very seriously, as in it's not some kind of show where you're supposed to be screaming and frightened and whatever but they try to do real research about the house and so on.
In general everything is more secular but sometimes in a weird way. They teach you about different religions in school (not just Christianity), and you even go to church as a school field-trip. Politicians are not exactly going to talk about god (unlike American politicians) and no one is going to say something like "Sweden is the land of God" (as Americans say about America in various ways) : l
Even the confirmations aren't serious, like my wife says that in hers they literally just played games and joked around the whole time and then when they were supposed to recite something from memory (otherwise you're not supposed to be allowed to be confirmed) they were actually allowed to just read from a piece of paper. In general church and religion is not at all serious, but it's still a part of normal life in a way. When you watch a Christmas TV special they're going to show religious singing and there will be a passage from the Bible read aloud, then there will be a bunch of stuff like old Disney cartoons. Or everyone will interpret a Disney song as being religious even if Americans don't (modernly) see it that way (ex. "When you wish upon a star").