I was raised in a Christian enviroment, I studied Christianity's main principles, got disappointed and consciously left that religion. After that, for a while, I called myself a religionless theist.
About one week ago, I searched about Hinduism in an encyclopedia. Not wikipedia. A normal encyclopedia, made of paper. (Yeah, believe it or not, those, too, still exist!)
Much of the stuff Hinduism preaches (eg. reincarnation, vegetarianism) agree with what I believed as a religionless theist. What attracted me even more to Hindu, though, is the lack of dogmas, how open it is to personal interpretation. I mean, there have been thousands of religions in the history of mankind (including denominations and heresies) and every single of them preaches that this certain belief is the only way of salvation and any other belief leads to eternal destruction. Hindu is the only belief which does not claim such a thing (at least if I got it right).
Back when I considered myself a Christian, every time something about Christianity seemed to me unfair or nonsense, whenever I asked a priest or pastor or something, he would reply, 'It doesn't matter what you or I consider fair. What matters is the word God left to us through the Bible.' I ended up devoid of hope and joy. When I renounced Christianity, God showed me that his law is written in my heart. Therefore, what I myself would deem right if I had never heard of any religion in my life is what he, too, deems right. Hinduism is the oldest faith. In other words, it was created by people who had not prior been brainwashed by other religions. That's why I believe it must be the correct faith.
Of course, by that logic, I have no reason to bother with Hinduism to begin with. I mean, since God has implanted in my heart everything I need to know, I might as well keep going by the 'religionless' label. Then again, it might be nice to feel that I belong to a religion, for the first time in my life. I mean, all my life, I believed myself to be a Christian merely because my parents and teachers had told me so; I never truly felt I belonged there.
Anyway, I don't know much about Hinduism yet, so I'm not sure yet whether to change the status on my blog's profile from 'religionless theist' to 'hinduist'. So, in order for me to avoid reading walls of text from the very beginning, can someone tell me, in a few words, what the basic principles of Hinduism are or anything else about that religion which you think could be useful for a beginner?
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