i grew up as a christian, went to church/sunday school every week, and even went to christian schools in the majority of my elementary education. i was once saved, but in my adolescent years i have grown increasingly away from God. it's just getting harder and harder to believe in something that i'm not even sure it's there. there are so many questions. how do i not know that God is just an idea passed from generation to generation, and then a few authority figures told me that God was real. heck, i was told the same thing about santa clause, and i vehemently believed in that there was a santa. of course, eventually i found out he was not real. is the situation with me and God different? the Christian faith has taught me not to question, accept God as real, and to blindly believe. i don't know if i can do that. Galileo once said, "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
I learned that questioning and searching, and then questioning some more was part of the process of faith. That without questioning there would be no faith. Questioning was very much a part Christianity as I believe.
Jonah was in a cold, damp hell; not a hot dry one. But was it the lowest hell that David spoke about in Psalms? Doubt it. What about the hell Israel was in in A.D. 70 when Titus surrounded Jerusalem and starved them to death? God warned them back in Deuteronomy. They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust. The wages of sin is living forever in hell, but the gift of God is eternal life??? or The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life... The soul that sinneth it shall surely burn forever in a fire in a hole in the ground or The soul that sinneth it shall surely die. Hmmmmm
run, don't walk, from that church. the Christian faith won't tell you to blindly accept...but a bad church will. question like crazy. but don't just give up on the subject.
It's silly to presume that answers of life would be answered so easily and quickly, especially when it comes to faith. We're all taking our test blindfold, but people are allowed to shout out their answers.
I'm in the same exact boat. Same background and everything. Thousands of years ago the vast majority of the world belived in the "Greek Gods" as well. Now that idea just seems silly. In a couple thousand years from now will everyone look back and think that Christianity is just as silly? Don't get me started on the Bible either. We go from a world of crazy miracles that make no sense to a world now where it doesn't happen ever. When did this great change come about?
I was the same way. But 1 night is all it took - completely out of the blue - but that night changed my life forever. You can argue certain things, but God is real - this I know for a fact - because of that 1 night. Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened.
I don't mean to be rude, but the only thing you "know" is that God exists for you. Which is all cool, but the whole I-felt-His-love, I'm-so-undeserving-but-grateful thing gets old real quick. The tone many Christians take appears to be "I'm only trying to help. If you don't understand, that's all right.. you are blind but soon will see", and this veiled condescension is what truly rankles for non-Christians That, and the siege mentality adopted when things don't go the Christian way in contemporary society. Hilarious, coming from the fastest-growing and arguably most dominant (in terms of cultural influence) religion in the world
are you asserting this as fact? forgive me, but i think i've heard you say that truth is somewhat relative. that what's blue to me may not be blue to you. right? so then how can anything be proven to be fact? my point, really, is to show that you seem to apply different ways of defining things. you are attracted to certain buddist notions. but i believe a buddhist would say that my faith was a good thing...that God really does exist, as I understand Him, to me. am i wrong there? if so...then isn't that my fact? or, in the alternative, doesn't it make the idea of fact completely irrelevant?
i haven't thrown the existence of God out of the boat yet and i never expected there to be some magical proof. i've been searching for years, still searching now...hopefully i can find something eventually.
For all you who are questioning whether God really exists... Imagine if you will - what would it take for you to become a believer? What would turn someone like you into some like me? I was a person like others in this thread that had some religious background (because I had to go) but near the end of my former life, I didn't think there was a God. And even if there was, I didn't care - I ran my own life the way I wanted to. What could happen in 1 night that would turn that person into this person? And this change was over 20 years ago. It wasn't just a feeling (in fact my initial feeling was fear) or good drugs (I was completely sober and had been for a couple of days) or bad pizza (I felt completely fine). I wasn't in church and wasn't even looking for God - but He found me. And my greatest witness was to those who knew me the night before. They could chose to believe or not, but one thing they didn't question was something happened to me that night and it changed that person radically. This person will never doubt again. I owe my life to Him and I wish I did a better job of serving Him but I will not doubt Him.
Not rude at all and I REALLY don't mean ANY condescension. I am humble because I see me for what I am. And yet I am loved by the Creator of the Universe - even in my current state - even in my former state. It's hard to explain or put into words and I'm always second guessing my words because I don't know everything that is going on in a person's life or has gone on in a person's life. And while my presence is accepted in main stream Christianity, "my story" isn't. But I don't care. It doesn't change what happened. But there isn't a perfect church out there or they wouldn't take me. Religion isn't the answer anyway, your relation with Him is. But God is a perfect God and we are not. So how can we have a relationship with Him? How can we come to know him? What a better way then for Him to come to us as one of us.
So what happened? You have mentioned it more than once so you would seem to have no problem talking about it.
faith without works is dead. (james ch 2: 14-26) you cannot have one without the other. works alone will not get one into heaven. (Eph chap 2: 8-9) your beliefs are manifested in everything that you do. one can say that they believe, yet if the do not ACT upon those beliefs then do they really have faith?
