desiring religion, but turned off by various factors

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I want to be religious, I want spirituality and another method of understanding my existence, other than just logic, science, and thought. The problem is that everytime I try, I feel disgusted and confused. The last time I picked up a Bible, I intended on continuing from where I left off a few years back (the part where God tells the one person to sacrifice his kid to prove his faith in God, but then God stopped him at the last second, because it was a test), and I opened the book, and I read the foreward written by the transcriber. It was written by a man who murdered 20 people as a youth, went to prison, and then after 50 years, converted to Christianity, and began spreading the Lord's light to the other inmates. He stated that he hoped that he and his fellows would be redeemed in the eyes of God. At first, I passed that off as a delusional "reformed" killer trying to sound like he had changed, but I began looking into it, and God sees all sins as equally damning. Read: God sees murder and lying as equally damning crimes. A couple months later, I began to look into Islam, but there were some aspects of the belief that I disagreed with (when I say Islam, I'm not meaning "Jihadist" Islam), so I chose not to join the religion. I'm now desiring some kind of religion again, but if I stop to think about them at all, I don't find them appealing. Advice?

Have you read New Testament (bible) yet? Old Testament can be very confusing and takes a long time to read. When I first started picking up the Bible I barely got past Genesis chapter 1 lol.

The Bible isn't supposed to be read cover to cover. Most Christians have very little familiarity with the Bible.

I don't think studying the texts is going to work for you. Instead, find a religious service that you feel comfortable attending. I might suggest Quakerism or Buddhism. Modern Judaism is another option but can be difficult for outsiders. In practice, that's how the spiritual side of religion "works", not by reading books. If you give that a try and it isn't for you, then the chances are that religion isn't for you.

What a lot of people I know have done is just keep reading and looking into things. The more you learn the more you'll form your opinions on what makes sense.

That's maybe a frustrating answer, but you're young and just beginning your journey.

Hopefully over the years you will find what you need.

What do you want? What would you like to find? Are there specific questions you want to research or is it just a vague feeling of "there's got to be something there?"

I too think that's a good idea, especially for people who are not Jewish.

First thing to do, as I see it, is to realize that us humans are flawed from the start, we are a very long way from perfect.
Therefore religions created by humans will not be perfect; and, humans will not perfectly do a religion created by a deity.

Next thing to do is define what the terms spirituality, faith, religion, mean, denote, imply, to you when you use them.

After that comes the question of whether there is an immaterial, invisible, spiritual reality outside of this physical, measurable, experimentally testable, reality.
And whether and how much they collide.

A big question is whether there is such a thing as evil and how much power and effect it has.

Other questions to consider:
How structured and formal of a religion or denomination within a religion suits you?
Are you willing to do a religion which will divide you from people you know?
Are you willing to accept a religion which says you can't do squat to make yourself acceptable to an infinitely holy God? There is nothing you can do, your only hope is to trust in this fellow named Jesus who claimed to be God and human at the same time.
Along with that - can you accept the declaration that there is one God manifested in three persons, God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, and that is a concept humans simply can't wrap their minds around and just have to accept since our finite mortal minds can't grasp infinite existence and the possibilities of how that might manifest.

A really big question - if you accept that there is a spiritual reality such as Jesus described, and you want to move from outward Christian religion to deeper internal faith, are you willing to accept that you asking for trouble from evil trying to bring you down and destroy your faith? Jesus said outright you will have trouble. Evil will try to bring you down in order to show God in a bad light.

The Christian faith makes sense on one level and is really, really, bizarre on another - can you live with that?

Also, while Jesus is well known for teaching love, forgiveness, tolerance, he has a scary side which is not to be dismissed, http://biblehub.com/john/5-22.htm Are you willing to deal with that?

Ah but that's your view of Christianity kiteman.

See this is why I don't venture in here very often. I'm too inclined to play devils advocate.

Not all Christians believe in the trinity.

Not all Christians believe in an outward external evil force often called the Devil.

Some believe the kingdom is in their heart others think it's a kingdom in heaven that you go to when you die. Either way they may or may not believe in a hell.

The OP might subscribe to one of those types of Christian Faith. The options are endless they really are.

May I ask what sect of Christianity you subscribe to? I'm intrigued.

Could be anything or nothing my dear. I'm not going to unduly influence you. You have to find your own path.

Tell us what sort of things you want to know and we can help you think of things to research.

Nb I usually try and stay out of ppr.

My first question: How can the supreme being, the lord of all, the omnipotent/all knowing God succumb to his anger, commit genocide by drowning the world temporarily, then realize that he screwed up, and then wallow in pity? That never made sense.

My second question: Is homosexuality truly a sin? I've often wondered if the phrasing of the frequently cited "thou shall not sleep with another man" was possibly because A) It was transcribed by many different people, over a vast amount of time, and somewhere along the line, a transcriber may have been homophobic or something, or B) The fact that it was copied into many different languages back and forth may have resulted in a misinterpretation, or C) Both. I'm somewhat bisexual, with a preference for women, and I don't think it's right to discriminate based on what someone does with their partner(s) in the privacy of their home, so I think that's a big question.

My third: Is hell truly described in the Bible as a fiery hellscape (no pun intended), with goat-devils and demons poking people with pitchforks? Is heaven ever described as a flowery place where people grow wings, wear togas and laurels, and sit around doing but knitting for all eternity? I'm really curious to know if this is merely a derivative of Vatican-sponsored artwork, or the true depiction.

My fourth and final for now: (This one's a bit silly) Is it wrong that I believe that Jesus may have actually been a woman? When I look at the old artwork/paintings depicting him, I can't help but notice that he is depicted as insanely effeminate, and I wonder if that was changed, due to the fact that Jesus was around the Romans, who were a Patriarchy turned up to eleventy-one, or because the Catholic Church existed in an era of male-centricism.

That's it for now.

Well then. You've got loads there to research. You had me thinking you were just beginning and didnt know quite what you were after yet. After all you can't get an answer if you don't have a question.

We can't give you the answers. We can give you all sorts of opinions. You have to go and research this stuff yourself. By all means Weight up what we say, think about how that fits in with what you already know and experience and then try and find out more about the subject. We aren't the authority on here. We're just a stepping stone.

This isn't a cop out, but it's 11pm in the UK so I'm clocking off now. But I'm pleased you have a springboard to go forth and seek answers.

Keep writing this stuff down and keep asking questions. Maybe some others will offer some thoughts.

I did read the bible cover to cover several times, it was too important for me not to because of how much it's shaped western culture and I also had my own momentary struggle in the shape of certain things I was seeing.

I'm at a loss for what to tell you, mainly because I sincerely don't know what you're ready to be reading. There are books that I know of which go into all of the nuts and bolts of what the philosophies were in the ancient middle east, the astrotheology of the bible and other religions, the various Mithraic, Orphic, and Eleusinian mysteries, etc.. but - it's not that kind of thing you're really able to read unless you've already come to the conclusion that much of pagan theology of those times, as well as Judaism and even the bible, are based on ancient astronomy and the desire of those particular tribes and cultures to make sense of their world based on how the sun, moon, and five observable planets moved. If you don't have that intuitive sense already, especially if you haven't already read the bible and gotten through all the stuff like Exodus, Daniel, Ezekiel, etc.. it would be meaningless/useless reading.

I think that all who fly the cross have taken the apostles creed and expect that Jesus died for them.

They all want to profit from that immoral tenet of punishing the innocent instead of the guilt.

Bishop John Shelby Spong: Why Atonement Theology will Kill Christianity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKNup9gEBdg

Regards
DL

Religious is just your tribal nature wanting to assuage itself.

Spiritual thinking is more important if self-improvement is your goal.

I was going to ask you if you had investigated Gnostic Christianity then remembered this old O.P. Please have a look and opine.

You will note that the main differences is that the Gnostic Christian Jesus wants to free you from tradition and dogma while the usual Christian Jesus wants to slave you to a religion with an immoral God.

[youtube]http://forum.bible-discussion.com/showthread.php?30109-Have-you-investigated-Gnostic-Christianity[/youtube]

If you seek a moral God, look to Gnostic Christianity. As John Lennon said, the only good Christian is a Gnostic Christian.

Regards
DL

Last edited by GnosticBishop on 04 Sep 2017, 8:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think the root of many of your questions is this one biggie: was everything, or anything, in the Bible truly dictated by God or Jesus? Once you answer that question, other issues, like homosexuality, the relevance of God's behavior to our morals today, and other mysteries of faith will begin to fall into place.

There are many answers to this one big question. You could go with the "inspired by God" idea, which means that humans wrote the Bible and might've gotten some things wrong because of human imperfection. You could go with the "made-up" idea, which is that Christianity is just one of many made-up religions with no basis other than charismatic leaders or the search for explanations or whatever. You could go with the fundamentalist view, which is that the Bible is the divine and inerrant Word of God. This view would require lots of faith and acceptance of the incomprehensible, which you don't seem to have right now.

Pretty much every person of faith with whom I've ever had a discussion says that religion is mostly about faith, or what you feel in your heart. You can't fully embrace religious belief with just your intellect, they say.

What do you like best about the idea of religion, or being a religious person?

That's a hard question. I can think of multiple, overall reasons, but I'm stumped for a single, this-is-why reason.