God doesn't deserve to be worshiped

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I grew up in a family who practiced the Roman Catholic form of Christianity. Even today, I still feel some remote sense of guilt and anxiety about my escape. I even tried to "go back" a few times, but then I thought, what is the point anyway. I believe God exists, but I ceased 99.8% of worshiping him and paying attention to religious/spiritual life, for all practical purposes anyway. I hate God's character and that evil and sickness in our world is supposed to be 100% our responsibility only. I also don't like how my own personal issues aren't improving, and I think about the external factors of life that really do seem to make things worse, even though they are things outside of my control.

I wish that the religious people in my life would stop telling me I need to accept his so-called goodness or truths like they are totalitarian, brainwashed people in North Korea who can't see my own sadness or anger and chalk it down to "It's Satan". It's all I ever heard 99% of Christians ever tell me about. Right, I need to accept God and his ways, instead of questioning and being devil-seed! \s

I don't think God deserves any worship from anyone, and what all may or may not be true about him existing or what he's supposed to be like isn't relevant.

/I hope I can vent about this and not be penalized here/

I wish God would provide a reason for Him to be worshipped.

I don't want to bother with the rituals, without knowing whether He exists or not.

"Faith" is not enough for me.

Also, I don't see any good real reason why I should bother with the question of whether they exist or not at all. I don't really lack any belief in "his" existence, but I am practically tired of it.

If God does exist, we know absolutely nothing about God. Everything anyone has ever said about God reflects man's opinions, not God's. Nobody knows what God really is or what it (it doesn't seem very rational to assign an arbitrary sex to God) wants. When we study God, we are studying man's thoughts about God, not God.

Unless, somehow, God "comes to you" in some manner.

That's never happened to me.

I went through a pretty heavy grind even in the last four or five years trying to figure out, not even touching the question of whether God exists, whether there's anything to justify the suffering we have in this world under any circumstance.

if I take my current view of what I can glean of a non reductive materialist worldview it would be this, its absolutely brutal grind but we're in a universe that's actually actively hazing us.

I think of the 25th Path of Wisdom on the Tree of life, the Path of Samekh, that connects Tiphareth (beauty) to Yesod (foundation) which are the sun and moon respectively. That particular key, for Samekh, is Temperance which shows the Archangel Michael pouring water on the green lion (symbolic of unprocessed fire) and fire on the eagle (here dark symbolic of unprocessed water) which, when you think about what that imagery is intimating, is every bit as brutal in its activity as some of the old woodcuts of the stages of alchemy displaying putrifaction, calcination, etc..



"The twenty-fifth path is called the Intelligence of Probation or Trial because it is the first test whereby the creator tries the compassionate".

The other two paths coming down from Tiphareth toward Netzach (Victory) and Hod (Splendor)? Why those are Key 13, Death, and Key 15, The Devil. Netzach is the center of human emotion, Hod the center of human intellect, and Yesod the center of the human subjective life. Good luck trying to get anything light or fluffy out of that.

So why do you believe in him at all?
Essentially "he" is irrelevant to you...
And the man-made construct of a god is laughable in the first place?

I'm not telling you to dump the concept, though I did and have never looked back...errr...except once when I fell in love with a committed Christian woman...when I was young and dumb...
Love conquers rationality in the young, inexperienced and ignorant, unfortunately...<chuckle>

Here is a hug, in whatever form you find comforting.

Yes, you certainly can, but you might want to ask the mods to move your thread to the Haven. This is such a hot-wire topic that it attracts haters and trolls (and people who turn into those on specific topics) very quickly. (I have not read any posts other than your original one, because I'm not interested in engaging with any who might be here.)

Not going to poke religion at you, not going to criticize you. I do have beliefs, but right up front and center is the belief in every being's right to free will and independent thought.

You're in pain, you're being honest, you aren't trolling, you're not evil, you're not "deceived". I do have a pretty good idea of how you feel, actually, because my life sure hasn't turned out like the promises either. There is this thing called the Dark Night of the Soul - it's what happens when faith, or lots of religious indoctrination that has always felt like faith (no criticism; how can someone know what they think when they're not allowed to think?) - runs headlong into ugly realities.

I don't have a ready answer for you - except to honor yourself; allow yourself to feel and think and question and have anger. Much of what passes for religion is really nothing more than social control, and you know what? I read the Old and New Testaments front to back and that jumped out at me really hard through ALL of it. Woven through every strand of higher thought and feeling, I saw rackets being established by people unscrupulous enough to use those thoughts and feelings for their own personal gain. But I also saw that higher thought, those higher feelings, the existence of something that was genuinely selfless and good. That is what keeps me going these days. That there IS good, there IS unselfishness, and it is just as likely to flourish outside the pale.

[Edit in: possibly MORE likely outside the pale, TBH. I've known some quite genuine churches but sadly most that I've seen weren't much to do with God at all; they were temples of ego, greed, self-aggrandizement, Other-hating, unhealthy hypercompetitiveness, etc., dominated by cliques, wholly uninterested in all that old stuff in the Beatitudes. I'm now retired, but I worked long hours and often six/seven-day weeks, and I can remember saying to myself: wait a minute. Am I actually expected to kowtow to middle-school meanies in my place of worship after having to do so at work all week? Nuh-uh! No more of that for me! THIS I have a choice about! And I am unchurched now and have been for years.]

Hugs again, and warm thoughts.

I have a hard time with the idea of this God even needing to be worshiped at all unless this being has strange Ego issues.

God point...err...I mean good...