I no longer believe

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Yuch [not on the elderly people, you get good and bad churches with old and with young and with all kinds mixes]. I was lucky - When I had to go to church it was content free except for the liturgy - which is so full of old sound Christianity that it has a force of its own. So I never got the PCism that claims to be Christianity - except for one scary encounter in LA.

Walk your path. And look around - there are more real Christians in your life than you might think. I met a good few ass an atheist, and hardly any of the folk from your church - thank God.

If I hear something over and over again I put it on my pile of things to check against reality. It is called science. A lot of people in the academy are unaware of it.

What about a Cosmos that has been around Forever in one form or another. And besides, it is Turtles All The Way Down.

ruveyn

One thing you notice as a historical linguist with interests in straight history [not a homophobic slur, folks], paleontology and cosmology [I like old books and old wine too] is this:

People keep trying to push the beginnings back under the carpet, so they won't have to deal with them.

Forever and a universe extant in one or another format forever is fine - but it does not deal with what lies outside time. Of course you can ostrich [they don't really do that, but the idiom can work]
'

NobleCynic - yep, we are not unclose. I have five years on you, stradsdling your New Jersey - born Baltimore, brought up New Haven.

For some, it helps to walk away. You can see the whole picture without the distraction of the brush strokes and the prerecorded commentary. My wife also ran [do not walk] to the nearest exit and was later free to look straight - some in her family were the type often here complained of.

MCalavera:

Another reason I feel neither inclined to go to church or read the bible much anymore - I'd take what you said about the emotional high but phrase it like this; I'd liken a bible high to eating ecstasy. I say that because from both you get this really awesome, life changing transcendal feeling, on both you start asking "I love this! What can I learn from what I'm feeling right now? How can I translate it into knowledge or have it impact my day to day life in reality?". Both send you yearning for more and wanting to know what useful information you can extract from that feeling and and for both the answer happens to unfortunately be...err....nothing, life is still life and you're still left holding the same bag. I'd actually put religious 'highs' down as being as damaging to faith as churches that don't take the message seriously and have porous watered-down homilies.

That said though, even when I did my best to filter that feeling out - I'd find a mix of both profound insights into human nature on one hand and then what would seem like garbage on the other. I suppose its still worth reading - whether for historical or religious info - and I should get back to reading it, but, I think a big portion of what you described was losing sobriety in the first few months of your faith and back in seventh grade I had something like that happen with a nondenominational family down the street. The trick is, I think you have to figure things out your own way, come up with what make sense, and really try to keep yourself sober at all times in relationship to topics of spirituality.

I don't really know. The Epistles don't make it so clear to me what faith is. Hebrews 11 is the closest to explaining it, but I still don't understand what exactly was it that made me not truly believe. What was missing in my "faith"? I thought that faith was a gift enabled by God. Did Gd fail to make me truly believe even when I asked him to make me have faith and live it for him?

So when I was a Christian, I just assumed that I just needed to stick to professing Jesus Christ and claim that I live in him. That was what faith sounded like to me.



But that's the point. Why is it so normal and common for Christians to have doubts about their faith? It just seems fishy to me.

Is there any Scripture to support claims that doubt/questioning are normal and/or healthy parts of being a Christian? I thought certainty in one's convictions and complete faith was what made a good Christian.

I didn't say it was not supported by the Epistles. I said that it simply pointed the person accepting the general revelation to the Christ who was sent to pay the price for his sins and relieve him of his guilt. If you believed like the Jews (who accepted the general revelation) but didn't believe in the Christ, you were still condemned according to the Bible.

All are without excuse (according to the Bible) because the Bible assumes that every person (Jew or Gentile) has a conscience and, therefore, suffers guilt for his sins.

We know from modern psychology, however, that this is not true. Some people just don't have a conscience.



But the Epistles are quite clear that ALL humans are without excuse. You actually said it above!

So if all humans are supposedly without excuse, then that's enough to have all humans deserve hell as they supposedly go against God with knowledge.

You see why it's so hard to take the Bible seriously?



Unfortunately, his actions speak louder than his words.



But the Epistles state that, even IF they didn't know about Christ, they still deserve hell anyway.

Christ is meant to be a gift from God ... not something that you must have because you feel you deserve it.

If you don't like it, you can always stop professing the faith. It's that simple.



The way I see it, Roman Catholics don't understand what justification is. Otherwise, they wouldn't inadvertently keep preaching that it's by one's works.

I think you have a good point there. One reason I'm here is to also learn - learn about why I believed the way I believed when I was a Christian and why I believe differently now ... and also learn how to "read" the minds of religious members here. Are they thinking exactly like I did when I had the faith? What's on their mind? It's things like that that make me continue to participate in this section.

Not that I know of. In fact, the Bible links faith to assurance - assurance of things we can't see.



Maybe. I personally have yet to meet one. I had several Christian "brothers" confess to me that they, too, had doubts about their faith. And not one Christian has ever denied (to me) that he had doubts about his faith. Even Natty, our dear fellow member, admits that it's normal (and she's a Christian).

@MCalavera

I like the biblical nature of what you are saying. Like I said before, it is supposed, for the mot part. However the interpretation that is beings used, is a little skewed. When I was taught exergesis the result had to be in keeping with; the logical makeup of God, the concept of free will and most importantly, the sacrifice of Chist. The reason that I cannot accept you interpretation is that it would allow for innocent people to go to hell. This outcome would not be compatible with a just or a loving God, it would not respect the individuals free will (since was not utalised in a choice) nor can I imagine Christ on a cross suffering for the sins of only the lucky.

As to the concept of justification. The Catholic Church does not seek salvation by works. It is by grace that we are saved, but one must also attempt to live a good life. Like I said, most mainline protestant denominations are fine with the Catholic doctrine on the subject. A good deal of them have signed ecumenical statements on the subject. The Catholic view relates to the preservation of grace, through a life in the Holy Spirit, not justification through works. The Lutherans also support this view.

To clarify - faith needs to constantly engage the intellect: there's no point at which we can stop and say "I know enough. I do not need to know anything further." Doubts and seeking the answers to those doubts can drive the process; undoubting faith that results in a continual desire to know more can drive the process. But either way God means for us to use our intellect, to understand for ourselves what we are about and why. I don't know of any Scripture offhand that gives that idea as such, but isn't that why the letters of the New Testament were written; for instruction (not just correction, those poor "stupid Galatians!")?

For a bit of my own story, I'm a "revert". Never formally separate from the Church but pretty darned lax about living the life until God tapped me on the shoulder, so to speak, to get my attention. I know exactly what that feeling MCalavera describes is; and I know that it does pass. (One convert described it as God holding us by the hands until we're able to take a few steps on our own.) For me, it was long gone by the time I nearly threw everything away - faith, God, all of it - in disgust over the latest chapter of the sex abuse scandal. I didn't do that; instead I forced myself to get up and go to weekday Mass even though that wasn't my normal habit and it was the absolute last thing I had any desire to do. I would define faith as that - that raw knowledge of God that was there even when everything in me wanted to turn and run. And I'd say that my faith is the stronger for having had that experience and having been forced to make that explicit choice.

Jesus quoted Moses when He said the greatest commandment is to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind, and your strength." So that makes TWO places in the Bible that say the same thing. So there you have it: Love God with all your MIND.

You could find scripture - starting from I believe - help my unbelief -.But if you are a Didymoid, as I am, you don't need scripture, it just is. EVERYTHING is constantly reexamined in light of incoming data. I have known some - my late mother-in-law - a definite non-questioner, she got there, it was, she did not poke at it. I have known others who could just decide on a topic and hold it firm. Me, I am now as I have always been a skeptic - look and check. Tonight, 2 + 2 = 4 [to ten significant figgers]. Ask me again tomorrow. I expect it to be the same, but we will see.

I don't think you are going to find that here because the answer is within yourself, not in other peoples beliefs.

There have been three topics on mysticism in this forum in as many months and it seems clear from them that few people know what it is or are interested in finding out. The first objective of a mystic is to know yourself and this is done by a process called “recollection” which begins with meditation. Underhill, Evelyn "Practical Mysticism" Chapter IV

You might want to try it.