Any Christians here? Need to ask you something.

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I've got a question. I'd prefer to do ask it in a PM though. Let me know if it's ok.

I'm Christian

Ok if I send you a PM?

I'm a Christian as well. And yes, PM'ing me is OK.

yes

Count me in.

Thanks a lot!

PMing's OK.

If it's for support, you would do well to post it here as well just for the sake of honest feedback and/or advice. Many of us may not be Christians now, but we were definitely serious Christian believers at one point in life, so you may benefit from our perspectives as well.

Okay, I'll post it here as well.

So basically it's like this. I'm a Christian myself though I struggle with it quite often and quite a bit. I'm a huge believer of science and in my opinion science and God are compatible. Even though I think the one doesn't have to exclude the other I still doubt God often. I don't really doubt his existence but other things. I'm going to be open and honest here even though writing about these things worry me a bit (I don't want people to mock me etc).

Anyway, I feel like a lousy Christian. When I was about 13-14 years old Christianity was my obsession/special interest but since then faith has been a constant struggle. I think a lot of has to do with what I'm going through now and what I've been going through my whole life. I'm not diagnosed with anything yet but all the psychologists I've seen think I've got AS (waiting to get assessed) and they've also told me I meet the criteria for things such as depression, social anxiety disorder, generalised anxiety disorder and OCD. They also want to see if I've got ADD (it's called ADHD-PI nowadays I think). Needless to say I've had and I'm still having a hard time with all of it. Life is really tough. I find it very difficult to be a Christian because of it. There's always something going on inside my head and I'm always anxious, stressed, worried and overwhelmed and I just don't understand where God is in all of this.

I hardly ever go to church anymore (and I haven't done in years). First of all I get overwhelmed and I get headaches because of all the noise and people etc. Second of all I don't like the general Christian attitude towards problems: "if you pray to God and worship him you will be happy and he will take your troubles away." Well, I've been a Christian for most of my life and I'm still going through all these things. So going to church and hearing those things just makes me feel like a bad Christian (like I'm doing something wrong) which makes me feel depressed and scared. I'm scared that my very small faith isn't enough. That I'm not "doing" enough (praying, reading the bible etc). I'm very aware I'm not the only one with problems. We've all got things we fight but I just feel like I've had to fight my whole life.

I don't think I've stopped believing that God can help me but I'm really not counting on it. I'm not sure I've been able to adequately describe the situation but my questions to you all are: how do you deal with being a Christian while having problems like for example ASD? How do you keep the faith? Why are we all going through these things if God wants good things for us?

The reason I'm asking you guys all of this is that I don't know any Christians going through similar things and if I were to ask other Christians they'd most likely say things like "just pray and everything will be alright".

Thanks for your help.

Ok, I'm no longer a Christian, but I definitely understand and empathize with what you're going through. It's been a long and interesting time for you as a Christian, and you've been accustomed to seeing comforting truths in it, and also the Christian company and all that may all have some benefits for you as a human being desiring some network or love or whatever, but because you're the rational type of person (typical of Aspies), you end up with a conflict of interests of some sort. On the one hand, you want the spiritual comfort that comes with being a believer. On the other hand, you're not seeing anything intellectual much about faith and you aren't seeing much evidence to back the assertions the Christian faith tends to make about the world and everything in it and beyond. This happens gradually but it's now put you a lot of mental and emotional pressure on you, and depending on how bad you want to relieve yourself of it, and on how strong the influence of the fellow Christians is on you, you may or may not eventually ditch the faith. I suspect you will soon, but if you, deep in your heart, still want to be a Christian, you're going to have to adjust the foundations for your faith, so that you could still believe in a God and in Jesus but not allow yourself to stick to dogma that would only make you doubt your faith more and more.

But I say consider letting go of faith and being a skeptic altogether unless you really want to remain submitting your life to an entity that just doesn't seem like it's even there for you. Much more refreshing (intellectually at least) to not have such faith.

Check my OP in the following thread:
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt150209.html

And read up on stuff online on the subject of faith and why people choose to believe without evidence and all that.

You're not facing anything that Christians don't face...because you're dealing with some issues you have an added dimension to normal doubts that make it somewhat more difficult.

For me, I deal with these kinds of things by engaging in activities that serve to strengthen my faith. You like science because you're a logical person, whereas many NT's tend to make more decisions on emotion. Emotion isn't a BAD thing...we're made emotional creatures for a reason. I'm a musician, for instance, and whether I'm playing bass or keys, depending on the situation, many of the choices I make are instinctive. Sure, there are a few general "rules" that guide my decisions, but they aren't strict, binding rules that can't be changed or abandoned if I decide I need to update my playing style. How people respond to music is emotional. Feelings of affection are emotional. Choosing among different cars within one's price range is emotional. Buying brand names vs. identical generics is emotional. There's an advantage to going on emotion or instinct when pure logic fails to give you the answer that you need. I agree that going on evidence over emotion is ideal, but if I'm trying to decide between one beater car and another just to get back and forth to work for $3,000, same condition, same mileage, I'm probably going for the one with the white paint.

However, we are made as image-bearers of God. If God is perfect in wisdom, i.e. perfectly logical, then as reflections of God it makes sense that we, while imperfect, do have logical minds and capable of acting on something more than pure emotion. We are able to find a balance between the two. I do not believe that Hebrew or Christian faith is devoid of reason, nor do I believe that my faith is blind faith. I believe that we are called to faith. I do not believe that God would call us to faith without substantiating that faith.

Think of it this way: If someone is put on trial, evidence must be brought before the court in order to persuade a judge or jury to find against the person on trial. That person may or may not be found guilty. But in either case, the evidence is documented, the trial is documented, the verdict is documented, the guilty are sentenced, the not guilty are let go. Evidence eventually is disposed of or fades into the recesses of history, and all persons participating in the trial grow old and their memories die with them. All that is left is a court record that details what happened over the course of the trial. Do we now say that guilty persons are posthumously not guilty because of lack of evidence? Or do we trust court records?

I believe that evidence regarding Biblical accounts show that the Bible is a reliable record of numerous witnesses and therefore trustworthy. I can put my faith in it, in other words. It is also possible, just like in court evidence, to dismiss evidence on various grounds. Or even in science, just because you find evidence doesn't necessarily mean that the evidence actually points to what you want it to point to. Galileo described the orbits of the planets as perfect circles and described the tides as being caused by the sun rather than the moon. He had evidence and was flat wrong. This isn't an anti-science commentary, btw, but the point is people will believe what they want, demand evidence all they want, and never once even consider changing their minds despite what anyone else can show. Coming to the conclusion that there is a God at all is a logical process. Reading Biblical accounts and finding them believable is a logical process. By no means do Christians reject logical thinking, and I think it would be a cruel, tyrannical deity that would expect us to shut down all reasoning.

Faith takes over where reason leaves off. If one can come to a justified, true belief, there is no need to continue looking for evidence or testing a hypothesis or theory. If you can determine something to be true, then you have assurance that it is always true. For example, many of us accept that two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen makes water molecules. If we can observe that at least two or three times, we can have faith that this is likely always true and hold it as understood. Scientific inquiry will test things a lot more than that, obviously, but after a few million trials and getting the exact same results, it's probably time to move on. It's perfectly fine to have doubts. It's perfectly fine to test God (within reason). If you're going to believe something to be true, you at least should have some way to substantiate that belief. Once you HAVE that kind of faith, it is very difficult for anything to threaten it.

If you don't want to hear, "just pray about it..." then I won't go there. I'm at a place in my spiritual journey in which I've submitted myself to obedience to God in as many aspects of my life as I feel I humanly can--ideally that would be EVERY aspect of my life, but I'm imperfect and will naturally tend to hold back in certain areas often unaware that I'm even doing it. I'm a work in progress, though, and will keep trying.

For the next two or three weeks, the area of my life that is my greatest weakness is maintaining a proper perspective when it comes to food--I've always had a problem with compulsive overeating. I feel that God killed my appetite through fasting, and the whole experience changed my perspective on a number of things that I've struggled with physically and spiritually. So now my focus is relying on God to give me the strength to resist the temptation to fall back into bad, self-destructive habits.

I would never suggest anyone follow the particular spiritual path I'm on unless you know WITHOUT A DOUBT that it is something God calls you to do because what I did was extreme and physically quite dangerous. I ended up losing over 50 lb. in 40 days. After that it took two weeks to get my strength back and I've been on a strict diet ever since. But it was a test of my faith that I needed in order to get a sort of "report card" on where I am and find what direction my next step of faith should take. I think all Christians should allow themselves to be tested in some way or another so that they can grow closer to God and gain a better perspective of their own walk of faith and God's will for their lives.

When I think of doubt vs. faith, Peter walking on water always comes to mind. Stepping out onto the water is easy if you are able to maintain a perfect focus. But we don't keep a perfect focus and we are not all completely mature in our faith. So despite knowing what God is capable of, we allow ourselves to get rattled. I don't see Peter falling under the waves as a failure. I see it as being human and growing in faith. Even after Peter fell into the water, he still had just enough faith to cry out to Jesus to save him. Doubts will always come and go. Knowing that you are secure in God's hands through peace or danger, through life and even in death, is the whole of living a life of faith.

That's a dirty trick for the purpose of point-scoring and making yourself look good fighting religion. Your response above was exactly what I thought it was going to be regardless of what she said. You even showed an OP you wrote...

I'm not a Christian (or any other faith,) but I do believe in God.
I don't think God cares for any of us on an individual basis, I think we are part of a greater whole. There is a purpose to things, but it is beyond us to understand it. When things go wrong, don't take it personally - it's just part of the ebb and flow of life.
God is there whether I'm suffering or not; my suffering is insignificant in the greater scheme of things. I think praying is silly. To think that an all powerful being would be moved by my expense of mental energy is arrogant.
Christianity has a lot of good tenets like forgiveness, and not being judgmental - these are good guides to how to live your life. You can follow these guides without subscribing to a religious organization. Often religious communities are corrupted anyway; you may do better on your own.

I feel pretty much exactly the same as you Rebieh, in fact only yesterday I was thinking trying to keep hold of a close relationship with God seems to be like trying to keep hold of a slippery wriggling fish.

I dont go to any Church as I feel they all misrepresent what the Biblical version of Christianity says, and I dont want to be classed with those that Jesus will say too, "get away from me you workers of lawlessness, I never knew you".
Consequently without Spiritual;l peer pressure, and without a framework of worship, J find it difficult to maintain that closeness.

What I have found in my life is that the more I do for God, the closer he is to me, I think with all relationships between mortals and the Spiritual, doors have to be opened and it takes efforts of us mortals to maintain that contact, the only doors that seem available to me now is constant Bible reading, and talking to others when the opportunity presents itself.
If I neglect either of these, the relationship seems to slide away.

Now I dont blame God or Jesus for this, after all the Devil is in control of this world, we have to fight to maintain that contact with God as if its over a vast distance, but when Jesus does return with his Kingdom, those of us who have even wanted to try, he will reward so take heart my friend.

Is this a biblical reference or your own belief? I have often wondered about this. The bible refers to Lucifer being cast out of heaven. Did God leave him to rule on Earth?