Christianity lapsing
fluffybunyip
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I know Christianity is a huge issue on DS, But where do we stand on lapsed Christians?
For 30 of my 32 years, I believed that God had a huge plan and was the answer to everything - literally everything, including hugely and horrible personal stuff I'd gone through.
But what when you finally decide that it's just not true, and there is no higher superpower, and that the rubbish you go through is just life - with no higher purpose?
Where is the difference? Why would "God" put us purposely through rubbish, to what end?
My mum is a huge Christian artist (huge in the art world, not actually 'huge') and it's tough to break away from her constant ministering. She won't accept my disbelief, which I understand. It's very recent.
But I can't believe anymore in this sky superpower that rules over us and lets us go through horrible stuff for some greater good. It's just .... unproductive.
If anyone has a way they could explain, that'd be great - because right now my faith has completely evaporated and maybe that's not a bad thing at all.
For 30 of my 32 years, I believed that God had a huge plan and was the answer to everything - literally everything, including hugely and horrible personal stuff I'd gone through.
But what when you finally decide that it's just not true, and there is no higher superpower, and that the rubbish you go through is just life - with no higher purpose?
Where is the difference? Why would "God" put us purposely through rubbish, to what end?
My mum is a huge Christian artist (huge in the art world, not actually 'huge') and it's tough to break away from her constant ministering. She won't accept my disbelief, which I understand. It's very recent.
But I can't believe anymore in this sky superpower that rules over us and lets us go through horrible stuff for some greater good. It's just .... unproductive.
If anyone has a way they could explain, that'd be great - because right now my faith has completely evaporated and maybe that's not a bad thing at all.
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Why do feel the need to tell everyone about this?
Why not? Why not ask for answers?
Would you like everyone to be non believers as well?:)
I'm not saying that believers are stupid (although I'm sure a substantial amount are), but they either don't bother thinking much about life and just accept what they've been told, or compartmentalise.
(Note: Religion and God are not synonymous. You can believe in God without believing in the stupid customs, laws and mythology of the world's religions)
Don't be silly. Adding a smiley doesn't make your post less offensive. I'm simply airing my views, that God has basically treated at least a good few of his believers like absolute rubbish.
If your life has been so blessed then you don't need to doubt, then lucky you.
Doesn't necessarily mean you have to rubbish other people for doing something that you don't say you need to do.
I was amazed at the amount of things that required me to ump through hoops to explain were a lot simpler if you just said "its probably not true," or "the god written about here doesn't seem very nice." It cleared my head a lot and by the end of it, it felt like I was really seeing the world as it was, for the first time. It's a lot of effort, but I felt better for it in the end.
Some of the other fish say 'well you can't summon these shapes whenever we want to see them or explain using fish language what they are so we don't believe they exist', and other fish say 'well maybe we can see these shapes but we can't see how they have any relevance to fish life so let's just pretend they're not there'.
Now view it from the human perspective. We know the fish are there and that they have a very limited understanding of the world/universe. Far from us not affecting them at all, in many ways they depend on us. In the face of a changing world climate, over-fishing of the oceans, etc., they could do certain things to help us maintain their numbers and ensure their continued survival. How would we communicate to them what we need them to do? We can't talk to them, or explain the science to them, or lay out the reasons why human economic policies require a fishing quota system. We would have to become a fish and show them by example what we needed them to do.
Now I realise this analogy only goes so far, but I think it illustrates that trying to understand God will get you about as far as a fish is going to get trying to understand the EU.
To relate it directly to your point about suffering in the world (and again this analogy has at least one massive hole in it), a fish might feel the pain of being hooked in the mouth and pulled from the sea but it is ultimately going to be part of something much bigger and more wonderful than it could ever have imagined (e.g. a cod mornay ). Not sure where I'm going with this now...
Anyway, in my view really you have to do what works for you. If you find you just can't believe in God, then be true to yourself. But if you do believe there is something else out there and that Christianity can tell us something about it, you just have to trust that the pain will lead you to a better place in the end. Much like a child being immunised against a serious disease cannot understand why their parents are inflicting pain on them. I find www.ronrolheiser.com often has thought-provoking short columns about things of this kind.
Finally, I am sorry to hear that you have had horrible experiences to deal with in your life.
I wasn't rubbishing you! I was trying to be sympathetic to what must be a difficult phase!
I'm so sorry Grabid Completely misquoted!!
And Thank You, Helbore and Aspen! Such valuable inputs without coloured viewpoints
No please don't be sorry! I think I see now the context you intended but I just didn't immediately grasp for myself
I think I see also that some posters are making some hopefully very helpful and meaningful contributions for you
The thing is, we don't claim to have created the fish, nor do we demand that they worship us or tell them that we will torture them for eternity if they refuse to do so.
I know, it is one of the massive holes in the analogy that humans don't have at all the same relationship with fish as God would have with us (not that I would describe that relationship as you have) . We would need to have created fish to be able to actually become a fish though wouldn't we? The analogy is intended more just to show how unlikely it is that what we see as humans and can understand with our science is all there is.
How does one respond to that? You either refuse to believe that there is anything else; you accept that there is something else but don't want to think about it as you feel it is irrelevant to us; or you try to respond to it.
Maybe religion has something to offer in understanding whatever else there is, maybe it doesn't. To me it is clear that it does.
When nothing happens, the other fish conclude they probably don't exist and, either way, it is not worth paying any attention to until some vibrations or noises are detected.
The first group of fish decide that these dark shapes definitely do exist, evidence be damned, and so decide to live their lives according to how they think these dark shapes would want them to.
Of course we don't understand everything. We should not fill those gaps in our knowledge with some undefiniable 'something else'..
For many their non-belief isn't a result of refusing to believe there is something else but rather seeing absolutely no evidence or reason to believe there is.
Doesn't your analogy actually suggest that religion has nothing to offer? That's how I took it, anyway. The fish are incapable of understanding the world above the water, so whatever they come up with to explain it is inherently flawed. If they happened to get it right, it would be purely by chance - because they're incapable of grasping the realities of it.
Similarly, if we - as a species - are incapable of understanding god in the same way, then there's next to no chance that any religion is anywhere near correct. Just like the fish who sees a sinking net and thinks it's descending angels, here to usher in a new world of peace and tranquillity.
Well I would reply that you are clearly one of the fish who refuse to believe that other fish have actually seen the shapes, because they can't be explained or detected using fish science. I am one of the fish who has seen some dark shapes (more than just blindly believing they must be there).
Anyway, I am going to log off now as I feel I am beginning to sound like a completely crazy fish .
Well yes I do think oversimplistic religion is not a good way of trying to understand the world. That was what I was trying to convey to the OP: if you try to understand God too much you won't get very far. It needs to be done in a different way and I am not sure I can explain how. I find it very hard to describe but I suppose it is what people mean when they talk about faith as a gift.
On another point, if a human had become a fish to try to teach us about how to be the kind of fish that would make a good cod mornay then I think that would be of immense interest to all the fish.
Anyway, like I said in my last post I am starting to sound slightly crazy and I'm not sure I like this cod mornay idea so I'm logging off now
At least they'd be glad they always wiggled their fins in that particular way they learn't at Sunday school.
Please note that I am not suggesting that you are a worse person for no longer believing.
If you don't want my opinion just say so and I wont post again