Could You Believe?

Great Debates
341

Glitch you ask some tough questions. I am not real sure how to answer.

First keep in mind this is my own personal thoughts and opinions. I do not know your heart nor the total mind of God. But the following is based on some of the things you have said.

Second, the only scripture passage that comes to my mind in which Jesus himself confirmed someone’s conversion comes from Luke 23: 39 - 43

{quote]39
One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!”
40
But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence?
41
We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”
42
Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. [6]”
43
Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”
[/quote]

Now in this passage, there are two theives. One is trying to get Jesus to rescue him. He says, “If you are who you say you are, then save us.” The other theif tells the first, that they are getting what they deserve. And then simply asks Jesus to remember him when he gets to heaven. Jesus then says, “I tell you the truth (there is that truth statement that Lib was talking about), Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Now, what does this tell us. You do not have to have gone to church all your life. You do not even have to have read the bible. You do not have to be baptized. All you have to do is believe in him and ask him for his gift.

Now, in light of what you have told us Glitch, how do we reconcile that? I believe that you have told us that you believed that there was a God and maybe you believed in The God. You asked him to show himself. You asked him to stop you from what you were about to do. So why did it not take, so to speak?

I offer this as a possible answer. Maybe you did accept him. Maybe he did come into your life. Maybe he does live inside you. I believe that once you have accepted Christ into your heart, he never leaves. Maybe that is the spark that is still within you that keeps you searching.

As I have mentioned before, I grew up in the church. I felt convicted of my sins when I was 8 years old. I prayed for Jesus to forgive my sins and accepted him into my heart at that time. I did not feel greatly different. I felt joy due to the situation, but had I been in a situation like yours, I might not have felt that joy. I do not believe that God changes your physical feelings (at least not always), I also do not believe that you necessarily notice a change in your personality (at least not all at once). But I do believe he changes your heart. He makes you want to be a better person. He helps you forgive the unforgivable.

As a human I would agree with your thoughts on the three times to perform a miracle and when the best would be. But maybe in God’s infinite wisdom, he knew that the cold hard steel piercing your flesh would be a wake-up call.

On this question I can come up with various possibilities and ideas as to what happened and why God did what he did or did not do. But when it comes right down to it, I do not know. I do not truly know why God chose to do what he did. And if this question must be answered to your satisfaction before you can believe, then I am not sure what to do.

It seems that your belief of the event to be:

  1. There is no God.
  2. There is a God but for whatever reason he does not love me.
  3. There is a God, He did what he did because he loves me and wants the best for me and eventhough I cannot see it, this was the best way.

I do not personally believe that 1 or 2 are correct. I believe the 3rd one to be correct.

I think you believe the first to be the most correct.

If this is where you are, I do not see any way around it at the moment. Do I believe you are beyond hope? Not at all. I just do not personally know where to go from here.

I will attempt to answer any other questions you may have though.

Jeffery

342

Lib, I think we are like ships passing in the night. This is my fault for lack of clarity.

This is what I originally said:

All I mean is that the “Divine Me” is not God, which I simply wanted to clarify as being the Christian God by which I mean not the God that you and others describe. I hope that makes clears things up. In fact, I can safely say that “Divine Me” isn’t any god I know of by any description, except a hypothetical god which could exist, logically speaking.

343

Well, that was clear as mud on re-reading it.

Here we go:

Divine Me <> Christian God = God = Description given by Lib, Polycarp, etc <> Divine Weasel

I.e. by Christian God I mean the true Christian God (i.e. God), and not the genie, magician or weasel that some believe in. I have to denote it as something to avoid confusion, and that clearly failed miserably.

344

Glitch, all He is is Love.

If the Divine You is that, then the Divine You is God. I don’t care if you call Him Corndog on a Stick.

If love is not what a man’s heart treasures, then that man will not seek Him. We always seek what we treasure in our hearts. And we always find it.

345

If God is nothing but love, then how do you explain His wrath and judgements? Not very loving, even if they were right. You and others, have said God is a “person” in His own right capable of feeling emotion, just perfectly applying it. Now, you are saying God is love. Sorry, Lib, but I am not understanding what you are saying.

346

Nice thought. Very wise. One question, from that, what am I looking for then?

I have a thought on this. I will report back later when I get to act on it first.

Clearly, to me anyway, the discovery of God being painful is two fold:

#1) Most importantly, I think it diminishes the human struggle.

#2) Important, but not nearly as much, is that it raises the question of what happened to a greater importance than I feel it has now, which is fairly important.

Part of #2 is certainly an inability, or lack of desire, to forgive God. So, why can’t I forgive God? Why doesn’t He help me forgive Him? I have stated all along that the one thing I need the most (to break the dam) is what I needed back then.

Well, there is 4. That God isn’t an interventionist, or is an invisible interventionist (i.e the so-called “Divine Me”). But anyway your point is taken.

#3 can be argued to explain the events of the suicide. I can logically understand the case. Difficult to accept emotionally, and I think you understand that, but perhaps I can with focus override the emotional concern. It doesn’t explain the next 17 years. There were so many chances to fix this gap between us, so many times when I had much belief then I do now.

Do you know what I mean by this?

The “it was for the best” can explain one perceived abandonment, it can even explain two, perhaps even three or maybe four. But by the time you get up to a dozen or more, “it was for the best” stops feeling … compeling (sp). Granted none of them was a serious as when I put a sword into my chest, but failure after failure after failure … ad nauseum, it starts to teach you a lesson. The lesson is don’t bother, I am not going to answer you, and He has to know that this was the lesson I was going to learn. Why would God want me to learn that lesson? My existing state make little sense … correction, it makes NO sense to me in the assumption of a loving God.

I know you can’t answer that implied question, although I greatly value your wisdom Jeffery, feel free to add any comments you wish. I appreciate them very much. Thank you for all of your contributions.
This discussion has been the best discussion (not that I like to talk about it all that much) I have ever had on my suicide attempt. Many talks I have had with people usually aren’t very productive. I wish to thank everybody for that. It was really nice to actually write it down, and I have learnt a lot about myself from all of this. So, again I thank you. Also, thank you for treating this with sensitivity and civility. That means an awful lot to me. I know that a lot of times we can see these messages are just bits, and ASCII characters, but to me this was a very painful experience. Again, it means a lot to me to be surrounded by truly wise and caring people.

347

Lib, the divine arithmetic is not commutative.

Yes, God is love. That is, his most salient characteristic is that of lovingkindness, of a compassion that does not pity, but accepts, loves, heals, dignifies, strengthens, and stands one upright in its wake. But the reverse is not true. God is greater than any definition we can put around him, and breaks the bands of each one even as we propose it.

While to you and me, this is an important part of our personal foundation, in some ways it is an intellectual exercise to define him better and in such a way as can be accepted by others. For Glitch, it is quite literally his life whereof we speak. God’s choice not to give an overt sign brought Glitch to where he is today. I for one am not interested in debating the metaphysical characteristics of God so much as I am in trying to find a way in which Glitch and God can achieve a rapprochement.

One point I learned in reading my wife’s spiritual journal (at her encouragement) over the weekend is all the Kingdom of God stuff, which is not supposed to relate to some hypothetical post-Rapture future theocracy, but to the here and now. “The Kingdom of God is very near/…is within you.” God did not fail to give Glitch a sign; the sign was in Glitch turning from self-destruction occasioned by hateful small-goddists stabbing through the heart of what mattered to Glitch. (Notice I am not calling this a miracle; miracles are signs for believers, and skeptics may label them whatever they choose.) Glitch lives, and is strong. His free choice. I feel that God must rejoice in that, over any alternative. Glitch walks the road that Glitch chose for himself; God walks it with him, but unseen. (Yeah, “Footsteps.” So what?) When the time is right and God’s presence will not be a violation of Glitch’s self, God will be known to Glitch. I need not convince him of anything. I must only wait, pray, be Glitch’s friend, and answer his questions, and go about whatever else God may have in mind for me.

He has the situation under control. And he loves Glitch too much to violate his inner self by becoming evident at a time when that would injure Glitch’s integrity. As Glitch lives on, and inevitably grows, the time for that revelation will come.

348

Glitch wrote:

What is Glitch looking for? Glitch, as I have said before you seem to be a logical man and being so you seek to answer questions via logic. “How have others done something similar?”, is a question you might ask yourself. You sought out God and to an extent hoped to find him. Part of that was trying to find out how others had experienced God. How they knew when they had found God. You took these answers reconciled the similarities and then decided that would be your litmus test. Not a bad approach, however, everyone does not experience God in the same manner. If you polled every Christian living today. There might be a large number of people that had the same feelings, but there are also many who did not feel that way at all. That is why Jesus did not say in the bible, “If you feel this way, you know your are mine.” So since you did not feel what you thought you should have, you are not sure what really happened, if anything. I think you are searching for that assurance. That knowledge as to whether or not God is real to you and whether or not God lives in you.

Glitch then wrote:

I am still not sure how God diminishes the human struggle. Believe me I struggle everyday.

I can not answer why you cannot forgive God. Glitch I have known people who have believed in God for quite some time (longer than I have been alive), then something happens that makes them feel so alone. They start to question God’s love of them. They start to question God as to why this thing has happened. They may wonder why they cannot forgive God. You can forgive man for what they have done to you. Why can you not forgive God? Is it because he is perfect and should know better? Is it because he does not have flesh, so it is easy to not forgive him?

Glitch, I know you have been through a lot over the last few years. I know you have on numerous occasions accepted challenges from Christians to find God. You see the results of these challenges as failures. The end result pointing to there is no God. Maybe you are right, maybe there is no God. Maybe there is a God and he does not want to get involved with mere humans, maybe there is a God and he does not like being challenged or revealing himself for a challenge. Maybe, there is not enough understanding of him to explain your situation.

Have you at some point, realized that you and everyone else on this planet is, in the bible vernacular, a sinner? That due to our imperfections, we do not deserve to be in the presence of a perfect God? That no matter what we do or say, we could never be deserving of God’s love? Did you feel this way at some point in your life? Do you believe it now?

Maybe this journey you have been on has brought you to this place, to this thread, to these posters for a reason. What that reason is, we may never know.

Glitch, for what it is worth, I do care about you as much as any IRL friend. I hope these discussions have been of some good. And I hope that we can always discuss our views in a civil manner and learn from each other.

Jeffery

349

Polycarp, Jeffery: Thank you for those posts. I will respond in greater detail. I just had an interesting thought … no, a very interesting thought … hmmm… suprememly interesting even.

God is the “Divine Me”.

I’ll post more later.

350

Glitch:

Finally!

[hugs and kisses and … oh … sorry … got carried away there … backing up … bowing]

351

I have not followed a lot of Glitch’s and others other threads on Atheism and such on GD, as I have been on a several month sabatical on MPSIMS (I got burned out on GD a few months ago.)

But Glitch or somebody enlighten me as to Glitch’s definition (as you understand it if you are not Glitch) as to “The Divine Me”. I had taken it to be Glitch saying that “he being God” was a possibility, but then in another thread I think he mentioned it and made some statements about it and it did not seem to refer to him specifically being a god, but how he could potentially view God.

Lib, Poly, Glitch, others. What is your take?

Glitch take your time. I am in no hurry. What is taking you so long? :wink:

Jeffery

352

Glitch, the real you, by the way, is the Divine You. As I’ve told you, you are God.

Poly:

Forgive me, but God is Spirit. Therefore, all His attributes are wholly manifest. Put another way, His Love is not a feeling or emotion. (Gaudere, you out there?) His Love is His essence. His Love is so good that it is alive in its own right. He is love. Love is He. Without God, there is no Love. And without Love, there is no God.

Mercy, kindness, compassion — and yes, also judgement and righteous anger — these all are born from Love. From God.

353

“Love is not a feeling; it’s an act of the will” - Don Francisco (and the title of a song by him well worth listening to)

354

Poly:

Oh, my goodness, I love that. Thank you. :slight_smile:

355

Slight correction: God might be the “Divine Me”.

More later.

356

Jeffery,

The Divine Me is a term I used to answer a question Lib asked in “The Atheist Religion Part 2”.

The question was what God could you worship?

My answer is take the positive ascepts of myself and magnify them to perfection. (See “Could you not believe?” I put a post there about it about post #90).

Ack… supper is ready.

Really, more later.

357

Polycarp wrote:

And a good friend you are.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Jeffery wrote:

See page 7, 2/4/2000 - 2:13 PM for part if it. The better post is somewhere in “The Atheist Religion Part 2”.

In short, an intervening God diminishes the human struggle in proportion to the amount He intervenes. The human struggle is glorious because it flows from our own power to push ahead, without access to even a finite part of infinite power and knowledge.

I think that is correct although I might phrase it rather differently. Rather God’s action do not match the actions I would have expected from the all-loving supreme being. Since, they seem imperfect to me, well, I find that hard to forgive.

Are you kidding? Of course, I felt that way. :slight_smile: No, I don’t believe that.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Re: “The Divine Me”

The Divine Me is a term I developed in answering a question for Lib. The question was “What god could you worship?” (or something like that).

My answer is “The Divine Me” (DM). Take all my positive attributes and magnify them to perfection. That is the DM.

Now, that has certain implications. The DM would be primarily an non-interventionist. If he did decide to intervene for some reason it would be in such a way that it would be impossible to confuse with divine intervention. DM would want people to not acknowledge his existence, and especially not turn to him for guidance.

Sorry, I disagree. I am not god, God or anything other than Glitch.

Sorry, but I am still working on a few logical problems involved with the possibility that God might be the “Divine Me”. Be back soon.

Anybody feel like taking any guesses as to what I am talking about before I get back? :wink:

358

A guess? God could be the Divine Glitch because the Divine Glitch would not have interefered in your time of crisis; He would have wanted you to grow strong under your own power. But perhaps that is too self-evident.

The Divine Gaudere would not want worship, incidentally; She knows that worship can impede one’s ability to evaluate and question, and everything should be questioned, even Her. And She would not care if She was loved. I think She also might be similar to Divine Glitch and not give any sign she existed and not interfere in with mankind’s struggle. However, an non-interfering invisible God looks remarkably like a nonexistent one. :wink:

359

Glitch you responded above to a portion of a couple of questions I had raised. I was curious if you lumped the first questions in that answer or if you were only answering the question you quoted.

The other questions are:

So, was your above answer in the affirmative for these other questions or just the one you quoted?

Jeffery

360

In view of your recent apotheosis, Gaudere, perhaps you’re new enough at the godding business to answer a few questions:

No doubt She would not want worship or love on Her own account. But what if that were best for Her creatures? Does it not make sense for a mother to inculcate love of herself in her small children, that they will depend on her in need, since she loves them and will provide that necessary care?

All too true! :frowning: