It is not faith that equals ignorance but blind faith. The desire not to challenge one’s faith in case it falters is the same as holding onto an archaic mindset because deep down, the idea that it is faulty is entirely too real.
Your faith, Hey You!, need not be destroyed merely because of what well-meaning adults have told you of the history of your sacred text. If you still believe in God, that need not be rendered faulty simply because of the historical difficulty of assuring the infallibility and perfection of the Bible. Your faith, after all, does not rest solely on the Bible but is an expression of faith that is ultimately beyond semantic expression.
My suggestion to you for how to get your faith back is to realize that while the bath water is dirty, the baby can still be cleaned:)
Heck, you might even want to give the “old ways” of our Pagan ancestors a try. Most of them don’t even require sacrifices anymore. And we all know that heathens throw the best parties.
Yes, but faith in the Christian religion still relies on you believing in a book with scant proof. Living your life by it, almost. It’s a pretty serious decision to make on faith, IMO.
Serious life decision, yep. The seriousest, in fact! That is why prayer and personal experience of God are so important. No, personal experiences aren’t generally subject to empirical data (thus the ‘faith’ part), but they are pretty convincing to the person involved–and tailor made to boot. Personal confirmation of the truth of the gospel is an essential part, IMO, of living a Christian life.
Faith is a valuable thing. I think people are hard wired to want to have faith in something. Many scientists pursue their belief in science with an almost religious zeal.
The only time I feel “close to God” are those moments in nature or in life that don’t really mean anything to anyone else. Not that I’ve seen angels or demons, or anything supernatural. To the contrary, I see “God” in nature, science, animals, plants, the whole universe.
Eh, maybe it was the stuff I studied and did in college. Or, maybe I’m a deistic/Earth and universe admiring/druid? I could just be an Anglican Minister – I heard a sermon very much like what I just said in my previous paragraph in 1986 at Westminster Abbey. The clergyman was a physicist in his secular life (a hard scientist certainly – that’s a few brain cells ago).
The trouble is your peace of mind depends on not thinking for yourself and trusting in AUTHORITY that might be a bunch of lying morons.
Have you found out the word HELL is not in the BIBLE.
Hell in an English Bible is translated from SHEOL in the Old Testament and HADES and GEHENNA in the New Testament. Get a Cruden’s Concordance and look up HELL.
SHEOL actually means something like ABODE OF THE DEAD.
The European concept of hell comes from Roman Paganism. Volcanos in Italy. No volcanos in the Middle East. Underground fire and brimstone crap.
see: OLD SOULS by Tom Shroder
if you want to freak out some more.
What about the Kaballah? Some Jews believe in reincarnation. Why was the Catholic Church persecuting Jews for centuries? I have seen 2 sources that claim The Vatican has the largest library on astrology in the world. How odd!
If you want your faith back, it means you haven’t lost it.
Go talk to a priest, go talk to a rabbi, go talk to whoever. But in the meantime, just be a good person. The bible may be self-contradictory, but it’s right when it tells you to be a good guy, not kill anyone, and all that fun stuff.
Blind Faith is the worse possible scenarion in my opinion… so either get your brain working and be a somewhat happy atheist like myself. Sundays will certainly be much more fun instead of hearing priests babble… or search for other sources of religion.
Most of my god beleiving friends that I respect have their own personal beliefs and don’t care much for organized religion. Why bother with a religious system setup by others and hardly flexible ? Have your own “notion” of God in other words. Even if its a mix of several religions…
You are here looking for a way to get your faith back? I’d first like to know why you consider yourself a Christian, as that word means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. As for Dec 25, that is a man made belief, and it has nothing to do with Christianity, apart from the fact that we remember the day Jesus was born. Something we were not told to do, but harmless IMO. Not only that, but you’ll find there may not have been three wise men, the inn keeper said nothing to Mary and Joseph, Jesus may not have been born in a stable, and he certainly wasn’t a new born when the wise men arrived. But that really has nothing to do with anything, apart from how religious we become in pretty small items. As for the Bible, I don’t believe the statements that we can’t trust the original language, nor are all translations a translation from one to another, most of them go back to the original language. To say that’s been corrupted is not really accurate, although I’d like to see a cite for that.
The issue is an issue of truth, which I believe you will find if you are really looking for it.
Well, Svt4Him, there is a lot of stuff that appears tacked-on, or strange. Like in Jobe, where the entire chapter is Jobe suffering and life being bad, and then everything gets happy within the last few verses. The message of the book was supposed to be “God shits on your head”, in the opinion of a former Christian I know, but some guy thought it would be a good idea to clamp on a happy ending.
Bad things happen to good people. Life is short. There is no predetermined plan or purpose for the world. Life is not fair, but that make it any less worth living? No!
Religion can add value to life for many people, but at the expense of being able to perceive reality. Can you handle the truth? You have to make a choice.
To take the blue pill: talk to your imaginary god daily, submit to weekly brainwashings at church, and read one-sided misinformational apologetic materials. Eventually your critical thinking will break down, and you’ll be another mindless credophile.
To take the red pill: Read as much material as you can on on all sides and take time to seriously think about the issues. It won’t be an easy journey, but the results will be well worth it.
To to say it hasn’t been corrupted, we would need to go back to the original books; not original language. Since we don’t have any originals, how you can say such a thing that it hasn‘t been corrupted? What we can do is go back to some of the oldest manuscripts we have today. One fourth century Greek manuscript is Codex Vaticanus. And it lacks certain scriptures in quite a few books that are not in today’s bible. It also doesn‘t include the books I and II Timothy, nor Titus or Revelation. The ending to Mark (last 12 verses) is also not to be found in it or another fourth century manuscript Codex Sinaitcus. There is more, but this in itself looks like major corruption comparing it to bibles of today.
If you want cites, do a google, they are not hard to find. Or directly go to this one. Quite a bit of scholars estimate some 200,000 variants of just the NT. This is admitted by even conservatives such as Geiser and Nix. But they say of the 200,000 variants, only one-eight carry weight and 1/60th of the 200,000 are very substantial variants. Do the math. You’ve still got thousands of very serious substantial variants admitted to from a very conservative source. But yet you say it isn’t accurate to say it’s been corrupted.
Maybe you will be able to again find faith, and experience the knowledge that this time it will be a more well-reasoned and more highly informed faith. Maybe you will never again believe in anything supernatural.
Whatever you may encounter, I hope that it may enrich you and that it is worth the effort of searching. Part of both the beauty and the fear of searching for a deity is that there are no generally known answers.
Has losing your faith been that traumatic to you? Your shot at heaven hasn’t been lost, contrary to what some religious doctrines may teach. Thinking honest thoughts doesn’t change the outcome; not to a benevolent god, anyway, if such a being exists. But all the wishful thinking in the world doesn’t change things one iota either. I would never want my faith back, although even in my youth, more days than not, I never really had it, but did experience to some extent a certain euphoria it gave me, however short lived it was. I can also remember many times as a child wanting to know how a magician did a certain trick. Although delighted to know how, whenever I did learn, there was also a letdown in actually knowing. Could it be that much of this “peace of mind” you gave credit to the “faith” you once had, really had more to do with the innocence of a child being lost by your transition into adulthood? It being just one of many magical things that you could never get back because of it? I know many adults in the church that don’t have peace of mind though. From sources I’ve read, depression is quite common, especially among conservative evangelicals.
It only takes a little courage to accept this world for the way it is, and get on with your life. Okay, sometimes it takes more than a little. But there is a lot in life to experience that makes the journey worthwhile to many, and no delusion is needed. I hope you find your way, whatever that may be.
Hey You! you’re probably experiencing growing pains in your spiritual walk. While it may seem that the foundation you stood on is crumbling around you, it really isn’t. Just your perception of it is. Perhaps you’re ready for a closer relationship with Him where your foundation is built upon Him as opposed to rituals and traditions. They are not necessarily wrong to have in your spiritual growth, but that’s not all there is. Have a heart-to-heart talk with God. He’ll be there and He’ll help you. What lies ahead if you seek it, is more wonderful than you can imagine.
Another note - Hey You, were you raised with religion? If so, I think that’s what’s making it so hard to break away. People who are raised with religion find it almost impossible to think against it, because it’s so rooted in their youth.
Your old “faith” was based on your unquestioning allegiance to certain perceived truths. Your in-depth research has cast many of these truths in doubt. This may be overly simplistic, but I see only two options:
Option 1: You make a conscious decision to reject the new infomation as truth and heretofore commit to denying any re-interpretation of your currently perceived truths, your faith. (Inflexible but consistent and safely predictable.)
Option 2: You accept as truth the results of your research, burning away the irrelevencies of your former allegiance. What you have left is a purer product, a refined faith that can be enriched further by broader and deeper research. Same faith, only more potent.
Funny you should mention this, I just started reading this a few days ago. Actually, the Bible never promises happyness. It has actually said we live in a cursed world. If you’re looking for happyness, you may find it, you may not. And if you were trying to show that some guy clamped on a happy ending, why didn’t the same guy clamp on a different story? And if you get “God shits on your head” from the book, I’d have to ask if you read it. But it’s irrelevant, as your comfort plays a little part in the message.
And we all know that heathens throw the best parties. 
That is why prayer and personal experience of God are so important. No, personal experiences aren’t generally subject to empirical data (thus the ‘faith’ part), but they are pretty convincing to the person involved–and tailor made to boot. Personal confirmation of the truth of the gospel is an essential part, IMO, of living a Christian life.