Religious/Spiritual- what has kept you from losing Faith?

[cosmosdan]

@Psilocybe

I’m curious how many of the faith-filled have NOT had a profound spontaneous religious experience of “feeling” god. Could you people please include whether you have had such an event? Its very important. I believe these experiences might be the foundation of everything.

I’ve had a few experiences that kept pointing me toward the spiritual path even as my beliefs were changing. It’s a big part of why I believe in a still unknown something more and that if you use the truth you have and remain open to more, more will be given.

What happened when I first became a Christian might be attributed to just emotion. I was praying “God if you’re really there I want to know” over and over. I felt a certain lightheadedness. When I finally looked up I realized the prayer circle had ended some time ago and people were looking at me with slightly worried expressions. I mention it only that now, years later, I think the message was
" Yes, seek the truth, that’s the correct path" Because of the people I was around at the time my interpretation was a more specific “God wants me to be in this particular church” IMHO that happens to a lot of people who have spiritual epiphinies. The message may be as general as “Yes you are loved” and it’s connected to a specific church doctrine or dogma by association.

A couple of years later on I was a councilor at a week long youth retreat. There was a visiting missionary who held a worship service the first night. Toward the end of the service there was a real feeling of elation in the room and the missionary {whom I had never met before} spoke directly to me and told me some deep things about myself and some things about the future that stunned me. For me it was a real “Whenever two or more of you are gathered in my name” type of experience.

There are two incidents years after leaving the church where my “inner voice” spoke to me so strongly about certain issues that it seemed as if another voice was speaking even though I was alone both times and I knew it came from within. A few months ago I read that a similar incident happened to Gandhi when he was in prison. {the only comparison I’m making is this single incident} He called it the voice of God. You might also call it a moment of clarity when all the emotional and worldly influences fall away and we see our direction clearly. The significant difference to me is that very strong inner voice.

The one that stands out the most was one evening when I was in real emotional turmoil. I couldn’t sleep and I kept thinking about the things I was so distraught about until I was trying to force myself to stop thinking and just sleep. I had what I can only describe as a vision or an out of body experience that showed me with incredible insight and clarity the deeper truths beneath the surface and allowed me to release the events that were bothering me with complete peace of mind and love. The next day I woke up on an incredible spiritual high. All anxiety and sorrow was gone and I was at peace and held a sense of joy. It was so evident that a good friend commented “What’s up with you today? You almost glowing”

I’ve read with interest the articles about certain chemicals in the brain that create a sense of Euphoria and the whole God helmet thing. The question that arises for me is where does the insight, the wisdom, come from? A chemical can create a sense of well being but what creates the knowing?

So, I continue to believe in something more. Myterium Tremendom as someone on these boards put it.

[FriarTed]

@Skald the Rhymer

Ted, I wanted to wait until you had some responses before asking this, but I think the thread’s nice & healthy now. Can you provide a cite to what you see as “rationalization” in the thread I started? By that, I mean point out the specific instances in my posts or others, along with an explanation of why you think the poster is rationalizing. I’d also appreciate cites as to your perception that persons in the other thread have called believers morally degenerate or intellectually crippled.

I think I’ll have to retract my “rationalization” comment after skimming the first two pages in your thread. I never said anyone “called” believers morally degenerate or intellectually crippled. I will say that when one opposes a
religion based on perceived immoralities or stupidities in a religion’s beliefs or
practices or sacred texts, then it is not a great reach to impugn the morality or intelligence of a person who does believe in that religion- which is the very reasons people take religious debates so personally.

To cite an example from your own OP- your traumatic discovery of the God-ordained slaughters in the OT & your Dad’s shallow response to them…

I do believe that in that particular historic situation, the total eradication of a
very few particularly perverse & incorrigible communities (Amalekites,
Canaanites & the male population of Balaam’s Midianites) was indeed ordained
by God as important for the security of the new Israelite Covenant society; but
that such policy was limited only to that particular time & place. Israel was never
ordered to make holy war as an ongoing policy. I don’t know if there is any explanation your father or anyone could give which would have satisfied you.
But I do believe that such incidents of Biblical genocide were rightly commanded by God at that time.

Now, I am sure that my admission has impacted your opinion on my moral sensibilities. Believing as you do, how could it not have? Hell, when I embarked on Bible study as a newly-active teen C’tian thirty years ago, I stumbled big-time on these OT stories, and had to do lots of reading & mental/moral gymnastics to make them palatable. I’d still be like to be able to discount them as errors in the
text, or ancient barbarities which Jesus came to prevent. However, outside of
my own desires, I have no compelling reason to discount them. Jesus called the
ruthless OT God “Father”, Whose will & Whose word he came to uphold. Jesus never addressed these tales. Nothing in his teachings could ever be used to
warrant such future genocides, but then again, nothing in his teachings discount
that God may have decreed them in the past.

[Lilairen]

I think it’s critical to my answer to this question to note that I’m a convert; when I settled into my current religion it was because it articulated my ethical beliefs in a coherent system, was consistent with my experiences of the world and my basic axiom set, and (I discovered when I tested them) the ritual practices were good for me. (My religion does not have holy scriptures as such, so I can’t speak to the effects of reading them.)

None of the factors that settled me in my current religion have changed. I have gotten disgusted with some of the people running religious organisations, with the result that I do not really belong to any, but that has not threatened my own relationship with the divine or the effectiveness of sitting down and doing my rituals.

I agree extensively with what dangermom wrote, that I have no reason to change; my experience backs me up. The demands of my faith are large, and they require me to become a better person than I could be without it. It works for me, it expects me to be the best I can be, and I am not willing to fall short of attempting to meet that challenge.

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@FriarTed

I think I’ll have to retract my “rationalization” comment after skimming the first two pages in your thread.

Thanks.

@FriarTed

I never said anyone “called” believers morally degenerate or intellectually crippled.

Then what did you mean by this?

@FriarTed's first post in this thread

A lot of eloquent, well-thought-out, heartfelt stories there; some bitterness &
rationalization also but not much. And an occasional implication that if one studies
“Holy Scripture” and religious history with the result that one actually believes, then one must be either morally degenerate or intellectually crippled…

Who made the implications of moral degeneracy or intellectual incapacity to which you refer?

No one, in the thread you read. But don’t worry, I’m about to now.

@FriarTed

I do believe that in that particular historic situation, the total eradication of a
very few particularly perverse & incorrigible communities (Amalekites,
Canaanites & the male population of Balaam’s Midianites) was indeed ordained
by God as important for the security of the new Israelite Covenant society; but
that such policy was limited only to that particular time & place.

I see. So it was just for the Israelites to murder the newborn children as directed to in this excerpt from I Samuel?

@The King James Version

1Sa 15:1 Samuel also said unto Saul, The LORD sent me to anoint thee [to be] king over his people, over Israel: now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the LORD.
1Sa 15:2 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember [that] which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid [wait] for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt.
1Sa 15:3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

I suppose those infants and suckings were perverse and corrupt. Why, just the other day, I saw a six-week-old baby pause from sucking his mother’s milk to beat his older sister to death with his pacifier, following up by defecating DIRECTLY on the nearest crucifix.

That smoke you smell is from my irony meter overloading, by the way.

@FriarTed

Israel was never
ordered to make holy war as an ongoing policy.

Read the book of Joshua. Ask the ghosts of the peoples of Jericho and Ai. The Israelites were directed to overthrow the cities of Canaan, put all the men, boys, babies, and non-virgin women to the sword, but to keep the

@FriarTed

I don’t know if there is any explanation your father or anyone could give which would have satisfied you.

Sure there is. Dad could have said:

*Son, the story of the Israelite conquest of Canaan is a Bronze Age myth. Like many narratives of that time, it contains incidents we rightly find abhorrent today. This may be because the scribes of the time sought to justify the barbaric wars of their legends by claiming the imprimatur of God. But that doesn’t mean that God approves of genocide and rape. *

But that’s not consonant with Biblical literacy.

@FriarTed

But I do believe that such incidents of Biblical genocide were rightly commanded by God at that time.

And I believe those incidents are, at best, slanderous. In another day and time I’d be asking you to choose your weapon and to meet me at dawn by the river with your second.

@FriarTed

Now, I am sure that my admission has impacted your opinion on my moral sensibilities. Believing as you do, how could it not have?

Damn skippy. Because believing that an omnipotent, omniscient, never-changing deity was all right with genocide 4000 years ago is only a hop, skip, and a jump from believing He’d authorize it now. Or is the God you worship not the same “yesterday, today, and tomorrow”?

@FriarTed

Hell, when I embarked on Bible study as a newly-active teen C’tian thirty years ago, I stumbled big-time on these OT stories, and had to do lots of reading & mental/moral gymnastics to make them palatable. I’d still be like to be able to discount them as errors in the text, or ancient barbarities which Jesus came to prevent. However, outside of my own desires, I have no compelling reason to discount them. Jesus called the ruthless OT God “Father”, Whose will & Whose word he came to uphold.

I call that God a psychopathic son of a bitch. I spit on that God. I do it without fear of blasphemy because that God is as imaginary as Darkseid. If God is real–which I believe but will not attempt to prove–then the biggest evidence of his mercy is his not smiting the slanderous, lying, murderous, raping assholes who do such things in his names.

[Johanna]

Skald, cogent and eloquent as your arguments may be, I’d rather follow them in another thread, since they digress well away from the topic of this one.

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@Johanna

Skald, cogent and eloquent as your arguments may be, I’d rather follow them in another thread, since they digress well away from the topic of this one.

I’d call those arguments more angry than anything else. Ted’s assertions rather vexed me, and I was more strident than I like to be. Sorry about that; I prefer not to be so angry; I was rude.

That said, everything I wrote was in response to a remark by the OPer–hence the multiple quotes.

[Antinor01]

@FriarTed

I think I’ll have to retract my “rationalization” comment after skimming the first two pages in your thread. I never said anyone “called” believers morally degenerate or intellectually crippled. I will say that when one opposes a
religion based on perceived immoralities or stupidities in a religion’s beliefs or
practices or sacred texts, then it is not a great reach to impugn the morality or intelligence of a person who does believe in that religion- which is the very reasons people take religious debates so personally.

To cite an example from your own OP- your traumatic discovery of the God-ordained slaughters in the OT & your Dad’s shallow response to them…

I do believe that in that particular historic situation, the total eradication of a
very few particularly perverse & incorrigible communities (Amalekites,
Canaanites & the male population of Balaam’s Midianites) was indeed ordained
by God as important for the security of the new Israelite Covenant society; but
that such policy was limited only to that particular time & place. Israel was never
ordered to make holy war as an ongoing policy. I don’t know if there is any explanation your father or anyone could give which would have satisfied you.
But I do believe that such incidents of Biblical genocide were rightly commanded by God at that time.

Now, I am sure that my admission has impacted your opinion on my moral sensibilities. Believing as you do, how could it not have? Hell, when I embarked on Bible study as a newly-active teen C’tian thirty years ago, I stumbled big-time on these OT stories, and had to do lots of reading & mental/moral gymnastics to make them palatable. I’d still be like to be able to discount them as errors in the
text, or ancient barbarities which Jesus came to prevent. However, outside of
my own desires, I have no compelling reason to discount them. Jesus called the
ruthless OT God “Father”, Whose will & Whose word he came to uphold. Jesus never addressed these tales. Nothing in his teachings could ever be used to
warrant such future genocides, but then again, nothing in his teachings discount
that God may have decreed them in the past.

You are the first person I’ve met you had the courage to come right out and say that. Most people beat around the bush with it.
However, what you see as ‘God was in the right’ I (and others it seems) see it as…at best the sign of a barbaric deity that is not worthy of worship.

Sorry for the hijack, there’s other things I would ask you about this but this is not the place.

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

FriarTed, you may wish to avoid further hijacking by answering my questions from post 24 in this thread I opened at Johannas request.

[RTFirefly]

Why do I still have faith in God? Because He’s a persistent cuss. I certainly can’t credit myself in any way.

[cosmosdan]

@FriarTed

To cite an example from your own OP- your traumatic discovery of the God-ordained slaughters in the OT & your Dad’s shallow response to them…

I do believe that in that particular historic situation, the total eradication of a
very few particularly perverse & incorrigible communities (Amalekites,
Canaanites & the male population of Balaam’s Midianites) was indeed ordained
by God as important for the security of the new Israelite Covenant society; but
that such policy was limited only to that particular time & place. Israel was never
ordered to make holy war as an ongoing policy. I don’t know if there is any explanation your father or anyone could give which would have satisfied you.
But I do believe that such incidents of Biblical genocide were rightly commanded by God at that time.

Wow! So you sincerely believe God ordered some of his children to slaughter his other children because they misbehaved. I find it sad that you would come to that conclusion.

Now, I am sure that my admission has impacted your opinion on my moral sensibilities. Believing as you do, how could it not have? Hell, when I embarked on Bible study as a newly-active teen C’tian thirty years ago, I stumbled big-time on these OT stories, and had to do lots of reading & mental/moral gymnastics to make them palatable. I’d still be like to be able to discount them as errors in the
text, or ancient barbarities which Jesus came to prevent. However, outside of
my own desires, I have no compelling reason to discount them.

How about reason, and logic for starters. Aren’t they compelling enough.

Jesus called the
ruthless OT God “Father”, Whose will & Whose word he came to uphold. Jesus never addressed these tales. Nothing in his teachings could ever be used to
warrant such future genocides, but then again, nothing in his teachings discount
that God may have decreed them in the past.

Yes , his teaching does exactly that. Does love thy neighbor and pray for your enemies, bless them that curse you include an unspoken “unless God asks you to slaughter them”?