I have been waffling with matters of faith for years so I open a challenge for people out there of any belief system to convince me what is the true faith and calling. This will probably be a debate but please be kind to each other as I award points for how much one lives up to what they espouse.
Atheists/ Agnostics are also welcome.
I’m not much for missionary work, but I’ll share this:
One of the funniest pieces of mail I ever received was a small, about Reader’s Digest-sized book, from a ministry hawking their Golden Seed Soul Harvest Plan, or something like that. The actual Golden Soul Seed Plan Harvest pamphlets were, they repeated over and over, FREE…but two-thirds of the book were filled with testimonials of people who talked about ordering their Soul Plan Seed Book Harvests and receiving financial windfalls, and all made mention of “love offerings”.
Think of the sleaziest ways a ministry could witness to the poor, desperate, and (the “and” is really the necessary bit in the marketting, I think) not terribly bright, and this was pretty much the Gods Plan Soul Golden Seed Harvest folks.
One of the best parts of the book consisted of a quiz, with various questions (in tortured grammar) that were supposed to make you think about whether you needed some Soul Seed Golden Harvest action in your life. My favorite question was: “Do you sometimes feel that Heaven is made of brass, and all the prayers you pray just bounce off and hit you in the face?”
I guess what I’m getting at is, try not to be convinced by those kinds of folks. Keep an open mind, but keep your hand very firmly over your wallet.
The Invisible Pink Unicorn is all you need.
May Her hooves never be shod.
Drastic wrote:
Heck no! We all know that Heaven is really made of arenak!
Well since you are in such an open frame of mind you can choose me as your friendly deity.
I can’t promise that I’ll always (or ever for that matter) give you what you ask for. I can’t even promise that I’ll give you the right answers to your questions.
But I promise to always answer you, unless I’m out for the evening or on vacation, in which which case you can leave a message with my answering service.
Now, you should think about this very carefully before you dismiss it entirely. It’s a hell of a better deal than you are going to get from any of the other so called “mainstream” deities who never bother to return a call. It’s all just take, take, take with them. All they want to hear is how big and wonderful and scary they are. It’s all about their egos and to hell with the customers (sometimes literally!).
I’ll suggest Judaism. Once you get past the whole penis slicing thing it’s really not that bad.
Well.
Having failed to elicit any serious responses thus far, perhaps you are beginning to wonder about other random, impersonal, unthinking ways to develop a world view.
Another thing that it might be fun to try – and which offers equally bright prospects for success – would be to call random people in the phone book and just latch onto whatever it is that the sixth person thinks.
Alternately, you could take the whole process a little more seriously and do some research on your own. After that, you could draw a conclusion and then go ahead and get on with it. And if you’re really feeling brave, you could not worry so much what other people think.
Of course, you can always continue down this particular course of action if you want. I expect you’ll have lots of laughs. Because this is a joke.
…but another non-serious one first. George Carlin spoke about a spiritual crisis once, and the faith he gained. It went something like this: “You know who I believe in? Joe Pesci. Why? Two reasons. One, I can see him. Two, Joe Pescie always seemed to me like someone who could get shit done.”
Now that that’s out of the way: I think what you mostly should do is work to narrow things down. “Matters of faith” covers a whole heap of stuff; for some people, it’s more a concern about the nature of morality, the Problem of Evil, and similar things; for others, it’s a more philosophical and deep dread of the fact of death; for others yet, a desire for self-improvement; and the list can go on, with all items mingling. You might have better luck both long- and short-run by trying a new thread in MPSIMS or similar, putting into words as best you can, in a more focused manner, what matters of faith you’re chewing at (and vice versa), asking for advice and thoughts, and seeing what elements strike chords for you from there.