Spiritual Crisis

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

How do you handle it?

I’ve seriously begun to doubt that there is a Deity. I’m not a Christian, but I’ve always believed that the God of Abraham exists. I just don’t believe that he exists alone.

Now I’m questioning whether or not there’s a Higher Power at all. How could any Deity allow such devastation as occurred last week?

It seems to me that the Deities just don’t care. They don’t care about us Americans, or They wouldn’t have allowed this kind of tragedy. They don’t care about the Muslims in Afghanistan, who are now facing potentially worse horrors than they’ve already been dealing with for the last several decades.

I don’t blame the Deities for this. I know this attack wasn’t about religion. It was about terror. But my faith is on very shaky ground right now, and I’m just not sure what to do about it. “Having faith” just isn’t enough.

I’d appreciate viewpoints from any and all faiths, please.

2

I’m with you on this discussion and what a tangled web the answer can be. Regretfully, My Sister Of Knowledge, I have no answer for I am, myself, in the same dilemma.

Having Faith and You Just Have To Beleive when there is no proof at hand has always bristled my neck hair. Any conversation that begins with " The Bible says" or “Jesus this and that” and I go mentally AWOL.

I beleive over all, that there is goodness in humankind.

I beleive in a Higher Power.

I believe that we are given everything we know to get through life when we are born. What we do with it is our gift back to the Higher Power as well as a gift you give back to not only yourself, but to your future generations and as a way to honor the generations who had faith in us when we were uncertain.)

I don’t think God has a Master Plan for us. I think that She/he leaves us to our own folly and foibles (sp?) and how we act and react to them is how we are judged when our time comes.

Do I think God knew about and could have stopped the attacks of September 11th? No. If God could, then why not stop the atrocities of Nazi Germany or Pearl Harbor or any other savage aspect of humankind? Because we learn more from a bad times, than good times.

Or, as I like to say, You don’t miss the water til the well runs dry.

Something good will come of the events of September 11th. It is trite and possibly callous to say, but I am a firm beleiver that things happen for a reason. Never before have I ever seen such compassion and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps attitude before in our nation. We are an untested generation. To walk blithely along we will do no more. But I promise you this, everyone of us appreciates and savors our freedom, our country, and the like a hell of alot more now than we did on September 10, 2001.
Do WE all think who perpetrated this unspeakable act will go to hell? Yes.

Do THEY think they are going to hell for performing an act to bring “the great Satan” (US & Western Culture) to it’s knees? Not a chance.

Do I wish I had faith like other people do, to be able to go to church, beleive in the Bible and have God talk to me as he seemingly talks to others so much and in such great detail? When I was younger, yes.

Do I beleive that God talks with other people in great detail and gives them permission for some deep personal burning question? Nope. Twenty bajillion Christians on this planet, all praying at some time or another, and you think God cares about your whiny little self induced situation that you got yourself into in the first place because you did not use your head? Well, God does care, but God wants you humbled. (She told me that :slight_smile: when I was asking her what stocks to invest in. -Jehovah is not only my savior, but my fiancial advisor as well :slight_smile: )

I beleive we all have the answers deep inside us to help us through whatever slaps us in the face. ( And if we don’t have the answer, we can -pay attention people -ask someone else for assistance.)

One of the hardest lessons I have learned in life has been learning to walk a different spiritual path than the rest.

To handle crisis, tragedy and maelstroms in my own way
( and those who are regular dopers here in MPSIMS, know that I’ve had more than my fair share of what I call " life’s little learning lessons" than the average bear ( and most of them are not self-induced.) I take it as it happens,and do my absolute damnedest not to let worry ruin my life while keeping my mental eye on the horizon while trying to gleen some kind of future learning lesson from what is before me so I can share it with some one in need in the future.
It is also very important in the Book Of Shirley to keep a sense of humor and not to take things too seriously.
So sayeth Shirley.

{closing hymn: What a Wonderful World.}
[sub]If I actually got to the OP, it was by mere coincidence and unintentional. [/sub]

3

This has been an issue for me lately as well- I was already struggling with it, when the events of last Tuesday occurred. That’s just made it worse.

I was raised Catholic, left the church, became a fairly hard-core Fundie, then came back to Catholicism. The Fundie Years™ were years in which I knew that there was a reason for everything, and it was all part of a plan.

During The Catholic Years™ I learned that religion had rules-and I learned what faith means when you are a Catholic. I enjoyed it. I considered the convent-seriously considered it. And it was all still God’s plan.

Now, I question it all. What kind of God plans something like last Tuesday? How can I just accept something like this for a plan or for the will of some unseen being? It’s not something that makes sense, and I don’t know if it will ever feel right again.

I want the innocence and blind acceptance back again-that was easy. This isn’t, and dammit, I want answers.

4

You did. Believe me, you did. I pretty much hang on your every word anyway, and everything you said makes a lot of sense, and means a lot to me.

Thanks. :smiley:

5

This whole thing is making buddhism look real real good to me.

Seriously.

I don’t think “God” (whoever/whatever he or she is) does things or lets things happen or prevents them. Not the god I believe in. I think he’s a force that some people are tapped into more than others. Tap into him the right way, and he/she/it will lead you to be a generous person, a peaceful person, a kind person. Miss him completely, and you’ll be an ugly person.

I don’t mean that people who “don’t believe in God” are damned or evil or have ugly souls. I think just by deciding/choosing to be kind or patient or whatever is tapping into that positive force. No matter what you call it or don’t call it or believe in. It needs no label. It’s just there for all of us to share in.

I don’t pray much, but when I do, I sometimes pray that more people will tap into this positive force. More often, I pray that I could get a better hold on it and stop being such a selfish bitch. This week, I’ve prayed that prospective terrorists will have a change of heart, and that victims’ families & friends will, through that force, find emotional peace and healing.

6

I personally believe in the existence of God, but I think it’s anthropocentric reasoning to assume that we are the center of creation. I hope that the god of the universe is nothing like us; that He isn’t constrained by our physical form or ruled by our petty emotions. No disrespect intended, but perhaps it isn’t really all about us. One might as well ask why God allowed me to run over that anthill with the mower last week.

Anyway, that’s how I rationalize something like this.
There is also the possibility that God is COMPLETELY beyond my understanding — In which case, please disregard this posting.

7

All religion is narrative; various tales spun up by the natural workings of the human brain and mind.

That’s all religion. Not all religious experience. Experience trumps narrative, every time–or, it should.

The strongest selling point of various forms of buddhism for me is the stress it lays on, in essence, learning to coax the narrating brain to shut up. To put it another way, to train your consciousness to be aware of the silences between the words, which silences speak volumes more than the jibber-jabber of the surface.

I don’t know about enlightenment or nirvana or release from samsara, I just know those are appealing stories, and they resonate more strongly for me than competing stories of salvation and heaven and the defeat of death. What I know–small and glancing as that knowledge often feels–is that silence and the peace that touches it, and the experience of it. Propinquity. Nearness. Immanence. Suchness.

A mild temporal lobe seizure, maybe. Maybe more. That doesn’t matter.

I don’t think buddhism has any sort of lock on that experience; you can get there through any sort of practice, and even none at all. I do think it only comes if you’re ready for it, but being ready for it isn’t someting you yourself will.

It can’t hurt to ask, though. Trust in life. Ask of it, in yourself, to do what is necessary to you for it to happen. Mean it.

And if it never does happen, well then, find peace in that. Faith without experience is just a narrative, and the world is better off without stories of that kind. Love your loved ones, accept love in return, and the rest will sort itself out.

8

I have recently embraced the idea that we are all part of one pan-dimensional entity experiencing itself subjectively, and we are therefore all co-creators of our world.
Whenever anything happens, the question is not “what does this mean?” but “What meaning do I choose to ascribe to this?”
I am moved to tears by what I have seen in the media, and especially in these forums.
People are wonderful beyond my ability to express.
It is 13:00, I have drunk half a bottle of scotch, and I still have to go to work.
This may not help, sorry.

Peace and hugs.

Paul.

9

Feelng better now, This : http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=87248

helped. A lot.

10

Well, you know I believe, Pers.

However, I think it all boils down to free will. God cannot interfere with our decisions - good or bad - if He (no gender actually ascribed) is to truly allow us free will.

How does prayer work in this? I don’t know, to be perfectly honest. Maybe it makes us more aware of the work He does ? Help us understand the work we are to do? See beyond our present circumstances to the way they tie into the greater tapestry of life and history?

I firmly believe that we, each and every one of us, are God’s hands in this world. If anything is to be done, it is to be done through us and by us, acting as agents of God. God is love - that’s one of the Bible truths that I believe wholeheartedly - and any action done in love is done as though God Himself did it.

Contrarily, to prevent an action, no matter how heinous, would be to deprive that person of free will, to be arbitrary in who gets it and who doesn’t. What kind of freedom would that truly be? The greatest gift He has given us, indeed the greatest responsibility, is free will. We can choose to use that free will to “tap into” (as someone else mentioned) Him and His ways or we use it to pursue only the desires of self and self-love, which seem more likely than not, to end in disaster and pain for many.

I was reading a passage out of Kierkegaard this morning and he was talking about how the love for a neighbor is greater than the love for a friend or lover. The love that God calls us to have for our neighbor, which is everyone - all humanity, is not preferential. It is true love. The giving or doing unto because it is right, not because we have a desire to do so. How does that connect with knowing there’s a God? I’m not sure. Just reading the whole passage (couple pages) just seemed very appropriate with all that’s happened lately.

11

Whenever I hear someone say “How could God do this?”, or “How could he let this happen?” I remember that line from Van Halens “Right Now” video. The line said “Right now, God is killing moms and dogs because he has to”.

I don’t follow one religion really and I’m not so sure I believe in God. But what I do realize is death happens. Its a part of life. Whether it be a horrible tragedy, or someone going peacefully in their sleep.

~/X(…)/X\

12

I am a Unitarian Universalist and an athiest, so feel free to ignore what follows if you don’t deem me a worthy source to speak about God and the like.

I think it’s good to remember that this is definitely not the first, and probably not the last tragedy to grace the Earth. If one’s faith can be sustained through lessons on the plague, the Holocaust, Stalin, the Inquisition, the Civil War (heck, just about any war), and even The Flood of Biblical times, then theoretically it can be sustained through this. It’s more dificult because it’s happening to you, and it’s happening now, but the flip side of joy is sadness, and the opposite of pleasue is pain.

As I stated before, I do not have “faith” in God, but I do have faith in humanity (which for a deist could almost be translated into the same thing). I have retained my faith in humanity throughout this by witnessing the wonderful, selfless actions people have committed in support of their fellow man/woman. The outpouring of support and love in the wake of so much death is so much more meaningful to me, in a spiritual sense, than the actions of a few hateful people.
Hope this helps a little bit.

13

Welcome to the Mutual Admiration Society.

You Persephone are one of my favorite posters. (You are up next to Bo Duke :slight_smile: )

14

This is pretty much how I feel.

15

This (the OP) is a good question, but it is not a new question. You might as well ask why God(s) allows anything bad to happen. You can add me to the list of people who believe in a good God but don’t have a complete, 100% satisfying answer. But a good chunk of the answer is what BunnyGirl said.

It both inspires and scares me, to think that God has given us human beings the awesome privilege/responsibility that what we do matters.

16

Something that is helping me a little is indeed the “faith in humanity” aspect.

Last week, I made some red, white, and blue ribbons, and took them to work. Left them at the candy stand in the lobby, for anyone to have. They were gone within an hour, and I’d made about fifty. Made fifty more this weekend, took them in to work today, and the same thing happened. Gone in about an hour.

And I started thinking today too, about just how few people caused this tragedy to happen. A few nutballs. Not a whole nation, or a whole religion. A few whacked-out radicals. Yes, they managed to kill nearly six thousand people in a matter of minutes. But that just means that those few people suck. Not God, not humanity–just that small handful of jerks.

I’m starting to feel a little better.

17

I’ve been questioning God a lot lately. I came to the conclusion that a Greater Thing Than Us exists, though I didn’t know what exactly that Greater Thing was.
But now I just don’t care. I often wondered if people who survived Nazi Germany kept their faith, and if so, how?
This whole thing has shaken me to my core. Every moral or value I had has been disrupted. To quote Don Henley

.
I’m angry about this. I’m angry that some nutjobs had this power to disrupt my life. I’m angry that I’m angry. I’m angry at my husband because he won’t talk to me about it, he doesn’t seem affected by it. I’m angry at my sister because all she can talk about is God. I’m angry that I wince when I hear sirens or an airplane. Where am I supposed to direct all this anger? I think that if I evaluate my position objectively, I can honestly say that I’m directing my anger to a God that I don’t even really believe exists anymore.
Is that crazy, or just a way to cope?

18

Persephone, my dear friend, well ya know I’m Buddhist, and following that path has focused my spiritual search without looking to a Creator God. (I’m certainly open to the possibility, though.)

The past week had left me shaken and angry, yet determined to stick to my basic optimistic pacifism. Today that all seemed to crumble. As I watched the news tonight, with images of crews sifting through the hauled-off rubble for remnants of bodies and airplane parts, I felt the best hopeful part of me dry up. It seems so unimaginably endless; the task of cleaning up and making some sense of this evil act.

Perhaps prayer is like that, too, though, when it’s most needed. When all is going well, it’s a moment of thought, gratitude, and hope. When faced with adversity, especially in a time like this that drains you of hope, it becomes a sifting: searching for answers that are not going to be resolved easily. It’s the search that counts, though, and that requires a resolution of heart that the effort will at some point bear the strange fruit of understanding. I suppose you could call that Faith.

The fine Buddhist teachers I’ve tried to learn from are Tibetan. They’ve lost everything dear to them in the past; their people, homeland, culture, and precious archives. Yet they continue to devote themselves to teaching non-violence and methods of cultivating that. My main teacher was the only survivor of his monastery, and has managed to walk out of that with his best heart intact.

I’m trying desperately to follow that example. The words that have come to the fore lately to give me guidance are from the Dalai Lama: upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, he was asked why he didn’t harbor any hatred of the Chinese, after they had decimated his country. His response was, “They’ve taken everything else, must I let them take my mind as well?”
That’s pretty much the crux of the biscuit, ain’t it ?

19

Feeling a lot better today, after reading and re-reading these responses (and thanks, Sassy, for the email. It helped).

I made more ribbons last night, with the same effect–all gone. Then I went shopping for craft stuff this afternoon, specifically for pin backs. There’s none to be had here. The craft shops are sold out. There also sold out of flags, and they’re really, really hurting for stuff that can be used to make anything that’s red, white, and blue. Including size F crochet hooks. And I need another one of those, too.

What does that have to do with anything, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you.

My personal situation was not adversly affected by this tragedy. No one I know died. My family is still with me. I still have my job, my home, my husband, and my kids. I’m healthy. I’m here.

Most of the people I know are just like me. We want to do something, but we can’t. We can’t go there and help clean up. We can donate blood, but that’s about it. If we can donate cash, it’s not as much as we’d like, because we’re still here and have bills to pay.

So we show out support in other ways, like making pins. With ribbons, beads, and yarn, we make our little symbols and wear them proudly. We give them away to friends and strangers.

The lack of craft supplies here tells me that lots and lots and lots of people are doing this. We’re pulling together in our own little way.

Maybe the Deities didn’t act to stop this horrible tragedy, but I’ve begun to think that maybe, just maybe, they’re working serious overtime now. Providing comfort to those who’ve lost loved ones, and providing ideas for people like me.

And every time I walk through the halls of my building and see yet another person wearing a ribbon that I made, maybe it’s the Deities’ voices I hear saying “See? You are doing something.”

Does that make any sense at all?

20

I was raised Catholic, and fairly devoutly, but it didn’t really take after a while. After years of church, Sunday school, and parochial school, I didn’t really believe any more. I spent years in a happy agnostic haze.

I remember learning about the Holocaust when I was a kid, and not understanding why the Jews in Europe didn’t just renounce their faith. I thought that were I in ther posistion, I would have simply pretended to be Christian, and try to get passed over (huh–interesting choice of words, there).

As I grew up, I understood the importance of keeping one’s faith, but my understanding was only intellectual. It is only in the relatively recent past that I could really understand this concept, as I ended up converting to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After careful study, I found answers that I hadn’t even been looking for.

Ok, don’t want anyone to think I’m pushing here, so I’ll get to the heart of the matter at hand. I did have a crisis if faith last week, but not in God–in humanity. I know that God did not cause this tragedy. I know that He could have prevented it, but He loves us too much take away anyone’s free will. I know that many people will disagree with this concept, but I’m not going to argue it here.

My faith in humanity, however, was severely shaken both by the attack itself, and by the backlash in this county against Muslims and Arabs. I couldn’t concentrate at work at all last week, until I added flowers to the growing piles at the local mosque (which someone had tried to burn down the night before). The outpouring of love and support I witnessed brought back my faith in the essential goodness of the human spirit, and added more support to my belief in a loving God.