Ship of Fools: The story

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Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on :

Karl:Liberal Backslider asked for info about my experience of the way I came to believe in the existence of God. I have shared this occasionally before, and had my story trampled upon and pulled apart by those who prefer to think me deluded or an idiot than to consider that I might have been convinced by real events discerned intelligently.

I am therefore posting this in All Saints, as it's not here for the purpose of discussion. Perhaps it will be a one-post thread, but I would be interested to hear others' stories if anyone else would like to share theirs.

Karl asked what I did, what the results were, what I concluded, and the reasoning that drove my conclusions from my results.

As a mature adult, following a bereavement I wondered whether death was the end, and whether the childish notions I had of heaven and God were true. I genuinely didn't know, but it was a question I had put off all of my life and it was time I thought about it. I had no desire to be attached to any religion or to join any church - far from it. I would be happy to go down the atheist route by default, but that would not satisfy me either. I had to find out for myself. This was my starting position.

I did not want to speak to anyone about it as they would be biased, and so I decided to read the New Testament instead, starting with the gospel of Mark as Matthew looked too boring. I read a little each day. The message from the stories of Jesus was saying that he was the way to God, and so one day I prayed to Jesus. I said if you're real, please show me the way to God. Nothing happened immediately. It felt as if I was talking to myself.

I continued to read. The verses said ask, and so I asked the questions that arose in my mind. I didn't keep a log, and so I don't remember most of them. Again, nothing immediate happened, but over time, answers began to appear, sometimes in odd ways through comments of other people or magazines that came my way, etc. I put these down to coincidence for a long time, but continued to ask the new questions that arose.

Over time, usually weeks, answers came. I told nobody what i was doing. I did not talk about the questions to anyone. When answers came, it was often in an extraordinary way. Once, when I asked the question about suffering, I was passing by a second hand book stall and I was drawn to a book which was face down. It was CS Lewis's 'The Problem of Pain.' Given that I didn't buy books at the time, I would not normally stop at a stall, and I couldn't see what it was about when I picked it up, you might understand why this and continuing events like it that I became convinced over time, now months, that Jesus was really showing me the way.

I began to pray to Jesus then in a more sincere way, still looking to find God - which I did, over four years, by praying to and following the teaching of Christ. I have since had and continue to have affirming experiences of a different kind, more spiritually tangible than physically so.

I think this is the best I can do Karl. I hope it helps.

Posted by Lothlorien (# 4927) on :

Thank you for your story and you are right. It is your story of a journey, not that of anyone else.

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

Thanks for sharing that. And what Lothlorien said.

Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :

You sought, and you found. Or were found.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Seek and you will find. No magic is necessary.

Today I was walking circuitously back from church, photo-ing plants en route. I knew there was some Butcher's-Broom (Kneeholy, Knee Holly, Kneeholm, Jew's Myrtle, Sweet Broom, Pettigree, Lagomilia: Hare's apple, Le Fragon: The Butcher) over the road, but didn't need to see it closer. But I did have to cross to check out another shrub. A viburnum it turned out. It always is. So I wandered up to the Ruscus aculeatus and started noticing white axilliary tendrils, the needles (whence aculeatus) at the end of the cladodes/phylloclades/cladophylls, immature flower buds on the cladodes; started snapping, enlarged and a revelation from paradise burst in to view. Tiny, exquisite, trilaterally symmetrical green sepal, green to purple petal, purple receptacle, white anther flowers leapt out.

Magical.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

Raptor Eye, there are some similarities with what happened to you and what happened to me--though thank goodness you started at Mark, and not Genesis (as I foolishly did!).

Posted by Doone (# 18470) on :

Raptor Eye - thank you.

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