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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: I have a real problem with Hell!
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Alt Wally
Cardinal Ximinez
# 3245
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Posted
I know what you mean Jim. Dostoevsky, who to me is one of the greatest religious thinkers of any faith, said his doubts would go with him to the grave. I don't think I will be any different.
I don't want to make too much of the "experiences". This was not like a road to Emmaus type thing and they were not the proverbial final nail in the coffin. What I guess I would say is that over time a quiet certitude settled in to my heart which progressively tipped the scales of doubt and belief. The experiences I mentioned were not emotional or ecstatic and actually happened a while after I felt like I had fully accepted the presence of God. Long ago I had directly sought God and asked him to lay his cards on the table much like Thomas mentioned earlier in the thread, but nothing came of that for me either.
This may sound strange, but I've always had a feeling of connection with Judaism. Especially the idea of worshipping God not because rewards are expected in a future existence, but simply because God is there and cannot be avoided. Perhaps one of the reasons I feel so at home in Orthodoxy because it has retained so much of the temple in its liturgical life.
Posts: 3684 | Registered: Aug 2002
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saysay
Ship's Praying Mantis
# 6645
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Posted
Thomas -
I am also not Mousethief, but I thought I'd chime in. My longwindish rantings on other boards aside, I really do have sympathy for where you're coming from. I was raised UU, which is a denomination that many people (including many shipmates) have some interesting misconceptions about. I'll probably say more about that later, on your education thread (assuming I have time). But I spent a long time really struggling with Christianity. I didn't understand how one religion could give rise to both Martin Luther King and to the people who bombed the house where my father was staying because he was trying to integrate the Presbyterian church. I wasn't sure if there was something weird about the teachings of the religion itself, or if people just tended to act like people no matter what religious teachings they followed.
So I spent a lot of time studying Christianity and its teachings and theology. I also studied the world's other major religions (but perhaps we shouldn't tell the other shipmates that). I realized that, in the end, they all had the same basic teachings about how we should act (feed the hungry, clothe the poor, etc.) And so I decided to simply imitate Jesus as well as I could and hope that G-d would take that into account, no matter what I thought. To be fair, that is pretty much what my mother had taught me to begin with (that my only real obligation in this world is to love others), but studying the religions gave me a much better intellectual understanding of spiritual matters.
And as I practiced seeing G-d in others, I grew in my belief that G-d exists. And then I had a very intense personal experience that convinced me. IMHO it was not the kind of experience that can be reversed by other strange experiences. I don't doubt that G-d is there, although I do doubt that I am always capable of loving others in the way G-d would like me to.
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"It's been a long day without you, my friend
I'll tell you all about it when I see you again"
"'Oh sweet baby purple Jesus' - that's a direct quote from a 9 year old - shoutout to purple Jesus."
Posts: 2943 | From: The Wire | Registered: May 2004
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daronmedway
Shipmate
# 3012
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Posted
If our God is a consuming fire, is it possible that the fire of heaven is going to be a lot 'hotter' than the fire of hell? I imagine that if you get to heaven only to find out that you've been building with straw then heaven and hell are going to feel pretty similar. For a while.
Posts: 6976 | From: Southampton | Registered: Jul 2002
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
Alt Wally, thanks for the reply. You may have seen that I said recently that I think The Brothers Karamazov should be canonized. My tongue is only partly in cheek; I think everyone should read it. Also, as the "Unitarian hiding in an Episcopal Choir" I retain many connections to Judaism. If it weren't for all the cultural and racial trappings of Jewish tradition people like me might be more likely to become a Reformed Jew.
Let me make a comment about the "show me a sign, Lord" phenomenon. It seems to me there is a purely philosophical point to be made about a "caring and concerned personal God who always at least answers the fervent prayers of believers, even if He does not grant what is asked." From a purely philosophical point of view, I can see this leading to a form of deterministic or gridlocked Hell where either everyone knows or can determine the future, or no future is possible because of conflicting requests. Thus, it would seem from a philosophical point that our existence as Beings with a moral responsibility to choose Good behavior over Bad requires either the silence of a conscious God or a God that is not conscious but an inherent enabling principle that allows free moral agents to exist.
[ 01. June 2004, 20:52: Message edited by: JimT ]
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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Duo Seraphim*
Sea lawyer
# 3251
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ThomasDF:
Duo Seraphim:
It seems I'm not getting across what I mean about faith and believing in god. I'll try to word it different.
What I want is no different than what Christians claim they have, that spark or light that tells you that you have connected with god. That revelation, if you will. I do not want bells and whistles or even knowledge, though knowing god would be knowledge in itself.
Though the teachings of Jesus inspire me on a humanitarian level, they do not inspire me on a spiritual level and convince me that god exists.
What I see is that people self stimulate themselves into believing god has touched them and from that their faith comes. This is a very deep and profound experience. Of course I don't know what is in the mind and heart another and I could be wrong. God could very well be touching them and that possibility is why I never close my mind to the possibility that god exists.
Does this help explain it better?
ThomasDF, I could say that you've shifted ground, as you did give some fairly extreme examples of "faith" and "proof" earlier - but actually I think we agree on the nature of faith as a response to God.
That "spark" hasn't happened to you - yet.
Fair enough. It's enough that you remain open to chose the radical possibility of God when it does.
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2^8, eight bits to a byte
Posts: 3967 | From: Sydney Australia | Registered: Aug 2002
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