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Source: (consider it) Thread: The Journey Back
Paul.
Shipmate
# 37

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This comes from a tangent in the Doubting thread.

Did you stop going to church for a long time and then return? Did you lose your faith and have now re-gained it, or perhaps re-built it from scratch?

How would you describe your journey back? What prompted it and what helped/hindered along the way?

Thanks!

Posts: 3689 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged
Paul.
Shipmate
# 37

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OK I guess I'll start with my story.

For why I "left" see the doubting thread - short version I was worn out but not disbelieving per se. Funny thing about that was despite telling people, and myself to some extent, that I was done with it all, I always sort of secretly thought I'd "go back" one day. And I always sort of thought it'd be as simple as turning around, making that decision, repenting if you like and that things would start to fall into place.

And I guess they sort of are but it's been a very gradual process. I'm a year and a half into it and I'm still more confused than anything.

So my journey's still on-going and I'm not sure where it'll end or even which direction to go in from here really. I just keep praying, and worshipping - with people who are lovely but probably not really sure if I'm "saved" or not - and hoping/believing that God will eventually make things clear (-er).

And for that very reason I'm curious as to what others' experiences were.

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Curiosity killed ...

Ship's Mug
# 11770

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I've done both, doubted and come back, but I'm not sure I fit on either thread.

I grew up in CofE, walked away when presented with CU church of HTB and stayed away for 13 years. Came back for 20 years and have just drifted out again over the past couple of years. Just about around, doing some stuff for the church, but my regular attendance is monthly for the thing I get asked to run.

I don't know where I go now.

--------------------
Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat

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Welease Woderwick

Sister Incubus Nightmare
# 10424

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For my part I seem to be on a journey onwards rather than back and I am pretty sure that I am where I should be at this moment, doubts and all. It really will turn out ok. That lovely line from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel:

quote:
Everything will be all right in the end and if things aren't all right then it is not the end.


--------------------
I give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.
Fancy a break in South India?
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What part of Matt. 7:1 don't you understand?

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Taliesin
Shipmate
# 14017

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Thanks for this thread. I think I'm on my way back... sometimes I think I've arrived, and then I realise it's still a process... than began 12 years ago. Gulp.

I was a childhood Anglican, left it in finality at 17 when I left home. Flirted with evangelism for about 10 minutes ( hated the pressure of an alter call, refused to move, felt their disappointment)

Became a pagan for 10 years. That was good, actually, but it's very much a create your own path kind of thing, which is easy to lapse from when bored or disillusioned.

Found a little church by accident in 2001, slowly got involved, love the people. Helped 'them' transition to a new building when three churches amalgamated in... 2006??? I'm still there. I had a break I think, for 6 months or so, can't recall.

Most of the time I know God exists and all will be well. And sometimes I remember logic and contradiction ( usually if reading the bible) and wonder what the hell I'm doing. So I can't write on the doubting thread or even read it, in case it rehearses or reinforces the wrong story. I'm trying to keep God.

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mark_in_manchester

not waving, but...
# 15978

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Hi Late Paul

I came back after losing my childhood faith for 4 or 5 years. I kept going to church - I had kids - and felt pretty desperate about the whole thing. The core of my unease was that I felt Christianity was this huge, non-essential cultural accretion which no longer made any sense or felt in any way 'real' or 'true'.

So then I went off attempting to read philospophy (don't laugh...yes I'm an engineer...). And after attempting to get into Nietzche for a couple of years it suddenly (it was a sudden thing) seemed to me that from a rational/material set of presuppositions (which I had been attempting to work from, having chopped-off that big accretion) then nothing was defensible, to me. Not God, not love, not truth, not meaning. This struck me with great force, and since I observed everyone on Radio 4 happily going on with meaning, truth and love I thought f*ck you, you lazy b*stards, you'll not then deny me God.

I became quite evangelistic about my weird personal witness. I also got into Dooyeweerd and Dostoyevsky (behold, he reads [Smile] ). Generally I found I just annoyed people.

So now I have a strong sense of what I am saved from, because I have tried really hard to live without God, and attempted to chop everything else off which fails the kind of tests we can easily set for God Himself. Having God is no more daft than having these other things AFAICS, and so God saves me from their absence, which is, I guess, old-fashioned nihilism.

I don't have a strong argument for why the Christian God - that's much more woolly and 'devotional' for me. But for me, if I've swallowed Love and Meaning and Truth, then to object to God is internally inconsistent and murders the rationalism I thought I was trying to move towards.

Church is still desperate. But my soul is much more quiet.

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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)

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Squirrel
Shipmate
# 3040

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I grew up RC, but got interested in conservative Evangelicalism, and started thinking of myself as "born-again" while an undergraduate.

Two things happened to me during the summer when I was 23:

FIRST: I worked at a sleep-away camp for kids with severe disabilities like Muscular Dystrophy. Seeing how these innocent children were suffering (many kids with MD don't make it to adulthood) shook my faith. I could not reconcile my previous notions of a benevolent God with what I was witnessing. And the idea that these kids would go to Hell after they died unless they were "saved" seemed downright cruel.

SECOND: That same summer I "discovered" sex- and decided that there was nothing wrong with it, even though I had no intention of marrying my then girlfriend. This was at odds with what I always believed.

I didn't know of an alternative to either the strict Catholicism or Evangelicalism with which I was familiar. Alternatives didn't exist, as far as I was concerned. I called myself a Humanist.

So, I stopped really thinking of myself as a Christian, and avoided churches, except for funerals, until I was about 35, when I started dating the woman whom I'd eventually marry. She attended an Episcopal church where questions and doubts were not considered weaknesses, and I started coming with her, mostly so that we could spend more time together. Gradually I grew to like what I was hearing, and would even attend on my own some Sundays.

A few years after we were married I had a few experiences in which I really felt the presence of God. I read some CS Lewis, NT Wright and other authors and decided I was a Christian again.

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"The moral is to the physical as three is to one."
- Napoleon

"Five to one."
- George S. Patton

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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110

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Think WW is right about journey onwards, even though I used the phrase "journey back" in the Doubting thread.

Actually there were two interesting dimensions. I did go back to the church I'd been a member of in since conversion. But much was not the same.

Think I decided to test out mutual tolerance again. That turned out to be a smart move in my case. I've said it a few times here. My local congo is characterised by a lot of kindness. A famous LBJ quote works for me. Its been better for me - and better for the congo - to have me inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in. I don't advocate that as a general policy. Mutual tolerance is not guaranteed.

The experience of the time of change had a massive and profound affect on my understandings of God, myself, others. Sure that gets expressed in my theology, devotional life, relationships with others. What came first was a re-connection with God. That got coupled with a changed appreciation of the central importance of love and friendship for relationships with Christians - and indeed everyone else. And an appreciation of just how lucky I had been in life in the loving relationships and friendships I had, which had been sustained somehow during my time of change. They are all still there, except for the ones which have been, temporarily, interrupted by death. Even in those, the memory lingers on, the affections and the gratitude are still very much alive.

I never got any nastiness, or any "told you so"s, or any "so you found out we knew better after all"s. Even if I had, they would have been very easy to handle with affection.

Short version. When it came to Christian discipleship (mathetes = learner and follower), there was an important time when I took the Learner Plates off, chucked them on the floor, thought they would stay there. Learned a lot while they were on the floor. Grace knew that was a necessary perception for me, left me with that for a while, then showed me that they were still there, even though I thought I'd chucked them on the floor. I'd been Learning, even when I thought I'd stopped for good. I got that. Became a conscious Learner in community again. Still Learning.

WW is right. It's a journey onwards. Good companions on the way have been for me an essential part of that. Gildas has come up with a good phrase. The rest can get screwed up by "arid scholasticism". Whether medieval style, or more modern equivalents, doesn't really matter all that much.

Think some words from Nature Boy sung by the immortal Nat King Cole. "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is to love and be loved in return". Then reverse and add a bit. "The greatest gift you'll ever receive is to be loved, and learn how to love in return". Both seem to apply in our relationships with God and one another.

I'm still learning what it means to be loved and how to love. That learning is good though. Very good. Everything else seems to be secondary to that.

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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Welease Woderwick

Sister Incubus Nightmare
# 10424

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I think the willingness to learn - and to learn that you were wrong - is key to the process. If we ever stop learning, or being willing to learn, we may as well give up.

--------------------
I give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.
Fancy a break in South India?
Accessible Homestay Guesthouse in Central Kerala, contact me for details

What part of Matt. 7:1 don't you understand?

Posts: 48139 | From: 1st on the right, straight on 'til morning | Registered: Sep 2005  |  IP: Logged


 
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