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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Do you have any religious hangovers?
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Potoroo
Shipmate
# 13466
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Posted
Do you have any religious hangovers?
By religious hangovers, I mean aspects of Christianity or organised religion that still hang around unbidden, and you wish they wouldn't.
For instance, I still find myself afraid of going to hell sometimes. I can still quote scripture. Sometimes a Christian song pops into my head. I still have nightmares where I'm back in the church and am being rebuked for something and no-one will listen to me.
I fight against all this, as I feel glad and relieved to be free of it all. I suppose that Christianity was such a big part of my life, that it is bound to still pop up sometimes - I only took the big decision to leave about 6 years ago.
So does anyone else experience this?
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Gilbert's Potoroo is Australia's most endangered animal.
Posts: 2778 | From: Australia | Registered: Feb 2008
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Macrina
Shipmate
# 8807
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Posted
Despite my best efforts I still believe in God, even if I don't believe in the Church.
This irritates me because it does mean I tend to pray even when I am fairly sure that the being up there isn't really going to listen or care. Every time I think I've finally got over this something happens to make me.
Last time it was Phil Hughes, the Aussie batsman who died. I cried everywhere and prayed to God to help the bowler who had bowled the ball. Maybe he did. I don't know?
Posts: 535 | From: Christchurch, New Zealand | Registered: Nov 2004
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Potoroo
Shipmate
# 13466
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Posted
I still believe God exists too, Macrina. I just don't want anything to do with him anymore.
(And Sean Abbott, the bowler in question, is receiving heaps of support from heaps of people.)
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Gilbert's Potoroo is Australia's most endangered animal.
Posts: 2778 | From: Australia | Registered: Feb 2008
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Bob Two-Owls
Shipmate
# 9680
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Posted
I still love the history, the buildings and the music (pre-C20th music that is, not modern stuff). I still enjoy a trip to Ely Cathedral or Southwell Minster as much as I did when I was a Christian and sometimes the atmosphere in a quiet corner makes me long for the ability to believe. Such longings never survive contact with other Christians though.
Posts: 1262 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Macrina:
Despite my best efforts I still believe in God, even if I don't believe in the Church.
You see, I think that is a good place to be. It means that you have separated church and God. Maybe you just need some time to understand the God you still believe in, without the church context?
It is interesting that you seem to pray because the action of praying is what you want to do. Irrespective of whether it makes any difference.
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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Paul.
Shipmate
# 37
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Posted
I'm actually back at church now, but I spent a dozen or more years away and even now my faith is not what it was by a long way.
Anyhow - the thing I used to find weird, and unwelcome, was that in stressful situations I would find myself chopping off an urge to pray. Depending how anxious I felt I'd sometimes let myself even though it'd feel dishonest.
Also initially, in the first year or two, I missed the end-of-day, falling-asleep prayer that I'd always done. I found myself talking to myself in order to process the events of the day as an alternative. Not sure if that was healthy or not.
Posts: 3689 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2004
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TallPoppy
Shipmate
# 16294
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Potoroo:
Do you have any religious hangovers?
By religious hangovers, I mean aspects of Christianity or organised religion that still hang around unbidden, and you wish they wouldn't.
For instance, I still find myself afraid of going to hell sometimes. I can still quote scripture. Sometimes a Christian song pops into my head. I still have nightmares where I'm back in the church and am being rebuked for something and no-one will listen to me.
I fight against all this, as I feel glad and relieved to be free of it all. I suppose that Christianity was such a big part of my life, that it is bound to still pop up sometimes - I only took the big decision to leave about 6 years ago.
So does anyone else experience this?
I am sorry about the fear of Hell, Potoroo. For myself, I never believed in Hell in the first place. It seemed inconceivable to me that such a place would exist.
My faith ebbed away very gradually. For those who don't know me, the last five years have been too eventful by far - my husband's cancer, my descent into bipolar madness and the death of one of my closest friends at the age of only 30. Somehow I found that the end of the day prayers no longer happened any more, and what Susie Orbach (a noted English feminist psychotherapist) called the 'God-shaped hole' in one's brain simply wasn't there, as it always was in the past.
I remain open to the possibility of it returning, and I still enjoy sacred choral music very much. Haydn's Creation being my current listening.
I hope some of this makes sense!
TallPoppy
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Papaver exaltatum
"Love comforteth like sunshine after rain"
Posts: 2389 | From: Southern England | Registered: Mar 2011
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
I'm still religious, but I switched denominations within Christianity from a more fundamentalist one to, well, an Anglican one ("let the reader understand"). I still have fears of hell from time to time, too, and I don't believe in it. I definitely get twinges of past beliefs pestering me for not believing in them anymore. Old habits from growing up Pentecostal have kicked in in really weird places, like the time I rebuked (not using that word, thankfully) a mugger in the name of Jesus. (I had wrestled his gun down from my heart and we were still kinda wrestling over it. He let me go.) That incident is a bit comical and baffling in my memory. Might've freaked the guy out, who knows. But "In Jesus' name!" just came out of my mouth. That was nearly 15 years ago now, though.
I hope you all got a chuckle out of that too. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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I reserve the right to change my mind.
My article on the Virgin of Vladimir
Posts: 7773 | From: Detroit | Registered: Feb 2004
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
Might have caused the gun-toter to have a future conversion , who knows. A mighty brave action Churchgeek even if Jesus didn't inspire it.
I'm probably having a 'religious hangover' after a fairly profound conversion experience amidst a marital breakdown 13 yrs ago. Still partake of the hair-of-the-dog though, and short spontaneous prayers are still forth-coming in times of stress or thankfulness. Doesn't seem way of stopping it, not even sure I want it stop.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
Posts: 3206 | From: U.K. | Registered: Dec 2011
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Macrina
Shipmate
# 8807
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Posted
Does anyone else find themselves second guessing themselves a lot?
I think that my psychological and spiritual views are reasonably coherent and well thought out. I have read fairly widely in and around religion (various flavours) and atheism and have come to my positions following this. I think that humanity at its finest is capable of astonishing and incredible insight into the world and that religion and religious views of a more traditional kind are incompatible with some of what we now know.
Even so I still find myself (having been in a position where I yielded authority and knowledge to God) wondering if I am being too arrogant - if in fact it is all true and I've decided to postmodern myself into a corner from which pride will not let me escape.
Posts: 535 | From: Christchurch, New Zealand | Registered: Nov 2004
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Jemima the 9th
Shipmate
# 15106
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Posted
I don't know about second guessing, but I definitely recognise what you say about pride and post-moderning yourself into a corner. That's a great phrase!
Posts: 801 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2009
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Mark Wuntoo
Shipmate
# 5673
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Posted
quote:
I fight against all this, as I feel glad and relieved to be free of it all. I suppose that Christianity was such a big part of my life, that it is bound to still pop up sometimes - I only took the big decision to leave about 6 years ago.
So does anyone else experience this?
Absolutely, exactly where I stand. I left it behind about 8 years ago after over 50 years a Christian, ordained a minister in 1963.
quote:
I still believe God exists too, Macrina. I just don't want anything to do with him anymore.
One hang-over I have is that I couldn’t possibly say this! I’d feel too guilty! ![[Help]](graemlins/help.gif) ![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif) I had to totally reject the concept / possibility of there being any sort of GOD.
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Blessed are the cracked for they let in the light.
Posts: 1950 | From: Somewhere else. | Registered: Mar 2004
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jacobsen
seeker
# 14998
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Posted
A sneaking "what if Hell does exist?" remains with me, in spite of a concurrent belief that God's mercy and love are infinite, and that eternity will bring us all home. I did vote with my feet where the Roman Catholic Church is concerned, however. Too much dogma of a quite unnecessary kind.The temporal manifestation of a church does tend to be less user friendly than the eternal concepts it is supposed to reflect. I find the CoE less constricting.
In fact, in common with some other posters, I believe in God, but hang loose on practically everything else.
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But God, holding a candle, looks for all who wander, all who search. - Shifra Alon
Beauty fades, dumb is forever-Judge Judy
The man who made time, made plenty.
Posts: 8040 | From: Æbleskiver country | Registered: Aug 2009
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