What do you do when you don't believe any more?

Indy,
My, my. Where there are many words, sin abounds! How true. I had your problem once, but in reverse. Then, after a life of questions, Christ found me. As His witness, let me say, this walk is a relationship--you talk and listen to God. Though you mention your Christian occupations, this is missing and can not be found in the material you're reading. In fact, it provokes confusion.

Originally Posted by didot

Indy,
My, my. Where there are many words, sin abounds! How true. I had your problem once, but in reverse. Then, after a life of questions, Christ found me. As His witness, let me say, this walk is a relationship--you talk and listen to God. Though you mention your Christian occupations, this is missing and can not be found in the material you're reading. In fact, it provokes confusion.

That's the truth! Or maybe I should say those are truths.

__________________

Absence of Evidence Does Not equal Evidence of Absence

Hello and thank you for your question.

You asked what do you do when you don't believe anymore?

Have some one with faith pray over you.

I will pray over you and keep you in all my prayers friend.

I am very glad you came here asking for help.

God bless you and have a wonderful day

Jesus is always with us

a friend,
ineedUtoLOVEMe

This Christian wouldn't.

Where are you getting this specific maxim from? I searched multiple versions of the Bible and searched a couple different commentaries. I also Googled another 10 minutes trying to find the the source of your notion.

The best I could come up with was Ecclesiates 5 with the anchoring verse on "many words" being...

Reading it in context, this is about people who blab away on something when they don't know what they're talking about.

Ecclesiates 5 then continues with letting your word be your word.

This is not too different from what Jesus taught in Matthew 5.

This is indeed good stuff.

Other than this, what specifically are you referring to by the phrase "many words?"

You might need to clarify this quite a bit more. After all, the [Protestant] Bible has about 770,000 words while the Qur'an has only around 77,000.

Please clarify what you mean and cite a Biblical or other source for this idea (assuming it's not something you just kinda made up on the fly then we're back to Ecclesiates 5).

I think we all have to work through similar issues.

Ah, predestination. Several pages ago, I wanted to see if anybody was interested in discussion. Over the centuries it seems most of the "how is one saved" discourses have centered significantly around the three big ideas of predestination, faith, and works.

I've read on the early church fathers, the Catholic catechism, Luther, Wesley, as well as number of modern authors.

If you're interested in having a discussion on predestination or these three in aggregate and helping me understand proper soteriology, that would be great.

Anyhow, I'm glad for you you believe he found you.

However, why doesn't He find most? By some estimates, around 100 billion people have lived. In context with that possible discussion on soteriology, I wonder what the eternal fates of most of those are.

What do you think?

Anyhow, you should feel very, very privileged "Christ found you" as by nearly all but the Universalists beliefs, one would think at least 70 to 90 (how knows, maybe 99) billion souls are bound for eternal torture.

Of the billions, why do you think God found you?

And specifically how do you know, really know, that it is THE VOICE OF THE ALMIGHTY talking to you and not just a nice idea somewhere from your own conscious telling you what's really the right thing to do, your subconscious bringing something to the foreground, your own imagination simply influencing you based upon what you hope to be so?

How do you know? Seriously, I mean really know.

It just seems like a lot of people, sometimes even with best of intentions, come up with the most mumbo jumbo ideas about God and about reality when they listen to the voices in their heads.

I'm not quite clear what you mean here, but I've read the Bible through, I've read numerous books by C.S. Lewis, by Strobel, by McDowell, and on.

But yes indeed, I have read lots on science and I don't apologize at all for that.

The fact that "it provokes confusion" is a very, very interesting concept.

It sounds like you might be willing, when confronted with a variant, or even conflicting, idea, you are willing to quickly discard the "new input." I struggle with see how this can be done safely. What if I was wrong before? Rather than arrogantly thinking I "had it all figured out," I have enabled myself to take in new ideas and see what happens. Good ideas should survive just fine.

If you recall from my original pages on this post, this pursuit, this quest of mine was to find the TRUTH and I fully expected my prior theology to somehow (almost magically?) fall perfectly, or at least sufficiently closely, in line with what I would be finding. Unfortunately, not everything has been affirmed. And that's part of why I came to this site. To seek more input.

Most of the quotes I have given in this thread have been scriptural and a few here and there from church fathers over the years. On this topic, I think I go with something a bit more modern. In the 1950s, Supreme Court Justice Douglas said...

Words, words, words.

Words are very interesting. I love words. I love the study of linguistics. In the earliest phases of my voyage of discovery, I even went down the path a while to understand the development of human languages, in part to try to reconcile with Babel. A personal favorite was John McWhorter's The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language. I find it incredibly interesting how the evolution of words and of language over the course of human history so well parallel the genetic footprints as well as the archaeological record, each pointing to a common Out of Africa story.

I enjoy the study of language and words. Words are the means by which we share ideas.

And perhaps, at the heart of it, it is really about ideas.

Didot, bottom line, I'm not interested in having a faith based upon ignornance, let alone intentional ignorance. I struggle to see why anybody would.

Ineed,

Thanks for stopping by.

And thanks for being nice.

And thanks for your encouragement.

I appreciate it sincerely.

You're quite interesting yourself my friend.

I'm familiar with it a bit.

For anyone who's interested in these(sinful?) WORDs, the following is from the Wikipedia entry on Jericho...

That said, on a lighter side there's this great scene in the Veggie Tales movie, Josh and the Big Wall where the peas are playing the part of the residents of Jericho and they say to the Israelites in this really cute voice, "Children of Israel, Now go away." It's really cute. My kids love this movie.

Yeah, but I think some might even be comfy with a faith resting on the foundation of intentional ignorance. I struggle seeing how anyone could knowingly, intentionally, do this. I suppose at least Veggie Tales has not to many words. And they're funny. Like the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything.

And I suppose there we can wrap it up, with a bit of Silly Songs with Larry. With Larry, in fear of losing his lips, on the couch of a Freud-like Dr. Archibald being the our bridge back between philosophy and religion. At least in a most superficial way.

Liz, You're kind and thanks for stopping by. I hope all is well with you.

Interesting response to the question on the difference between philosophy and religion.

Does this mean our entire discussion has been more of a philosophical discussion? It seems to me we are wrestling with a question that may never be answered, i.e. what evidence is there for the existense of God?

As for the definition of religion, for some people that definition is probably very accurate. But, I think for many people, the philosophy viewpoint is what we struggle with at least once or twice in our life.

Changing the subject (note the smooth transition ), I was in the public library and thought of you when I saw a book I read a few years ago. It is entitled, "Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?". It is a debate between William Lane Craig and John Crossan. Have you read it? If so, what did you think of it? If you haven't read it, see if you can find a copy. I enjoyed it simply because it was a discussion by two theologians.

Granted, there are those who would label Crossan as more of a heretic or blasphemer rather than a theologian, but I see Crossan as a theologian.

I will be out of town for a few days and the laptop given to me by my new employer allows me to see this website, but the icons for doing a response do not appear even when I move the cursor over the area where they should be. So please do not think I am ignoring you.

May your days be filled with joy.

As always,

OldChurchGuy

IndyEllis,
Read your Mithras articles, and then some more. Thinking it over, there are probably still more ancient legends or myths about people coming to life again. Hindu myhtology, for instance, has stories about about Ganesh being brought back to life; and Satyavan, husband of Savitri returning from the dead.

However, I syill think there is a difference between these stories and Jesus' resurrection. They are fairly obviously myths, with no attempt to place them in a time frame, or historical setting. They have some kind of geographical setting, sometimes, but thats all. Also, the tales are very vividly coloured with a strong bizarre element which precludes literal belief. Ganesh, for instance, is the son of Parvati, created from the dust of her body. She sets him to guard her door while she bathes. He refuses admission to her husband, Shiva, which enrages Shiva so much that he brings a lot of gods and chariots, and finally knocks off Ganesh's head. Parvati is enraged and to placate her, Shiva orders that his servants bring the head of the first creature they find. They find an elephant and bring back his head, so Ganesh is "re-born" with an elephant's head.

The significance of this story to Hindus would not be in the literal truth of this tale, but that Ganesh is faithful, helpful, (he is revered as the "remover of obstacles") intelligent (thats why he has a large head), light-footed and light-hearted (he rides a mouse) ...and so on.

Jesus' resurrection, though, is quite different. Apart from the admittedly fantastic coming to life of a dead body, the rest is so down-to-earth, so realistic. As someone said it, or remmebered it. The gospels even record the part of Mary's eyes brimming over, as she looks in to the cave, of John and Peter running to the grave, when the women say it is empty, and John running faster than Peter, but stopping, a little intimidated by death, as a young person would be, outside; while Peter, spontanous as ever, rushes in when he reaches. They see the cloths..and they wonder. And they go away.

It just seems so.... different. From the old tales, certainly.

I wonder if you get what i mean?