Christians, has your faith been challenged?

[cloudyday2]

Christians, has your faith been challenged, and how did you overcome the challenge?
Examples of challenges might be:
- you became outraged by some seemingly senseless suffering
- your fundamentalist understanding of Genesis conflicted with your secular learning
- you were disgusted by sexual or financial corruption in your church leadership
- you were disillusioned by reading a book about the historical Jesus
- you found objectionable events in the OT

I've heard about these challenges from the perspective of people who lost their faith, but I want to hear from people who overcame these challenges to maintain their faith. Did you have to reinvent your Christian faith in some way?

 

[BeStill&Know]

Christians, has your faith been challenged, and how did you overcome the challenge?
Examples of challenges might be:
- you became outraged by some seemingly senseless suffering
- your fundamentalist understanding of Genesis conflicted with your secular learning
- you were disgusted by sexual or financial corruption in your church leadership
- you were disillusioned by reading a book about the historical Jesus
- you found objectionable events in the OT

I've heard about these challenges from the perspective of people who lost their faith, but I want to hear from people who overcame these challenges to maintain their faith. Did you have to reinvent your Christian faith in some way?

Hmm, A couple of times in my past, sicknesses, repeated betrayals, have caused me within a hairs breath of losing faith, that their was even a God.
I don't recall anything I actually did to begin again our walk. I think it was all Him. Though I came close to falling into the abyss and letting go of His hand, He held on to mine. He will not forsake us.
http://www.thejourney2grace.com/index.cfm?i=11059&mid=1000&id=324730

The others in your list never applied to me. When I became a believer, I simply asked the Lord if He would explain to me certain things that you mentioned. So eventually He did. He never asked me to look to any church leader as more than what they were. Dust and water who temporarily was the instrument which may or may not have His Ruach in them. Time would tell.

 

[SkyWriting]

Christians, has your faith been challenged, and how did you overcome the challenge?
Examples of challenges might be:
- you became outraged by some seemingly senseless suffering
- your fundamentalist understanding of Genesis conflicted with your secular learning
- you were disgusted by sexual or financial corruption in your church leadership
- you were disillusioned by reading a book about the historical Jesus
- you found objectionable events in the OT

I've heard about these challenges from the perspective of people who lost their faith, but I want to hear from people who overcame these challenges to maintain their faith. Did you have to reinvent your Christian faith in some way?

Faith is about trusting God. I have some similar "faith" in my parents
even after discovering things I thought were "bad" about them.
My views about the church never interfere with my conversation with God.

 

[dysert]

Christians, has your faith been challenged, and how did you overcome the challenge?
Examples of challenges might be:
- you became outraged by some seemingly senseless suffering
- your fundamentalist understanding of Genesis conflicted with your secular learning
- you were disgusted by sexual or financial corruption in your church leadership
- you were disillusioned by reading a book about the historical Jesus
- you found objectionable events in the OT

I've heard about these challenges from the perspective of people who lost their faith, but I want to hear from people who overcame these challenges to maintain their faith. Did you have to reinvent your Christian faith in some way?

To be honest, some of these things have bothered me; others, not. What it all comes down to is whether you can deal with cognitive dissonance, paradox, and the belief that there's Someone who is smarter and wiser than me. I walked through a spiritual desert as I struggled with some of these things. But I think that belief is a choice and that faith comes from God. I have *chosen* to believe things that my puny brain would otherwise reject. It's a pride thing. Am I willing to be scorned by the intelligentsia for believing certain things that seem to fly in the face of fact or moral propriety? Yes, I decided, I am. I will continue to believe God even if I can't make sense of things.

 

[cloudyday2]

To be honest, some of these things have bothered me; others, not. What it all comes down to is whether you can deal with cognitive dissonance, paradox, and the belief that there's Someone who is smarter and wiser than me. I walked through a spiritual desert as I struggled with some of these things. But I think that belief is a choice and that faith comes from God. I have *chosen* to believe things that my puny brain would otherwise reject. It's a pride thing. Am I willing to be scorned by the intelligentsia for believing certain things that seem to fly in the face of fact or moral propriety? Yes, I decided, I am. I will continue to believe God even if I can't make sense of things.

What do you believe as a Christian to minimize the objections your brain might feel? For example, the virgin birth isn't mentioned in the earliest sources (Paul and Mark), but it is part of the Nicene Creed this forum and many denominations use to define Christianity.

 

[PloverWing]

Christians, has your faith been challenged, and how did you overcome the challenge?...Did you have to reinvent your Christian faith in some way?

I'll tell my story briefly here, though I'll be happy to expand on it if you like.

I was raised with a belief in young earth creationism. If the universe wasn't created in 7 days, relatively recently, then Biblical inerrancy fails; and if inerrancy fails, then the whole of Christianity fails. The problem was, I kept running into counter-evidence. I could look up into the night sky and see stars that are millions of light years away. The Leakeys were finding hominid fossils in Africa when I was a kid, and they were on the cover of Time magazine. And so on. Eventually, I realized I was trying to hide from scientific evidence in order to protect my faith, and that's no good. I don't really believe that something is true if I have to hide from truth in order to believe it.

By the time I came to this realization, I was in college. I was fortunate to be taking a year-long historical theology class, in which we studied patristic, medieval, Reformation, and modern theologians. I also spent a summer reading on my own, reading theologians who were outside the Evangelical tradition I'd been raised in: Rauschenbusch, Bonhoeffer, Reinhold Niebuhr, Richard Niebuhr, Chesterton, Schleiermacher, others. These writers helped me see a way of approaching Christianity that is open to mainstream science and that doesn't depend on inerrancy. The faith that emerged from this painful year of my life was more firmly grounded in the centuries-long chain of Christian thinkers who have gone before me. No Christian theologian is free from error, but many of them were very very smart; we're not just making up this religion out of nothing.

 

[cloudyday2]

I'll tell my story briefly here, though I'll be happy to expand on it if you like.

I was raised with a belief in young earth creationism. If the universe wasn't created in 7 days, relatively recently, then Biblical inerrancy fails; and if inerrancy fails, then the whole of Christianity fails. The problem was, I kept running into counter-evidence. I could look up into the night sky and see stars that are millions of light years away. The Leakeys were finding hominid fossils in Africa when I was a kid, and they were on the cover of Time magazine. And so on. Eventually, I realized I was trying to hide from scientific evidence in order to protect my faith, and that's no good. I don't really believe that something is true if I have to hide from truth in order to believe it.

By the time I came to this realization, I was in college. I was fortunate to be taking a year-long historical theology class, in which we studied patristic, medieval, Reformation, and modern theologians. I also spent a summer reading on my own, reading theologians who were outside the Evangelical tradition I'd been raised in: Rauschenbusch, Bonhoeffer, Reinhold Niebuhr, Richard Niebuhr, Chesterton, Schleiermacher, others. These writers helped me see a way of approaching Christianity that is open to mainstream science and that doesn't depend on inerrancy. The faith that emerged from this painful year of my life was more firmly grounded in the centuries-long chain of Christian thinkers who have gone before me. No Christian theologian is free from error, but many of them were very very smart; we're not just making up this religion out of nothing.

Thanks, @PloverWing , how about the challenges presented by history? I have read several books on the origins of Judaism and Christianity, and I haven't found any evidence that God inspired these religions. I also haven't found any evidence that Jesus was particularly special. Most of the wise sayings of Jesus were first spoken by earlier Jews. The prediction of the Kingdom of Heaven within the generation of Jesus turned-out to be wrong unless we finagle. Paul clearly understood the Kingdom of Heaven to be a momentous historical event accompanied by a general resurrection within his own lifetime.

So I'm curious how you worked-around those issues. (Also, I hope I don't come across as obnoxious. I have seen some apparent answers to prayers and other evidence that God exists, but I also must acknowledge the history and science. My solution is to hypothesize that God must work through all religions - even though these religions are all wrong in different ways.)

 

[JackRT]

My faith has been challenged greatly It has not been broken but it has been radically changed. I am no longer a fundamentalist Catholic but a very liberal/progressive Christian. I am a much better person because of it. The reason??? --- to maintain my spiritual and intellectual integrity.

 

[dysert]

What do you believe as a Christian to minimize the objections your brain might feel? For example, the virgin birth isn't mentioned in the earliest sources (Paul and Mark), but it is part of the Nicene Creed this forum and many denominations use to define Christianity.

I'm not sure what you're asking me, but there's no cognitive dissonance with regard to the virgin birth. After all, it was prophesied in early Genesis; and it makes logical sense: since Jesus was sinless, it stands to reason that He would not have inherited the sin "disease" from the bloodline of Adam.

 

[cloudyday2]

I'm not sure what you're asking me, but there's no cognitive dissonance with regard to the virgin birth. After all, it was prophesied in early Genesis; and it makes logical sense: since Jesus was sinless, it stands to reason that He would not have inherited the sin "disease" from the bloodline of Adam.

The question on the virgin birth is not simply "did it happen?" - but "did the earliest Christians believe it in the time of Paul (50 CE) and Mark (70 CE)". Many people think it is suspicious that early Christians failed to mention the virgin birth until Matthew and Luke (80-90 CE). Furthermore, John doesn't mention the virgin birth - even though it would have fit nicely with the theme.

Another problem is that the virgin birth narratives are almost entirely different in Matthew and Luke. The differences cannot be resolved by simply assuming that both narratives are a partial list of the facts - the facts contradict each other in some areas.

 

[PloverWing]

Thanks, @PloverWing , how about the challenges presented by history? I have read several books on the origins of Judaism and Christianity, and I haven't found any evidence that God inspired these religions. I also haven't found any evidence that Jesus was particularly special. Most of the wise sayings of Jesus were first spoken by earlier Jews. The prediction of the Kingdom of Heaven within the generation of Jesus turned-out to be wrong unless we finagle. Paul clearly understood the Kingdom of Heaven to be a momentous historical event accompanied by a general resurrection within his own lifetime.

Can you be more specific about the challenges presented by history? Some aspects of history are troublesome, and others aren't; I'm not sure which issues you have in mind.

Detecting whether God inspired a religion is a difficult thing. It's not a problem for me that Jesus taught things that were similar to the Jewish teachers that preceded him; he was Jewish, and Christianity was a movement that grew out of Judaism. Christians believe that God was embodied in Jesus, and that this is why Jesus is special; but Jesus' teachings are not a radical break with the Old Testament prophets.

I agree that some of the New Testament writers seem to have been mistaken about how soon the Second Coming would be. Note, though, that both St. Paul and the Gospels warn about trying to predict the Second Coming too exactly -- no one knows the day or the hour -- so they seem to have been aware that they were making a guess that could be wrong.

(You're not at all obnoxious, by the way! Your questions are good and important ones.)

 

[cloudyday2]

Can you be more specific about the challenges presented by history? Some aspects of history are troublesome, and others aren't; I'm not sure which issues you have in mind.

Detecting whether God inspired a religion is a difficult thing. It's not a problem for me that Jesus taught things that were similar to the Jewish teachers that preceded him; he was Jewish, and Christianity was a movement that grew out of Judaism. Christians believe that God was embodied in Jesus, and that this is why Jesus is special; but Jesus' teachings are not a radical break with the Old Testament prophets.

I agree that some of the New Testament writers seem to have been mistaken about how soon the Second Coming would be. Note, though, that both St. Paul and the Gospels warn about trying to predict the Second Coming too exactly -- no one knows the day or the hour -- so they seem to have been aware that they were making a guess that could be wrong.

(You're not at all obnoxious, by the way! Your questions are good and important ones.)

I will try to answer, but it is probably going to seem a bit disorganized. It is hard for me to summarize the historical problems succinctly.

The Jews traditionally believed that God blessed their nation and they needed to show gratitude by following the Law. When I have read the Law in the Ten Commandments and Leviticus, I am very disappointed. There is no evidence of divine inspiration or even much human inspiration. It's a tribute to the Jews that they were able to create a good religion from the primitive and clumsy set of laws that God was supposed to have given to Moses.

Of course there is the Documentary Hypothesis and the more modern hypotheses showing that the Torah was spliced together from the texts of competing Jewish sects. One book I particularly enjoyed reading was "From Gods to God" ( https://books.google.com/books/about/From_Gods_to_God.html?id=SsUZO_vj-8IC ). It shows how editors of the Torah defeated heretical narrative by adding new context that subtly changed the meaning of the whole to be more orthodox (lots of other things too).

Books about Judaism in the time of Jesus and the historical Jesus are another interest. I just finished the book "Beyond the Essene Hypothesis" ( https://books.google.com/books/about/Beyond_the_Essene_Hypothesis.html?id=AnAiz6fB2X8C ). This was written by the chair of the Enoch Seminar ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch_seminar ). One of the popular Jewish texts of that time was "Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs". Traditionally the Christian elements were considered to be interpolations from around 100 CE, but some think that the elements assumed to be Christian were actually ideas that existed before Christianity.

I'm getting kind of tired of typing, and I'm sure this post is very confusing (as I predicted). Hopefully it gives you some idea about the areas of history that I find interesting and that make me skeptical about any divine inspiration of Judaism or Christianity.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

To be honest, some of these things have bothered me; others, not. What it all comes down to is whether you can deal with cognitive dissonance, paradox, and the belief that there's Someone who is smarter and wiser than me. I walked through a spiritual desert as I struggled with some of these things. But I think that belief is a choice and that faith comes from God. I have *chosen* to believe things that my puny brain would otherwise reject. It's a pride thing. Am I willing to be scorned by the intelligentsia for believing certain things that seem to fly in the face of fact or moral propriety? Yes, I decided, I am. I will continue to believe God even if I can't make sense of things.

And do you consider this to be a rational position?

Can you name another area in your life where you would allow yourself to take such a stance?

And, can you name another person who takes such a stance about a subject that is NOT christian beliefs?

What can you conclude from the answers you have to these 3 questions?

 

[dysert]

And do you consider this to be a rational position?

Maybe, especially when you consider the possibility that reality consists of more than what we can process with our five senses.

Can you name another area in your life where you would allow yourself to take such a stance?

Can't think of any.

And, can you name another person who takes such a stance about a subject that is NOT christian beliefs?

No.

What can you conclude from the answers you have to these 3 questions?

I conclude that I'm open-minded about reality, and that when dealing with the subject that is of supreme importance, special considerations should be made.

 

[SkyWriting]

What do you believe as a Christian to minimize the objections your brain might feel? For example, the virgin birth isn't mentioned in the earliest sources (Paul and Mark), but it is part of the Nicene Creed this forum and many denominations use to define Christianity.

The effect my mom has on me is due to some early years
most of which I don't remember. Odds are good that she
is my biological mother. Jesus didn't consider His mother
to be a Holy Relic.

 

[SkyWriting]

I will try to answer, but it is probably going to seem a bit disorganized. It is hard for me to summarize the historical problems succinctly.

Everyone has problems sorting out history. History is the
written record of man, not a reality to sift through in a
laboratory, to poke and probe.

 

[SkyWriting]

The question on the virgin birth is not simply "did it happen?" - but "did the earliest Christians believe it in the time of Paul (50 CE) and Mark (70 CE)". Many people think it is suspicious that early Christians failed to mention the virgin birth until Matthew and Luke (80-90 CE). Furthermore, John doesn't mention the virgin birth - even though it would have fit nicely with the theme.

Another problem is that the virgin birth narratives are almost entirely different in Matthew and Luke. The differences cannot be resolved by simply assuming that both narratives are a partial list of the facts - the facts contradict each other in some areas.

History is never facts. History is based on personal observations and
is peppered with conclusions and summations.

There are at least two dozen reasons for differing accounts. Not being
fully independent sources, one writer will leave out parts of the story
already told well by another. Or they might leave in their version of
an event thinking it adds a complementary point of view. And dozens
more reasons that we don't know.

 

[Uber Genius]

Documentary Hypothesis and the more modern hypotheses showing that the Torah was spliced together from the texts of competing Jewish sects.

It seems what to be a problem with the quality of your sources. The documentary hypothesis is a circular argument. Though popular 70 years ago it has fallen out of favor.

The date for Luke are set at 60-62 not 80-90. Looks like you have Erhman or Jesus Seminar for sources here.

Henotheistic origins in likewise a theory based on some equivocations on the term "monotheism."

One way to validate sources is to compare an authors popular work wi their peer-reviewed work.

The Jesus Seminar was formed to publish outside of the research peer review process because they were frustrated by peer demanding evidence for their views as opposed to question-begging.

If you are interested in OT listen to dr. Michael s. Heiser, or "Is God a moral monster," by Paul Copan.

Lee Strobel does a great job interviewing scholars in "The Case for Faith."

Stay away from The History Channel, they are just a little less accurate than Monty Python's "Life of Brian."

 

[SkyWriting]

I have read several books on the origins of Judaism and Christianity, and I haven't found any evidence that God inspired these religions. I also haven't found any evidence that Jesus was particularly special.

Other than the number of people who claim He was the Son of God including Himself?
People who act like God's only Son are in a special class. Some of them locked up.
Liar, Lunatic, or Lord?

 

[Uber Genius]

- you became outraged by some seemingly senseless suffering
- your fundamentalist understanding of Genesis conflicted with your secular learning
- you were disgusted by sexual or financial corruption in your church leadership
- you were disillusioned by reading a book about the historical Jesus
- you found objectionable events in the OT

Good questions. Wish pastors would ask these types of questions.

Senseless suffering is most problematic. I have had over $550,000 stolen from me in bonuses and commissions. I have been fired as the number one salesperson in the region on 2 separate occasions, so that my employer could rob me.

I have had many a prayer for sick or dying friend unanswered.

In 2008 my wife of 20 years was diagnosed with Brest cancer and blamed me and asked me to leave the house. We are together and she is a 7-year survivor. She no longer blames me for the cancer.

I had young earth beliefs that proved to be false and was somewhat painful the first two years in college. But then I learned that Christians, far fm being against science, maintained science and progressed the method all through the majority of the last 2000 years.

I also have a rich experience of God's goodness in my life. Which more than overcomes the pain and suffering.

And have developed a trust in God despite my circumstances and focus on using the gifts God has given me to help those in need.