You know, the kind where they sing the current contemporary christian songs. The kind where the chorus is song over and over and over and over lol.
Oh, yes, I know that kind of "worship." Makes me think of the Scripture's command to "avoid vain repetition." I've often wondered what the point is of singing the same few words half a dozen times or more. I'm pretty sure God heard me the first time. I suspect the idea is to work people up into an emotional lather by chanting.
Yes, indeed. But that person, again, is someone I can touch, see, hear, smell, etc. Apples and oranges.
Oh, I see. So, the issue for you isn't being able to love, but being able to physically perceive God. You have to be able to reach out and touch Him before you will love Him.
Why have you set this limit on yourself? It sounds like you believe you "just can't help it," but is that really true? There are and have been literally millions of people over the centuries who have had an experience of God. Some of them were just as you are: skeptical, analytical, and determined not to know God except they could lay their hands on Him first. Even some prominent atheists have conceded that there is more to life than simply what can be perceived by the senses. For example, Jean-Paul Sartre shortly before his death said,
"I do not feel that I'm the product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but rather someone who is expected, prepared, prefigured, in short, a being whom only a creator God could have put here."
Bertrand Russell, a very well-known atheist, wrote the following in a letter:
"Even when one feels nearest to other people, something in one needs obstinately to belong to God and refuse to enter into any earthly communion - at least that is how I should express it if I thought there was a God. It is odd, isn't it? I feel passionately for this world and many things and people in it and yet...what is it all? There must be something more important, one feels, though I don't believe there is. I am haunted."
The formerly notorious atheist, Antony Flew, has also recently become a believer in God (though not exactly the Christian one). None of these highly skeptical men could entirely eradicate the innate awareness all of us have of our Creator - even though they made careers and reputations in attempting to do so.
Exactly. Getting over the hurdle from knowing God exists to knowing him intimately is the problem. I'm not sure I know anyone THAT intimately, not even myself lol. I didn't say we need to walk on emotions. I said that to me, having faith is an emotional pursuit. If it was an entirely cerebrial pursuit, I'd be at the head of the line in having faith. I lack emotion. That's just how I'm wired (by God?).
Well, there is blind faith, which seems often to be accompanied by hyper-emotionalism. Normal faith, the faith all of us exercise on a daily basis, however, is typically more rational and rests on specific, trusted facts. Using public transit, or mailing a letter, or sending a package via UPS, or turning the key in the ignition of your car - all of these are relatively unemotional acts of faith prompted by trust in a particular set of facts. The same is true of the Christian's faith in God; it, too, rests upon a set of trustworthy facts. These facts may give rise to emotion, but that emotion should have no significant bearing upon one's faith. With or without an accompanying strong emotion, the facts upon which a Christian rests his faith are true.
You don't lack emotion. You've indicated that you love another. God hasn't made you an emotionless automaton; that's not how He "wired" you. You have
chosen to have your emotions follow your intellect in regards to God and that is okay - to a point. When you choose to engage your emotions in response to what you know of God is your responsibility, not His.
What's the difference between knowledge and belief? Doesn't it take "faith" to make the leap between knowing and believing? The crux of this whole issue it seems...
What do you think? Does it take faith to make the leap between knowing and believing? How does one go from knowing a fact to trusting it enough to act on it (which, I think, is the litmus test for genuine belief)? Is it simply faith that makes this possible? Or is there something else in the mix?
So, all I have to do is read the Bible and, poof, I'll have faith? I know that's not what you mean, but I hear that so often: just read the Bible and you'll figure it out. I have read the Bible, and I still haven't figured it out.
I think Paul the apostle answers your question here pretty well:
Hebrews 11:6 (NKJV)
6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
You can read the Bible till your eyes burst into flames and never come to any confidence in what you read. Part of what must happen is that God must convict you of the truth of what you are reading. If you are secretly determined not to be so convicted, however, God will not force the issue.
If you are sincerely expecting God to reveal Himself to you and you approach reading the Bible with this expectation, then it is that you may find the Word of God piercing you to the core of your being. But this is the problem, isn't it? Most of us don't naturally want God getting into the hidden corners, the coveted practices, the self-gratifying pursuits of our lives and changing them. We understand, mostly instinctively at first, that dealing with God will mean a profound life-shift that removes oneself from the throne of one's life and puts God there instead. He'll root around and throw out of our lives what doesn't suit Him and that isn't always a welcome prospect. So, we play mind games, games of rationalization, games of reason that justify keeping God at arm's length. I'm not saying this is necessarily true of you - but it could be.
Maybe I'm just dense. Maybe I'm just uncapable of "getting it," but when I hear people say things like that I have no reference point to relate it to, so it's just an abstract concept. It doesn't make sense that this invisible person has such a massive amount of love for me and as such, I owe him my unbridled love and faith in return? That's just out there, forgive me for saying so. Way off the common-sense scale. Again, it must be me because I seem to be in a minority.
I agree with you: It doesn't make sense that God has such a massive amount of love for us. After thirty-plus years of being God's child, I am still baffled by His love. This doesn't change the truth of it, however.
I guess to a stranger to the Christian experience looking in on it, it must seem very odd indeed. Certainly, if you are pretty sure God doesn't exist, then a Christian's talk of "being in love with God" must sound, as you say, "out there." Personally, I feel sort of the same about golf. Maybe I'm just dense. Maybe I'm just uncapable of "getting it," but when I hear people say things about their love of golf I have no reference point to relate it to, so it's just an abstract concept. It doesn't make sense that golf has such a massive amount of entertainment value for me and as such, I owe it to the sport to give it a try? That's just out there, forgive me for saying so. Way off the common-sense scale. Again, it must be me because I seem to be in a minority...
But I said the sinner's prayer. Once saved, always saved, right? Isn't that what "born again means?"
I'm not sure what "said the sinner's prayer" means. I've never encountered such a prayer in the Bible...I don't know what you thought you did to be saved, but, from what you've written it seems very clear to me that you aren't, in fact, saved. You aren't alone in this, mind you. I think there are probably more people in the Church who think they are saved and are not, than who actually are saved. Salvation isn't a matter of particular words that you say. It is an exchange: God's "new life in Christ" for your old life of Sin and Self. Salvation is in a person, Jesus Christ, not a ritual.
1 John 5:11-12 (NKJV)
11 And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.
12 He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
I haven't read that. But, isn't "love" one of the main points of Christianity? Love God, love your neighbor, love yourself?
Almost right - except for that "love yourself" part. We do that quite naturally - and that's the problem!
Maybe it's my understanding of the word "love," but to me it connotates an emotional response. Looking up love in the dictionary and it's either a noun (the emotion) or a verb (to be in love). Therefore, equating God with love, doesn't it make sense that faith in God is more of an emotional response? Again, I could be wrong, and probably am, but take emotion out of love and it's something entirely different to me.
The Bible defines love primarily as
self-sacrificing action, not emotion. This kind of love is exemplified in Christ's sacrificial death on the cross for mankind. It is the kind of love Paul the apostle defines in
1 Corinthians 13. This doesn't mean love isn't to some degree emotional - it is - just not mainly so.
I'm not trying to pick an argument here, but this is just an issue that constantly escapes the grasp of my comprehension. Yes, I can probably convince myself without too much of a struggle that there is a God, a creator figure. But the limits of my comprehension stop there. To convince myself that this person who has been around longer than the universe wants me to know him personally? How is that possible?
Friend, I honestly don't know. It is perhaps the greatest mystery of all. Why does God care about me? I have no idea except that He tells me He loves me. Why is that? Goodness knows! Certainly, I don't deserve His love! Rather than this putting me off a relationship with God, it, instead, deepens my love for Him. I think this what He intends His love for me should do (and you, too, I'm sure.)
Maybe some day something will happen that enlightens me, but I feel like I'm just beating my head against the wall right now. No sense in wasting anybody's time on this forum anymore than I already have, too. I do appreciate your efforts, however.
Hey, no problem. I'm glad to have been able to talk a bit with you about your God issues. May I recommend a helmet? For the head-against-the-wall thing?
Peace.
