My Journey From Being an Atheist to an Agnostic to an Calvinist Christian

Are you familiar with true and false conversion?

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Well technically speaking there is no such thing as a false conversion. You either convert or you don't. Once you trade your dead spirit for the living spirit of God there is no going back. Imho

Matthew 28:20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Paradoxum said:

Well I had faith as much as anyone else, so if I never had faith, then no average Christian has saving faith.

So if I had to pick one of the above, I'd say, 'Others say you can deny him and a person would be denied the opportunity to repent and suffer Hell.'

In my opinion, anyone who thinks 'someone can't genuinely lose faith' is narrow minded and can't handle reality. It literally happens.

My opinion as a Christian was that Christians could lose faith, and could come back at any time. I'd say that is the most reasonable position.

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It is by grace you attained salvation the faith was when you accepted it.
But your faith can weaken,yet you still have salvation.
It could be you never accepted Christ in your heart.
Thank you for your answering

Sorry, I must have missed this post before.

Paradoxum said:

Well if it could just be feelings, why believe in God?

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That's a tough question for me to give you a satisfying answer to. Before I had wanted to believe in God (about some fifteen to twenty years ago), but it just seemed like a feeling and that was it. It's difficult for me to come up with a way to explain how I am alive now spiritually--it's a matter of a change of my whole life, as in feeling and understanding of things.

Paradoxum said:

Well
Well we are worldly as much as you are worldly... we are both in the world.

Why do you think it's a fact?

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I know we are both in the world, but I have something that other people who have not been regenerated by God do not have: I have a living spirit. Those who have not been regenerated by God have a dead spirit. I have been born again of the Spirit and therefore are no more of the world but am of God.

I think it's a fact because that is what is stated in the Bible and I trust that every word that God has caused to be written is true.

Paradoxum said:

If you know it could be psychology, why think it is God then? Just because you want to believe n God?

I hope you don't mind me asking. I always feel a little bad questioning someone's faith, if they seem to like their faith alot. I know it hurts to lose it.

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I can't give you a better answer other than I trust that it is God. All I can do is point you to Jesus; if you know Him, then you know why I can trust God.

I want to believe in God and I do because He gave me that ability. I like my faith a lot; it's the best thing that ever happened to me. The one thing that I fear (outside of God Himself) is that my faith will be taken away from me.

Paradoxum said:

Well, I suppose I wanted to make sure my belief, and reasons for those beliefs, were reasonable. But I then found the reasons I had for believing in God seemed more and more shaky. There's no justifiable reason to believe, and the reasons to believe in God don't stand up.

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I'm sorry and I don't mean to sound negative or mean or anything, but from what you are saying here it sounds as though you love reason more than God. What happened when you met God as a Christian? Did you not love Him more than anything in the world? Why did reason seem more appealing to you? Not that God isn't reasonable but to try to comprehend Him by worldly reasoning is not possible; He is too infinite. What would be a justifiable reason for you to believe in Him? Is not a relationship with Him that you can only comprehend by the spirit enough? Does it have to be something apprehended by any of the senses? Or is it something else?

I guess I just don't understand how a Christian, once they have come into contact with the holiness of our Lord and Saviour, how they can reject that for something that is not Him (which would be something that is of the world, for there is only the world and God and nothing else).

I suppose I came from a different background perhaps, maybe that is some of the cause of my inability to understand. My family wasn't religious by any means though they went to church. It was a lackadaisical going to church out of a sense of that they should be doing this instead of wanting to go. Even though I was raised in a religious environment, I had no idea who God was. I found reason and logic and philosophy very fulfilling for a time and had no sense of needing God or any sort of religion in my life until I actually met God; now it all makes sense to me and my former life that I had lived as an atheist seems so shallow and full of empty things which can promise no lasting fulfillment.

Well, I've got to hurry off to work, so sorry for the rushed post; I wish I could have spent more time on it.

ObamaChristian said:

The doctrine of irresistible grace was very appealing to me.
It felt somewhat like at the view of universalism, while at the sometime not quite.

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So you're tolerant at considering universalism? Interesting. To me, Calvinism to its logical conclusion, assuming we think of God as all-good or all-loving, reaches universalism. Thomas Talbott, a big-time universalist, talks about this in his books.

Universalism is a tricky subject because the Bible itself doesn't take a solid stance on it. There are about as many passages that support it as there are passages that support eternal hell and annhilationism. God is sovereign and can apply the blood of Christ to anyone. But I probably wouldn't run around telling everyone that they are saved because there just isn't enough Biblical evidence to back that up. It is not our position to decide who is saved and who is not. God does the saving. We are only here to make disciples and that starts with sharing Christ.

The "eternal" is what's in question, so any passage that has an English translation of "eternal" can be interpreted in favor of universalism. Although I'm partial to annihilationism (some people call it soft universalism), I don't think the full rhetorical and substantial support is there.

No universalist goes around telling people they're saved. The beauty of universalism, IMO, is that it forces you to understand salvation and "eternal life" as things that start in the present moment. Every person still has to make a commitment to God in order to be saevd. You also have the freedom to have a more rigorous application of salvation, where (if God is actually nice and everyone gets in in the end, not without some punishment post-mortem) you don't have to believe doctrines that lead to all sorts of bad things, such as "once saved always saved," and can see salvation as something you can lose even on a day-to-day basis in relation to how you're following the will of God or not.

I definitely agree with you that eternal life starts the moment you are saved, but I think I am in a stage where I do believe in OSAS. I just can't seem to logically grasp the idea that salvation can be lost moment by moment. Once our Spirits become alive we take on the process of renewing our minds and being conformed to the image of Christ. This is not an easy process, and it is why discipleship is so important (a major issue I have with mega churches). So many Christians today never truly go through this process and many of them end up falling away from the faith. Does that mean that they were never saved? Many people say yes, but if that was the case why did God draw them to Him in the first place? At the moment of their salvation they no longer belong to the enemy, but the enemy will do everything they can to prevent saved people from growing the Kingdom. Gods promises are bigger than our failures. If it becomes possible that we lose our salvation at any moment it makes life become about us. A saved persons life is not about them because they are dead. It is about Christ living through them. IMHO

I don't think moment-by-moment salvation makes it all about us. At the same time, I don't think it's quite moment-by-moment, but all about the central mechanism that determines righteousness and salvation: faith.

To me, faith is both an inclination beyond direct volition as well as something exercised directly by the will. Kierkegaard compared it to floating on your back over forty thousand fathoms. Your will here helps you get to the point of floating on your back, but ultimately you have to trust things enough to let them go so you can float.

You have faith and its opposite, sin. To sin continually brings a state of spiritual death, which basically means you're not even aware of God to any large degree, and so you float on in a sort of passivity. But a person who has faith is in a state of trust. A single instance of breaking this trust doesn't break the trust, just as a single moment of doubting yourself on the water makes you fall down completely and drown. The takeaway is that you have to work at it to get from a state of faith and righteousness to a state of spiritual death.

And it doesn't become about us, because living in faith always means living by the will of God. When we're alive in faith, this means we're living as God would like us to live.

While I do agree that it is a matter of trust moment by moment and that living outside of faith is living in sin, I disagree about its implications. Gods spirit cannot die and that is what we received at the moment of salvation. I don't believe that a saved person can then spiritually die. Hebrews 13:5 says He is with us always. If God has given us His Spirit it cannot be removed. We might fall away from faith but that doesn't mean we become spiritually dead. It just means we are spiritually sick. If this is not the case then we have to seriously redefine what took place on the cross.

God's spirit doesn't die; we die in relation to God's spirit. The ray of sunlight is still there, just we're the ones who step out of it. He might be with us always, but we're not always with him.

That makes no sense to me lol

Why?

now faith said:

It is by grace you attained salvation the faith was when you accepted it.
But your faith can weaken,yet you still have salvation.
It could be you never accepted Christ in your heart.
Thank you for your answering

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Maybe I never accepted Christ in my heart, and maybe you nor the Pope has either.

dhh712 said:

That's a tough question for me to give you a satisfying answer to. Before I had wanted to believe in God (about some fifteen to twenty years ago), but it just seemed like a feeling and that was it. It's difficult for me to come up with a way to explain how I am alive now spiritually--it's a matter of a change of my whole life, as in feeling and understanding of things.

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I don't see how that is different from a worldview change, but fair enough.

I know we are both in the world, but I have something that other people who have not been regenerated by God do not have: I have a living spirit. Those who have not been regenerated by God have a dead spirit. I have been born again of the Spirit and therefore are no more of the world but am of God.

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Well I wont argue about that, since I don't believe in spirits.

I think it's a fact because that is what is stated in the Bible and I trust that every word that God has caused to be written is true.

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Why do you think the Bible was written by God?

I used to think the same thing, but the Bible does seem to have problems, such as contradictions (eg: What with the resurrection?)

I can't give you a better answer other than I trust that it is God. All I can do is point you to Jesus; if you know Him, then you know why I can trust God.

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Well to know Jesus (who isn't on earth) you sort of have to believe in spirits already.

I want to believe in God and I do because He gave me that ability. I like my faith a lot; it's the best thing that ever happened to me. The one thing that I fear (outside of God Himself) is that my faith will be taken away from me.

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It sounds like you believe because you want to believe. But I wont push my beliefs too strongly.

I'm sorry and I don't mean to sound negative or mean or anything, but from what you are saying here it sounds as though you love reason more than God. What happened when you met God as a Christian? Did you not love Him more than anything in the world? Why did reason seem more appealing to you? Not that God isn't reasonable but to try to comprehend Him by worldly reasoning is not possible; He is too infinite. What would be a justifiable reason for you to believe in Him? Is not a relationship with Him that you can only comprehend by the spirit enough? Does it have to be something apprehended by any of the senses? Or is it something else?

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I don't know what it means to love reason.

I loved God, then problem is that no matter how much you love someone, it matters whether that person really exists. If God exists, reason should support that. When I was a Christian, I thought I had good reasons to believe in God.

So I wouldn't say it's about liking reason more than God. Reason is how to know if what you are doing makes sense. I loved God, but if I'm loving a fictional character, then it doesn't matter how much I love that character... there's no reason to believe in that character.

A reason to believe doesn't have to be something to do with the senses. But having 'a relationship with Him that you can only comprehend by the spirit' isn't enough. It could just be a psychological thing I made up... no matter how strong the feeling is, or how strong the conviction.

I guess I just don't understand how a Christian, once they have come into contact with the holiness of our Lord and Saviour, how they can reject that for something that is not Him (which would be something that is of the world, for there is only the world and God and nothing else).

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I didn't reject God for something else. I just stopped believing in God. Religious experiences could just be psychological... so if someone understands that, they could stop believing the experiences prove God.

I suppose I came from a different background perhaps, maybe that is some of the cause of my inability to understand. My family wasn't religious by any means though they went to church. It was a lackadaisical going to church out of a sense of that they should be doing this instead of wanting to go. Even though I was raised in a religious environment, I had no idea who God was. I found reason and logic and philosophy very fulfilling for a time and had no sense of needing God or any sort of religion in my life until I actually met God; now it all makes sense to me and my former life that I had lived as an atheist seems so shallow and full of empty things which can promise no lasting fulfillment.

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Well I came from a Christian family, so I suppose my story is sort of the opposite to yours. I was a committed Christian, and then I lost faith.

Well, I've got to hurry off to work, so sorry for the rushed post; I wish I could have spent more time on it.

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That's okay.

"Why?"

Its just seems counterintuitive. If God has given us His Spirit and promised to never leave us then it stands to reason that we cannot separate ourselves from Him. What you are saying makes it more about us than Him. If it is true that salvation can be lost moment by moment then there was never any reason for Christ to come in the first place. We had the law and the law provided exactly what you are talking about. But if we believe Jesus is the Messiah then the game has changed. We are no longer operating in a system of do's and don'ts. Yes, a saved person can still sin but we are now under grace and dead to the punishment of the law (we still reap what we sow in an earthly sense). Our spirit is now alive in God and we go through the process of sanctification to get our minds there too (in the new earth we will get our new bodies). So God has acted(Spirit),is acting(Soul) and will act(Body). God always finishes what he starts, we just don't always understand what that actually looks like.

Faith Unites said:

Its just seems counterintuitive. If God has given us His Spirit and promised to never leave us then it stands to reason that we cannot separate ourselves from Him. What you are saying makes it more about us than Him. If it is true that salvation can be lost moment by moment then there was never any reason for Christ to come in the first place. We had the law and the law provided exactly what you are talking about. But if we believe Jesus is the Messiah then the game has changed. We are no longer operating in a system of do's and don'ts. Yes, a saved person can still sin but we are now under grace and dead to the punishment of the law (we still reap what we sow in an earthly sense). Our spirit is now alive in God and we go through the process of sanctification to get our minds there too (in the new earth we will get our new bodies). So God has acted(Spirit),is acting(Soul) and will act(Body). God always finishes what he starts, we just don't always understand what that actually looks like.

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If I'm in a relationship with someone and promise to never leave them, are they not free to leave the relationship? And it doesn't make it more about them if they leave; if anything it makes it more about me, because I have more fidelity and love for them.

But yeah, the implicit conclusion here is that God doesn't always get what he wants in this life, because we have the freedom to walk away. But that's only in this life; the good news of universalism is that there is a judgment, where everyone will realize what they've lost by not being in relationship with God, and all will repent.

"If I'm in a relationship with someone and promise to never leave them, are they not free to leave the relationship? And it doesn't make it more about them if they leave; if anything it makes it more about me, because I have more fidelity and love for them."

I guess I haven't explained my stance particularly well. I believe in Oneness (john 17:21). Once our spirits have been intwined with Gods they become a new irreversible thing. Like water and a tea bag becoming tea. So while I may fall away from God mentally, I can never separated from Him spiritually. I may have a flaw in my theology, but it has not been presented to me yet Biblically. I hope this helps to at least express where I am coming from.

With that conception, there's definitely no such thing as falling away. IMV, "oneness" with the passage you're talking about is metaphorical, much like "the two become one flesh."

Well at least we are on the same page now haha. On that topic we might just have to agree to disagree. Everything Jesus did and said was to align us with reality. If some of these truths don't seem to fit into our theology we just have to change our theology. He didn't just come to show us how to live or tell us he was the messiah. He came to fulfill the law and put us back into right standing with the Father. But on top of this He came to give us eternal life not immortal life. That means He came to give us a life that existed before we existed. He does this spiritually. So when God sees us He sees Christ because He is literally our life. Now this does not appeal to our linear logic at all but we believe these things because certain truths have been revealed to us. Sound crazy yet? haha

Faith Unites said:

Well at least we are on the same page now haha. On that topic we might just have to agree to disagree. Everything Jesus did and said was to align us with reality. If some of these truths don't seem to fit into our theology we just have to change our theology. He didn't just come to show us how to live or tell us he was the messiah. He came to fulfill the law and put us back into right standing with the Father. But on top of this He came to give us eternal life not immortal life. That means He came to give us a life that existed before we existed. He does this spiritually. So when God sees us He sees Christ because He is literally our life. Now this does not appeal to our linear logic at all but we believe these things because certain truths have been revealed to us. Sound crazy yet? haha

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Doesnt sound crazy at all. It sounds ridiculously impossible, and futile especially considering God already chose His people before we were created. Why bother?

We weren't created. We were born