Log in
Register
Search
Search titles only
By:
Search titles only
By:
Forums
New posts
Forum list
Search forums
Leaderboards
Games
Our Blog
Blogs
New entries
New comments
Blog list
Search blogs
Credits
Transactions
Shop
Blessings: ✟0.00
Tickets
Open new ticket
Watched
Donate
Log in
Register
Search
Search titles only
By:
Search titles only
By:
More options
Toggle width
Share this page
Share this page
Share
Reddit
Pinterest
Tumblr
WhatsApp
Email
Share
Link
Menu
Install the app
Install
Forums
Outreach
Outreach
Exploring Christianity
No conviction of sin
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="losthope" data-source="post: 58417521" data-attributes="member: 94863"><p>To joey down under.</p><p></p><p>You wrote this:</p><p><em>In black-and-white terms you are currently living like an unbeliever but want to believe but can't at the same time. It is a terribly uncomfortable state to live in.</em> </p><p></p><p>That sounds like a good description of me. Not all of the time, but during the times when I am continuing my search for faith.</p><p></p><p><em>Excessive focus on lack of experience by yourself sounds like it is THE cause of a major jump from doubt to unbelief. </em></p><p></p><p>You call it excessive focus on experience. I would call it getting concerned because I never had a prayer answered, never had any guidance from God, never learned any spiritual truth, never had a conviction of sin, never had any awareness of God, never had any awareness of the Holy Spirit changing me from within, never had any kind of feedback or confirmation from God that my prayer for salvation had been accepted. But whatever someone chooses to call it, yes, that was what caused me to question my salvation. Or, you could describe it in another way: apparently nothing had changed since I became a believer, and that was not what I was expecting and it was not what the Bible promises, and so I realised that something was wrong.</p><p></p><p>In my experience there are (at least) two types of Christians. (I began a Christian Forums thread on that topic about a year ago, and many of the responders agreed with me.) There are those who rely essentially on the promises of the Bible to sustain their faith, and there are those who expect God to act in their life. I happen to be the type of person who would be in the second group. Perhaps, to Christians in the first group, those in the second group appear to have an excessive focus on experience. But please, do not condemn those who happen to have different needs in their faith.</p><p></p><p><em>1. God may have had people minister to you or caused events to happen in your life that you did not see His hand in it, further complicated by lack of feelings in your life over anything.</em></p><p></p><p>I agree that it is possible that God caused things to happen without me being aware that it was due to God. But if so, I can only echo the words of a local pastor who I spoke to a while ago, I confess that I lack wisdom in discerning why God should not have made Himself more obvious to you.</p><p></p><p>Over the years, several times there have been Christians who claimed to have received a message from God about me, and told me for example that certain things would happen in the next seven days, or the next forty days. None of those things ever happened. So in addition to not being aware of what God might, or might not, have done for me, I am aware of examples of when God definitely did not act, despite the sincere words of those Christians.</p><p></p><p><em>2. Experiences of God may lead some people to salvation. I have also heard accounts of Muslims having Jesus appear to them in their dreams and that led to them believing in Him. The vast majority of people become believers through the Gospel.</em> </p><p></p><p>When I became a believer it was through the gospel. It was only after I became a believer that I expected experiences of God.</p><p></p><p>Whether or not I would need some kind of experience of God in order to guide me to become a believer again, I do not know. Experience of God would definitely help the process, of course. But I would also expect God to be resourceful enough to find a way to bring me to salvation that did not require an up-front experience of God.</p><p></p><p><em>I disagree with you there. Your experience is that what was done for you by Jesus on the cross (as narrated by the Gospels and explained by the early letters to the churches) was not enough for you. You wanted God to give you more that because you did not have sufficient faith in Him to keep walking in your christian faith "by faith alone, not by sight" . Because He did not do as you demanded (come on admit it!) you slid into severe doubt, then unbelief then to outsiders agnostism/soft atheism, living as atheists do but secretly suffering severe doubt in your "faith of doubt".</em> </p><p></p><p>This is what I meant when I asked you not to condemn those who happen to have different needs in their faith. You describe as the ideal what the first type of Christian (a few paragraphs above) expects. My ideal would be different. Not wrong. Just different.</p><p></p><p><em>Well unlike most Christians I have the unusual situation that I have experienced a lot of what you are actually describing. </em></p><p></p><p>Yes, and I appreciate you sharing that with me. However, while we have similar experiences it seems that we have different expectations of faith, as noted above. This means that the experiences affect us in different ways.</p><p></p><p><em>Going back to the original topic - conviction of sin via feelings is unlikely to ever come to you because you do not experience any feelings.</em></p><p></p><p>I am not asking about conviction of sin via feelings, because as you rightly say I am unlikely ever to experience such feelings due to my lack of emotions. If the conviction of sin comes due to the action of the Holy Spirit, then that conviction of sin ought to occur whether or not feelings are involved. Nevertheless, I have no experience of a conviction of sin, and so I can only suggest that perhaps the Holy Spirit has not acted on me in this way.</p><p></p><p><em>I disagree with you here also. There are so many Bible studies, Bible commentaries, Bible lectures from academically trained professionals online now. If you need assistance understanding Biblical passages then look for helpful reference material and christian libraries online. God will not believe your excuse that you've got no-one to help you understand the Bible so you won't read it. If you have decided you only going to believe in God through getting a sign or a certain experience it is unlikely that you will ever become or believe you are a Christian. </em></p><p></p><p>It seems that I have confused you. When I wrote that I was faced with a lack of clarity from the Bible, I meant that some Bible verses suggest one thing and different Bible verses suggest something quite different. It is not due to lack of understanding of the Bible, it is due to different Bible passages saying different things.</p><p></p><p><em>It's been those type of statements that have made me think you are in that horrible grey zone "of I want to believe but can't" that I was for years and therefore you are NOT a real agnostic.</em></p><p></p><p>Yes, there are times when I am in that grey zone, wanting to believe but unable to. But I would not agree that being in that situation prevents me being an agnostic a dont know. Maybe there are different types of agnostics, just as there are different types of Christians.</p><p></p><p><em>So you know what sin is, how you have sinned, why Jesus had to die for your sin. What have you done with that knowledge? </em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Exactly what do you believe everybody else experiences as part of repentance that you don't? Do you think they also experience something in addition to feelings (that you most likely will never have)? </em></p><p></p><p>Yes, I understand the theory of the Christian message of salvation. I know what sin is, I know how I have sinned. I understand the theory (or theories) of why Jesus died. What have I done with that knowledge? I will tell you. In 1974 and again in 2007 I stepped out in faith, trusting that God would accept me into the kingdom. Both times there was no response from God that I was aware of, and both times this caused me to abandon my faith. I stepped out in faith, and landed flat on my nose. That is what I did with the knowledge of the gospel message.</p><p></p><p>I do not know for certain why it went wrong for me. Here I am trying to investigate the possibility that I did not have a real conviction of sin through the work of the Holy Spirit. That is the something that I suspect that other people experience when God calls them. Not just feelings, but a spiritual experience.</p><p></p><p><em>The thing is agnostics generally are so close-minded to considering Christianity and unaware that they are actually hostile towards it. You have sounded anything but that. Repeatedly you sound like you are are an "almost" Christian.</em></p><p></p><p>Who knows? Perhaps I am an almost Christian. I am definitely a former believer and I thought that I was a Christian. In the process I learned a lot about Christianity and about Christian living, and I sometimes I use that knowledge when I am writing here. In other words, I am more familiar with Christianity than are many agnostics.</p><p></p><p>Now to the comments on the long broadcast that I listened to on Saturday. You wrote this:</p><p><em>That short segment is a parody - remember the Monty Python soundtrack it used to introduce it? </em></p><p></p><p>No, I meant that the whole programme, more than two hours of it, virtually all of it sounded to me like a parody of a Christian broadcast. At times I was not sure whether to laugh or to despair. Certainly I would not expect anyone to find salvation as a result of hearing that broadcast. I listened to all of it because you asked me to. Under any other circumstances I would have switched off after a few minutes. If it was intended to help people to find God, it had the opposite effect on me and gave a bad impression of what Christians are like.</p><p></p><p><em>He definitely holds to the cessationist viewpoint. Strong Charismatics hold the completely opposite worldview. You sound like you hold more to the latter option and that is why you disliked some of what he said. I have listened to quite a few broadcasts and they were very confronting at how much I had been influenced by Charismatic distortions of the Bible.</em></p><p></p><p>Yes, as I said, two types of Christian. But why does one type of Christian have such a need to attack the beliefs of the other type of Christian? Unless perhaps they think that God only accepts one type of Christian and all of the other type of Christian are at best mistaken and at worst on the way to hell.</p><p></p><p>I also found it interesting that they criticised others, including in the sermon that they discussed towards the end of the broadcast, for not keeping strictly and solely to the Bible. Yet at one stage they themselves quoted from a long list of Christian thinkers to back up their arguments and made few references to the Bible.</p><p></p><p><em>It is one thing to believe that God still can and does heal people today. It is quite another to claim that preachers and healers can do the same things as the apostles in the 1st century AD did</em>.</p><p></p><p>In the broadcast it was said that there were only three times when God acted in a major way among believers the times of Moses, Elijah and Jesus. Have they not read about Noah, Abraham, and others? Are they also unaware of some of the manifestations of God that accompanied some of the great religious revivals in recent centuries?</p><p></p><p><em>That "I would not be interested in that type of God" last sentence is very revealing. You will believe in God/ any other type of Higher Being when He gives you something. You will not believe in God for Himself alone as revealed in the Scriptures therefore you may believe in another god if you feel anything in a spiritual encounter.</em></p><p></p><p>First, let me repeat what I wrote. It was this: But if the only type of Christianity on offer was the type represented by that radio programme, I would not be interested, and I would be looking elsewhere for God.</p><p></p><p>It was the type of Christianity that I did not find attractive, not the type of God.</p><p></p><p>You suggest that I only want to be a believer for what God could give me. Yes, I think that in a sense you are right. But wait. Why do other people believe? Surely a major factor is what God can give them forgiveness of their sins to deal with guilt, the promise of eternal life, a more abundant life, knowing that ultimately they will be on the winning side, and so on.</p><p></p><p>I did try to believe in God for the God as revealed in the scriptures. Unfortunately it did not work out for me. I learned that I needed more than that, presumably because I would be that type of Christian.</p><p></p><p>Would I follow another religion if I experienced something in a spiritual encounter? Possibly but unlikely. Though I would first try to exercise the spiritual gift of discernment of spirits to be sure of the real source of the spiritual encounter, and I would check my experience in various ways, including finding if it was consistent with the Bible. However, so far I have experienced nothing spiritual Christian, from another religion, pagan or secular.</p><p></p><p><em>P.S. Does this count as a sign - me with slight memory impairment for names remembering this series name on a sin you are guilty of - spiritual idolatry via seeking to please one god - yourself. </em></p><p></p><p>Not to me it isnt no.</p><p></p><p><em>Quote Losthope 10 August:" Asking a Buddhist to teach me a little about meditation is very different from accepting the teachings of another religion. " Talk about nitpicking, splitting hairs etc. - the intention was there. Spiritual Adultery Series</em></p><p></p><p>My intention in writing that was to tell you that it was not spiritual adultery that was the problem in my time as a believer in the 1970s. It was not until many years later that I even thought of learning about other practices. Other practices, that is, but not other beliefs. I retained my Christian knowledge even while someone was trying to teach me how to meditate. And I completely failed to learn to meditate, even though all of the others in the group managed it at least to some extent another example of me lacking any kind of spiritual experience.</p><p></p><p>Finally a comment on the CS Lewis book:</p><p><em>Regarding the "Pilgrim's Regress" If C.S.Lewis lived in the 21st century I think he might have added Mr. Neuropsychology, Mr. Postmodernist, and Mr. New Atheist to his many other characters that contradict the christian worldview. I was amazed at how many characters I had encountered during my reasoning walk through extreme doubt.</em></p><p></p><p>I would not describe myself as postmodernist or new atheist. Neuropsychology is something that I have studied, as well as neurotheology, trying to understand spiritual experience from a different perspective and attempting to understand my own lack of spiritual experience. Without success, so far.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="losthope, post: 58417521, member: 94863"] To joey down under. You wrote this: [I]In black-and-white terms you are currently living like an unbeliever but want to believe but can't at the same time. It is a terribly uncomfortable state to live in.[/I] That sounds like a good description of me. Not all of the time, but during the times when I am continuing my search for faith. [I]Excessive focus on lack of experience by yourself sounds like it is THE cause of a major jump from doubt to unbelief. [/I] You call it excessive focus on experience. I would call it getting concerned because I never had a prayer answered, never had any guidance from God, never learned any spiritual truth, never had a conviction of sin, never had any awareness of God, never had any awareness of the Holy Spirit changing me from within, never had any kind of feedback or confirmation from God that my prayer for salvation had been accepted. But whatever someone chooses to call it, yes, that was what caused me to question my salvation. Or, you could describe it in another way: apparently nothing had changed since I became a believer, and that was not what I was expecting and it was not what the Bible promises, and so I realised that something was wrong. In my experience there are (at least) two types of Christians. (I began a Christian Forums thread on that topic about a year ago, and many of the responders agreed with me.) There are those who rely essentially on the promises of the Bible to sustain their faith, and there are those who expect God to act in their life. I happen to be the type of person who would be in the second group. Perhaps, to Christians in the first group, those in the second group appear to have an excessive focus on experience. But please, do not condemn those who happen to have different needs in their faith. [I]1. God may have had people minister to you or caused events to happen in your life that you did not see His hand in it, further complicated by lack of feelings in your life over anything.[/I] I agree that it is possible that God caused things to happen without me being aware that it was due to God. But if so, I can only echo the words of a local pastor who I spoke to a while ago, I confess that I lack wisdom in discerning why God should not have made Himself more obvious to you. Over the years, several times there have been Christians who claimed to have received a message from God about me, and told me for example that certain things would happen in the next seven days, or the next forty days. None of those things ever happened. So in addition to not being aware of what God might, or might not, have done for me, I am aware of examples of when God definitely did not act, despite the sincere words of those Christians. [I]2. Experiences of God may lead some people to salvation. I have also heard accounts of Muslims having Jesus appear to them in their dreams and that led to them believing in Him. The vast majority of people become believers through the Gospel.[/I] When I became a believer it was through the gospel. It was only after I became a believer that I expected experiences of God. Whether or not I would need some kind of experience of God in order to guide me to become a believer again, I do not know. Experience of God would definitely help the process, of course. But I would also expect God to be resourceful enough to find a way to bring me to salvation that did not require an up-front experience of God. [I]I disagree with you there. Your experience is that what was done for you by Jesus on the cross (as narrated by the Gospels and explained by the early letters to the churches) was not enough for you. You wanted God to give you more that because you did not have sufficient faith in Him to keep walking in your christian faith "by faith alone, not by sight" . Because He did not do as you demanded (come on admit it!) you slid into severe doubt, then unbelief then to outsiders agnostism/soft atheism, living as atheists do but secretly suffering severe doubt in your "faith of doubt".[/I] This is what I meant when I asked you not to condemn those who happen to have different needs in their faith. You describe as the ideal what the first type of Christian (a few paragraphs above) expects. My ideal would be different. Not wrong. Just different. [I]Well unlike most Christians I have the unusual situation that I have experienced a lot of what you are actually describing. [/I] Yes, and I appreciate you sharing that with me. However, while we have similar experiences it seems that we have different expectations of faith, as noted above. This means that the experiences affect us in different ways. [I]Going back to the original topic - conviction of sin via feelings is unlikely to ever come to you because you do not experience any feelings.[/I] I am not asking about conviction of sin via feelings, because as you rightly say I am unlikely ever to experience such feelings due to my lack of emotions. If the conviction of sin comes due to the action of the Holy Spirit, then that conviction of sin ought to occur whether or not feelings are involved. Nevertheless, I have no experience of a conviction of sin, and so I can only suggest that perhaps the Holy Spirit has not acted on me in this way. [I]I disagree with you here also. There are so many Bible studies, Bible commentaries, Bible lectures from academically trained professionals online now. If you need assistance understanding Biblical passages then look for helpful reference material and christian libraries online. God will not believe your excuse that you've got no-one to help you understand the Bible so you won't read it. If you have decided you only going to believe in God through getting a sign or a certain experience it is unlikely that you will ever become or believe you are a Christian. [/I] It seems that I have confused you. When I wrote that I was faced with a lack of clarity from the Bible, I meant that some Bible verses suggest one thing and different Bible verses suggest something quite different. It is not due to lack of understanding of the Bible, it is due to different Bible passages saying different things. [I]It's been those type of statements that have made me think you are in that horrible grey zone "of I want to believe but can't" that I was for years and therefore you are NOT a real agnostic.[/I] Yes, there are times when I am in that grey zone, wanting to believe but unable to. But I would not agree that being in that situation prevents me being an agnostic a dont know. Maybe there are different types of agnostics, just as there are different types of Christians. [I]So you know what sin is, how you have sinned, why Jesus had to die for your sin. What have you done with that knowledge? Exactly what do you believe everybody else experiences as part of repentance that you don't? Do you think they also experience something in addition to feelings (that you most likely will never have)? [/I] Yes, I understand the theory of the Christian message of salvation. I know what sin is, I know how I have sinned. I understand the theory (or theories) of why Jesus died. What have I done with that knowledge? I will tell you. In 1974 and again in 2007 I stepped out in faith, trusting that God would accept me into the kingdom. Both times there was no response from God that I was aware of, and both times this caused me to abandon my faith. I stepped out in faith, and landed flat on my nose. That is what I did with the knowledge of the gospel message. I do not know for certain why it went wrong for me. Here I am trying to investigate the possibility that I did not have a real conviction of sin through the work of the Holy Spirit. That is the something that I suspect that other people experience when God calls them. Not just feelings, but a spiritual experience. [I]The thing is agnostics generally are so close-minded to considering Christianity and unaware that they are actually hostile towards it. You have sounded anything but that. Repeatedly you sound like you are are an "almost" Christian.[/I] Who knows? Perhaps I am an almost Christian. I am definitely a former believer and I thought that I was a Christian. In the process I learned a lot about Christianity and about Christian living, and I sometimes I use that knowledge when I am writing here. In other words, I am more familiar with Christianity than are many agnostics. Now to the comments on the long broadcast that I listened to on Saturday. You wrote this: [I]That short segment is a parody - remember the Monty Python soundtrack it used to introduce it? [/I] No, I meant that the whole programme, more than two hours of it, virtually all of it sounded to me like a parody of a Christian broadcast. At times I was not sure whether to laugh or to despair. Certainly I would not expect anyone to find salvation as a result of hearing that broadcast. I listened to all of it because you asked me to. Under any other circumstances I would have switched off after a few minutes. If it was intended to help people to find God, it had the opposite effect on me and gave a bad impression of what Christians are like. [I]He definitely holds to the cessationist viewpoint. Strong Charismatics hold the completely opposite worldview. You sound like you hold more to the latter option and that is why you disliked some of what he said. I have listened to quite a few broadcasts and they were very confronting at how much I had been influenced by Charismatic distortions of the Bible.[/I] Yes, as I said, two types of Christian. But why does one type of Christian have such a need to attack the beliefs of the other type of Christian? Unless perhaps they think that God only accepts one type of Christian and all of the other type of Christian are at best mistaken and at worst on the way to hell. I also found it interesting that they criticised others, including in the sermon that they discussed towards the end of the broadcast, for not keeping strictly and solely to the Bible. Yet at one stage they themselves quoted from a long list of Christian thinkers to back up their arguments and made few references to the Bible. [I]It is one thing to believe that God still can and does heal people today. It is quite another to claim that preachers and healers can do the same things as the apostles in the 1st century AD did[/I]. In the broadcast it was said that there were only three times when God acted in a major way among believers the times of Moses, Elijah and Jesus. Have they not read about Noah, Abraham, and others? Are they also unaware of some of the manifestations of God that accompanied some of the great religious revivals in recent centuries? [I]That "I would not be interested in that type of God" last sentence is very revealing. You will believe in God/ any other type of Higher Being when He gives you something. You will not believe in God for Himself alone as revealed in the Scriptures therefore you may believe in another god if you feel anything in a spiritual encounter.[/I] First, let me repeat what I wrote. It was this: But if the only type of Christianity on offer was the type represented by that radio programme, I would not be interested, and I would be looking elsewhere for God. It was the type of Christianity that I did not find attractive, not the type of God. You suggest that I only want to be a believer for what God could give me. Yes, I think that in a sense you are right. But wait. Why do other people believe? Surely a major factor is what God can give them forgiveness of their sins to deal with guilt, the promise of eternal life, a more abundant life, knowing that ultimately they will be on the winning side, and so on. I did try to believe in God for the God as revealed in the scriptures. Unfortunately it did not work out for me. I learned that I needed more than that, presumably because I would be that type of Christian. Would I follow another religion if I experienced something in a spiritual encounter? Possibly but unlikely. Though I would first try to exercise the spiritual gift of discernment of spirits to be sure of the real source of the spiritual encounter, and I would check my experience in various ways, including finding if it was consistent with the Bible. However, so far I have experienced nothing spiritual Christian, from another religion, pagan or secular. [I]P.S. Does this count as a sign - me with slight memory impairment for names remembering this series name on a sin you are guilty of - spiritual idolatry via seeking to please one god - yourself. [/I] Not to me it isnt no. [I]Quote Losthope 10 August:" Asking a Buddhist to teach me a little about meditation is very different from accepting the teachings of another religion. " Talk about nitpicking, splitting hairs etc. - the intention was there. Spiritual Adultery Series[/I] My intention in writing that was to tell you that it was not spiritual adultery that was the problem in my time as a believer in the 1970s. It was not until many years later that I even thought of learning about other practices. Other practices, that is, but not other beliefs. I retained my Christian knowledge even while someone was trying to teach me how to meditate. And I completely failed to learn to meditate, even though all of the others in the group managed it at least to some extent another example of me lacking any kind of spiritual experience. Finally a comment on the CS Lewis book: [I]Regarding the "Pilgrim's Regress" If C.S.Lewis lived in the 21st century I think he might have added Mr. Neuropsychology, Mr. Postmodernist, and Mr. New Atheist to his many other characters that contradict the christian worldview. I was amazed at how many characters I had encountered during my reasoning walk through extreme doubt.[/I] I would not describe myself as postmodernist or new atheist. Neuropsychology is something that I have studied, as well as neurotheology, trying to understand spiritual experience from a different perspective and attempting to understand my own lack of spiritual experience. Without success, so far. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Forums
Outreach
Outreach
Exploring Christianity
No conviction of sin
Top
Bottom