Struggling with my faith

Thekla said:

The term "theologian" in some Churches means roughly one who prays effectively; theology is a description of the experience of God. It is not, in this sense, our intellectual speculation based on the words of the text, but the experience of relationship with the living God which illumines the Bible, the way we see our neighbor, our self, and all things.

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I don't want to sound disagreeable but I think this is simply not true. "Theology" is very much about intellectual speculation based on texts. In fact, that is all it mostly is.

The Exodus said:

I don't want to sound disagreeable but I think this is simply not true. "Theology" is very much about intellectual speculation based on texts. In fact, that is all it mostly is.

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Thats how it may be presently understood here and now, but the definition of theology as intellectual speculation is not accepted in the East ...

Thekla said:

Thats how it may be presently understood here and now, but the definition of theology as intellectual speculation is not accepted in the East ...

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Your signature is a product of Theology. Do you believe that those who disagree with this statement of faith are in danger of Hellfire?

chestertonrules said:

Jesus never wrote a word, but he did start a Church.

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This is very true, and, I think, very revealing. Why do you think though that the attitude of Jesus is so different from the Old Testament God - the God of wrath and vengeance?

Also, I find it interesting you do not support systems of written Theology as strongly as other Catholics do. How do you reconcile your Catholicism with this idea, seeing as Catholicism is heavily theological and traditional? (YOu can see my post on page 1 I think to Rhamiel for specifics on Catholicism).

The Exodus said:

Your signature is a product of Theology. Do you believe that those who disagree with this statement of faith are in danger of Hellfire?

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I know for certain that the judgment is God's, not mine.
I do not believe that the SoF is a guarantor of anything; it is a guide, a goal.
It expresses, in summary, revelation.
Man does not discover the things of God, God reveals and mankind may hear.
If we cannot discover the things of God using our own intellect, but can only know God through what He reveals, how can we possibly think ourselves capable of judgment ?

The Exodus said:

This is very true, and, I think, very revealing. Why do you think though that the attitude of Jesus is so different from the Old Testament God - the God of wrath and vengeance?............

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A lot of times He had the same "attitude" as did YHWH in the OT...

Matthew 3:7 Being aware yet many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming upon the baptism of him he said to them "produce of vipers! who shows to ye to be fleeing from the being about/melloushV <3195> (5723) Wrath

Matt 23:33 "Serpents! produce of vipers! how? ye may be fleeing from the judging of the geennhV <1067>"

Ezekiel 39:12 And house of Israel buries them so that to Purify/Cleanse the Land seven months.
And all of people of the Land bury them, and He becomes to them for a Name, Day of to be glorified Me, declaration of my Lord YHWH.

Thekla said:

I know for certain that the judgment is God's, not mine.

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Perhaps then I should ask do you believe God WOULD send someone to eternal torment for finding fault in your statement of theology? Do you believe in a God who would do this?

Thekla said:

I do not believe that the SoF is a guarantor of anything; it is a guide, a goal.
It expresses, in summary, revelation.

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Was it a revelation to you personally?

thekla said:

If we cannot discover the things of God using our own intellect, but can only know God through what He reveals, how can we possibly think ourselves capable of judgment ?

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If we cannot use our intellect, how are we to even understand the revelation of God? A revelation of God to one man is not the same as God's revelation to one man, which subsequently becomes the revelation to many (e.g. Revelation, the last book in the Bible).

Are we to use our judgment at all? Can we discover anything? How can we be sure about right and wrong? How can we be confident that our revelation is accurate? What are we to do about "revelations" that contradict?

Where is the authority to judge truth if our minds are suspect?

LittleLambofJesus said:

A lot of times He had the same "attitude" as did YHWH in the OT...

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I must ask you if you are seriously being honest with yourself. Do you really think Jesus and God in the Old Testament have the same "attitude"? The same Jesus who told Peter to sheath his sword, for "those who live by the sword, die by the sword?" vs YHWH who told the Israelites to pillage a city and kill every man, woman, and child?

Do you really not see the difference? I could cite many instances, but it would be useless if you are not at least going to acknowledge there is some discrepancy... even the most honest, devout Christian will admit to seeing some variation in attitude.

The Exodus said:

This is very true, and, I think, very revealing. Why do you think though that the attitude of Jesus is so different from the Old Testament God - the God of wrath and vengeance?

Also, I find it interesting you do not support systems of written Theology as strongly as other Catholics do. How do you reconcile your Catholicism with this idea, seeing as Catholicism is heavily theological and traditional? (YOu can see my post on page 1 I think to Rhamiel for specifics on Catholicism).

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I think you would be surprised how philosophical and enlightened the Church really is.

I was a strong Christian for most of my early life. During college and after for several years I was luke warm at best. I didn't truly feel that Christianity made sense until I became Catholic.

Here's a quote from Chesterton that spells it out much better than I ever could:

Nine out of ten of what we call new ideas are simply old mistakes. The Catholic Church has for one of her chief duties that of preventing people from making those old mistakes; from making them over and over again forever, as people always do if they are left to themselves. The truth about the Catholic attitude towards heresy, or as some would say, towards liberty, can best be expressed perhaps by the metaphor of a map. The Catholic Church carries a sort of map of the mind which looks like the map of a maze, but which is in fact a guide to the maze. It has been compiled from knowledge which, even considered as human knowledge, is quite without any human parallel.
There is no other case of one continuous intelligent institution that has been thinking about thinking for two thousand years. Its experience naturally covers nearly all experiences; and especially
nearly all errors. The result is a map in which all the blind alleys and bad roads are clearly marked, all the ways that have been shown to be worthless by the best of all evidence: the evidence of those who have gone down them.
On this map of the mind the errors are marked as exceptions. The greater part of it consists of playgrounds and happy hunting-fields, where the mind may have as much liberty as it likes; not to mention any number of intellectual battle-fields in which the battle is indefinitely open and undecided. But it does definitely take the responsibility of marking certain roads as leading nowhere or leading to destruction, to a blank wall, or a sheer precipice. By this means, it does prevent men from wasting their time or losing their lives upon paths that have been found futile or disastrous again and again in the past, but which might otherwise entrap travelers again and again in the future. The Church does make herself responsible for warning her people against these; and upon these the real issue of the case depends. She does dogmatically defend humanity from its worst foes, those hoary and horrible and devouring monsters of the old mistakes. Now all these false issues have a way of looking quite fresh, especially to a fresh generation. Their first statement always sounds harmless and plausible. I will give only two examples. It sounds harmless to say, as most modern people have said: "Actions are only wrong if they are bad for society." Follow it out, and sooner or later you will have the inhumanity of a hive or a heathen city, establishing slavery as the cheapest and most certain means of production, torturing the slaves for evidence because the individual is nothing to the State, declaring that an innocent man must die for the people, as did the murderers of Christ.

http://chesterton.org/gkc/theologian/whycatholic.htm

I was a strong Christian for most of my early life. During college and after for several years I was luke warm at best. I didn't truly feel that Christianity made sense until I became Catholic.

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I did not have to become Catholic for the Bible to make sense to me

LittleLambofJesus said:

I did not have to become Catholic for the Bible to make sense to me

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I didn't say the bible, I said Christianity.

Jesus is the Word, not the bible alone.

We want to understand God, not a book, right?

The Exodus said:

Hey all.

I don't know if it's my current mood, or if it's a lot of things that have built up over time, but currently I am struggling with my faith, mainly with the Bible being the inspired, inerrant word of God.

I just can't understand how the Bible can be true, if it really preaches some of the things it preaches. I don't want to sound blasphemous, and no doubt some of you will just tell me to submit to God and be silent, but honestly, I doubt very much the legitimacy of the Bible.

First, it is such a complicated book. If every man was left to his own to read it, everyone would form a different understanding of who God is. How can this be? Why is "the word of God" so complex, so difficult to understand? Why does God care to reveal himself in a book? Many people in the world can't even read...

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These things assume a certain level of faith from the past, as you point out.

I find it so very, very hard to accept that those people who haven't heard of Christ are damned to Hell... I also have a hard time accepting that man "deserves" Hell, simply by being born. If the Bible is God's infallible word, why do we all disagree on what it means? And why do we not want to accept some of the things it says - namely things that we don't like?

When I step outside the Bible, and do not take it as authoritative to begin with, I see many things that I would not consider "moral". I feel almost blasphemous saying this, but I would be lying to myself if I said otherwise. When I ask: "Should people go to Hell just because they don't believe in the Bible?" I am almost repulsed that I even consider the answer to be yes.

Think how many religious books there are out there, how many prophets and "gods" there are... If I was born Muslim, I'd be a Muslim... If I was born in India, I'd be a Hindu, etc. We are all products of our environment in terms of religion.

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Perhaps.

*sigh* I don't know. It just doesn't seem right to me, to venerate a book... something written by man, that can't be fully understood or agreed upon by even most brilliant men in history. And what does that mean for the common man? Then there are things which just seem completely irrelevant to life... things like the doctrine of the Trinity; the "divine attribute of God"; the book of revelation. How does this have anything to do with God? How will these things better our lives in any way, or make us better people? Why are we to read and believe another's understanding of God? If there is a God, won't he reveal himself to us each individually?

Thanks for your time

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It's a paradox demanding an answer, eh?

Is there something specific you want to ask, from which to begin?

chestertonrules said:

I didn't say the bible, I said Christianity.

Jesus is the Word, not the bible alone.

We want to understand God, not a book, right?

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Chesteron, I'm in complete agreement with you here... although I would even go so far as to say the Bible is NOT the word of God, and only Jesus is.

And I would wholeheartedly agree that we ought not to desire to understand a book, but the Creator. Is not a book such a silly thing, compared to God?

The Exodus said:

Chesteron, I'm in complete agreement with you here... although I would even go so far as to say the Bible is NOT the word of God, and only Jesus is.

And I would wholeheartedly agree that we ought not to desire to understand a book, but the Creator. Is not a book such a silly thing, compared to God?

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Absolutely.

What matters is faith working through love, as the bible says!

That being said, Catholics believe that the bible is the word of God. However, it must be read in context, both historical and theological.

The Exodus said:

Chesteron, I'm in complete agreement with you here... although I would even go so far as to say the Bible is NOT the word of God, and only Jesus is.

And I would wholeheartedly agree that we ought not to desire to understand a book, but the Creator. Is not a book such a silly thing, compared to God?

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And how would you understand YHWH without His Written Book

2 Peter 3:16 As also in all the letters speaking in them about these-things in which are difficult to understand any which the un-learned and un-steadfast are wresting/twisting as also the rest of Writings, toward the own of them destruction/apwleian <684>. [# 684 used reve 17:8, 11]

Reve 14:11 And the smoke of the tormenting of them into ages of ages is ascending, and not they are having rest day and night

The Exodus said:

Perhaps then I should ask do you believe God WOULD send someone to eternal torment for finding fault in your statement of theology? Do you believe in a God who would do this?

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now you are asking me to make a judgment based on my partial knowledge of God who knowable (relationship) but Who cannot be comprehended by a finite creature. I can say I don't think so, but that is not comprehensive. I do know that Christ exhibited that God is willing to take on flesh and be voluntarily crucified, and that this is the love exhibited by God for mankind.

Was it a revelation to you personally?

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Christianity is not a "personal/individual" religion.

If we cannot use our intellect, how are we to even understand the revelation of God? A revelation of God to one man is not the same as God's revelation to one man, which subsequently becomes the revelation to many (e.g. Revelation, the last book in the Bible).

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We can use our intellect to describe our experience of God and acknowledge our limitation to comprehend God. If the intellect is sufficient for knowing God, only the intelligent would have faith; that is not what I know of Christians or Christianity.

Are we to use our judgment at all? Can we discover anything? How can we be sure about right and wrong? How can we be confident that our revelation is accurate? What are we to do about "revelations" that contradict?

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Do you mean revelation as recorded in the Bible ?
Do you mean contradiction, or paradox ?
Right and wrong are guides - the commandments are this; as has been said, "holy" is our goal for relationship toward God (the 1st clutch of the Ten Commandments, the 1st of the two greatest commandments) and "righteous" is our goal for relationship toward neighbor (the 2cnd clutch of the Ten Commandments, the 2cnd of the two greatest commandments).

Does what is revealed point to Christ ? Does it point to self-love (human) or unselfish love (of God) ?

Where is the authority to judge truth if our minds are suspect?

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Following the Fall, our minds are subject to enslavement by our own "passions", temptations; the intellect is self-serving. What Paul calls the fleshly nous. Only in voluntary submission to God can our mind be useful for understanding what we can. This is the need for relationship with God - until we are in relationship with God, and progressing thus - our relationship to God, to other and to self will all be distorted and self- serving.

it sounds to me like you need a Church that isnt based on the Bible, but rather on the living experience of Jesus Christ along with the Father and the Holy Spirit. and the Bible is a witness to this experience, but not the basis of it.

LLOJ unsubscribes.........

The Exodus said:

Hey all.

I don't know if it's my current mood, or if it's a lot of things that have built up over time, but currently I am struggling with my faith, mainly with the Bible being the inspired, inerrant word of God.

I just can't understand how the Bible can be true, if it really preaches some of the things it preaches. I don't want to sound blasphemous, and no doubt some of you will just tell me to submit to God and be silent, but honestly, I doubt very much the legitimacy of the Bible.

First, it is such a complicated book. If every man was left to his own to read it, everyone would form a different understanding of who God is. How can this be? Why is "the word of God" so complex, so difficult to understand? Why does God care to reveal himself in a book? Many people in the world can't even read...

I find it so very, very hard to accept that those people who haven't heard of Christ are damned to Hell... I also have a hard time accepting that man "deserves" Hell, simply by being born. If the Bible is God's infallible word, why do we all disagree on what it means? And why do we not want to accept some of the things it says - namely things that we don't like?

When I step outside the Bible, and do not take it as authoritative to begin with, I see many things that I would not consider "moral". I feel almost blasphemous saying this, but I would be lying to myself if I said otherwise. When I ask: "Should people go to Hell just because they don't believe in the Bible?" I am almost repulsed that I even consider the answer to be yes.

Think how many religious books there are out there, how many prophets and "gods" there are... If I was born Muslim, I'd be a Muslim... If I was born in India, I'd be a Hindu, etc. We are all products of our environment in terms of religion.

*sigh* I don't know. It just doesn't seem right to me, to venerate a book... something written by man, that can't be fully understood or agreed upon by even most brilliant men in history. And what does that mean for the common man? Then there are things which just seem completely irrelevant to life... things like the doctrine of the Trinity; the "divine attribute of God"; the book of revelation. How does this have anything to do with God? How will these things better our lives in any way, or make us better people? Why are we to read and believe another's understanding of God? If there is a God, won't he reveal himself to us each individually?

Thanks for your time

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I am responding with reading another post, so if I make the same points as another, forgive me.

The bible is not meant to be easily understood. It is through faith, that the Holy Spirit reveals the truth, a clearer understanding of the word. It is the same reason Jesus spoke in parables.

Matthew 10-17
10The disciples came to him and asked, "Why do you speak to the people in parables?"
11Jesus replied, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 12Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. 13This is why I speak to them in parables: "Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. 14In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
" 'You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. 15For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.' 16But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. 17For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

The answer is, maturity of faith (and age does not play a factor here).

I have to go...

jckstraw72 said:

it sounds to me like you need a Church that isnt based on the Bible, but rather on the living experience of Jesus Christ along with the Father and the Holy Spirit. and the Bible is a witness to this experience, but not the basis of it.

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And that's what a Bible based church will teach.
After all, it's how we please God, by meditating
on His Word.
Which church is not "Bible based"? I know of
none besides Mormon.

130 The entrance of thy words giveth light;
it giveth understanding unto the simple.




What people are looking for nowdays is a church
that will say that sin is not sin,.... or that....
the Bible doesnt really mean what it says,
and they want to hear, "God is whoever
YOU 'want' Him to be... because, as Jesus said:

19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world,
and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the
light, lest his deeds should be reproved&#65279;c&#65279;. 21 But he that doeth truth
cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are
wrought in God.

But His Word is as a mirror, (magnifying mirror I'd say )
21 Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and
receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your
souls. 22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving
your own selves. 23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he
is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: 24 For he
beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what
manner of man he was.



God's Word (Scripture)which gives us
hope, is a testimony of the Covenant
of God, and is given by inspiration of
God........ for US... and is profitable
for doctrine, correction, reproof,
instruction in righteousness!
.....That the man of God may be
thouroughly furnished, complete,
equipped for every good work.

I thank God for His Word, but I dont worship the Bible...
That's something that the devil likes to say because he
HATES the Word of God (he also hates to call it the Word
of God i bet )

11 Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God.
12 Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil,
and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe
and be saved