What de-conversion feels like

[Lokmer]

Lokmer,
Could you please provide the verse for
"Salvation comes through works of compassion and charity" ~ Christ?

Mat 25:31 "When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place on his glorious throne.

G-d bless,
sc

That's why I wrote Matt 25:31ff (ff means "and following). The entire parable is about that very doctrinal point.
-Lokmer

 

[Lokmer]

Deconversion is like eating a plate of spaghetti that uses ingredients in it's sauce that you have never eaten before.

Can you elaborate? I can't follow that at all. Reading it is like lying down in the middle of the street and calling to the whiporwills to steal my hat.
-Lokmer

 

[Lokmer]

That is funny that you think it somehow "proof." The existence of competing ideas about something is proof that something is wrong. BWAHAHAHAHA!

That's not what I said. I said that the fact that scripture and tradition can't agree on the most basic notion of doctrine is proof enough that God has left that building (i.e. God isn't involved in it, unless God is the sadistic author of confusion). Differences on the morality of alcohol or polygamy are one thing, but a lack of clear teaching on what constitutes the core doctrine is something else entirely. All of Christian theology (and I do mean *ALL*) consists of picking and chosing which verses of the bible are the important ones and either ignoring or harmonizing the conflicting passages. One picks which of the myriad biblical ways one will follow, and that chosing is done, ultimately, on the basis of personal and cultural bias.

I like your choice of terminology. You are completely wrong, of course, but I do like your choice of terminology. It does paint an interesting picture.

Well, if nothing else, I'm pleased that my loquacity was gratifying. However, a substantive argument about *why* I'm wrong wouldn't go amiss.
-Lokmer

 

[StainedClassKing]

Does anyone honestly think that the Lord is coming to save unbelievers?

Actually, yes. I do. I honestly think whether or not you believe in God or Christ, or whatever actually has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not someone arrives at salvation.

 

[radorth]

No, it sure doesn't and yes, it sure is.

I never once told any specific person here they were not born again. I never once said a person who is born again cannot honestly believe they have deconverted. Therefore I never insulted anyone nor was it my purpose to judge or insult. If the shoe fits wear it and if it doesn't, get over it. Any mind reading or personal judging going on here is not mine I'm afraid.

Rad

 

[radorth]

"We know we were born again even though we can't really prove it. But take our word for it or you are insulting us."

The faulty logic gets worse

"We also know God doesn't exist because he didn't answer the prayers we thought he should to answer."

Any atheist logicians want to explain the problem? Maybe the "deconverts" will listen after you explain the need for a provable premise.

Rad

 

[MQTA]

rules, guidelines, separations, columns, sorts, pidgeon holes. what a head spinner!

 

[Rize]

Does anyone honestly think that the Lord is coming to save unbelievers?

Well, I don't believe in God, but if it turns out that there is an omnipotent being out there who loves us infinitely, then I fully expect that he'll be fair and just with respect to us... which obviously would never include predestining anyone to eternal torment. There would be no time limit on reformation. Any person could eventually be saved in this life or another (if other lives exist).

Unless God doesn't want to do that... in which case he isn't infinitely loving/good etc.

 

[radorth]

are we such lofty arrogant creatures as to dictate to it what its proper form is?

That works both ways.

Arguing over dogma and doctrine seems important. But, eventually, it becomes a form of spiritual masturbation - a way to enjoy oneself while avoiding coping with the profundity and experiential reality of the spiritual experiences of others that differ with us.

Well now we have an idea what you did while you were a Christian.

Um I have said a hundred times, show me a better testimony than Charles Finney's and I will immediately convert. Show me a religion where this sacreligious sinner can do less to get a guarantee of heaven, and I will convert. Show me a humanist philosophy that built one tenth of the hospitals that Christians have and I will read more of their hot air. Show me a Hindu country that saved Britain from sure defeat by the Nazi's in 1940 and I will move there. Show me one story of a spiritual revival which had whole towns out singing humns together on the streets and I will dump Jesus in a heartbeat.

In fact show me one single religion or philosophy that has accomplished half the benevolent and charitable acts of what New Testament born again Christians have and I'll take a week off from the forum. Lets start with who freed and ransomed so many slaves that laws were passed by Constantine to facilitate and legitimatize the practice. Then let's review Finney's testimony and see if you can beat that. Then we'll move on to who graduated the first women from college, which religion has fed the most people and started all the major orphanages, who decried slavery in America a hundred years before Jefferson even thought of doing so.... well that's enough to get started

Any takers who can deal with actual historical facts?

Unbelievers live off the fat Jesus left behind and they don't even know it.

Rad

 

[Cat59]

My problem is this Rad- I know all that, I've seen what people like Mother Theresa for example have done and also seen the love radiate out of her and many other Christians. I've also felt God's presence in my life for many many years, the reality of his presence lived with me and I would class myself as someone who was "born again".
I am not taking what you say as an insult, I can understand what you and CCWoody are saying- that once truly converted you cannot deconvert. What I guess I am finding hard to see is then, how does anyone who believes they are born again ensure that they have actually been born again, know they were truly converted? What do you have to do to be actually born again?

 

[Lokmer]

Well now we have an idea what you did while you were a Christian.

Slander and innuendo in one sentence, how efficient of you. I state an (admittedly strong) opinion about the pointlessness about doctrinal disputes, and am greeted in return with this. Very sporting of you.

Um I have said a hundred times, show me a better testimony than Charles Finney's and I will immediately convert.

Well, in order to be a fair challenge, you should probably let us know what counts for good points in a testimony, in your book.

Show me a religion where this sacreligious sinner can do less to get a guarantee of heaven, and I will convert.

Universalist Christianity (a subspecies of Christianity that's been around since the second century at least).

Jainism

Buddhism

Most pagan mystery cults from the 5th c. BCE to the 4th c. CE

Hermeticism

Neo-paganism

Show me a humanist philosophy that built one tenth of the hospitals that Christians have and I will read more of their hot air.

Although it's hardly humanism, a competing religious philosophy has done so: Communism (in China and Russia).

The philosophy of humanism itself (religious and non-religious, since humanism isn't incompatible with Christianity) is what enabled modern medicine to push its way past Christian objections and benefit humanity. The Germ Theory of Disease, anathema to 16th and 17th century Christians of all stripes, enabled the development of both vaccines and antibiotics. The study of anatomy by dissection of cadavers, a practiced opposed and banned by Catholics and Protestants alike throughout Europe for centuries, was carried out by radically liberal Christian, diest, and atheist humanists. All of modern medicine rests upon the secularization of government and the desacrilization of the body. Genetic engineering and biotech, which is the current state of the art, likewise continues to find its major opposition only in two camps: Religious conservatives and anticorporate left wing activists.

Show me a Hindu country that saved Britain from sure defeat by the Nazi's in 1940 and I will move there.

I can't. But I can show you a secular country (the United States) led by a Masonic President (FDR) with the support and encouragement of his bisexual occultist wife (Elaenor) who did defend Britain against the onslaught of the predominantly God-fearing, Christian armies of Nazi Germany headed by a lifelong Catholic and Luther devotee named Adolf (Hitler, not Eichman).

Show me one story of a spiritual revival which had whole towns out singing humns together on the streets and I will dump Jesus in a heartbeat.

Geepers, man, any good concert can do that. Even villians and theives like Peter Poppoff and Benny Hinn manage to pull that off while picking people's pockets. I hardly think this is a good epistemic qualification for the truth of a proposition.

In fact show me one single religion or philosophy that has accomplished half the benevolent and charitable acts of what New Testament born again Christians have and I'll take a week off from the forum.

Well, since "born again" Christians only started appearing in the mid 19th century after the 2nd Great Awakening (something you should know if you're such a Charles Finney devotee), this shouldn't be too hard.

Lets start with who freed and ransomed so many slaves that laws were passed by Constantine to facilitate and legitimatize the practice.

Yes, let's. And let's then continue with the Christians who instituted a far worse form of slavery than was known in Roman times and carried the shameful institution on, in the name of God and with VERY explicit biblical justification, for 300 years, and who then did all they could to keep the freed slaves in economic survitude for a further 100 years after that. Let's talk about the agnostics like Robert Ingersol, agitated for social justice and abolition, of Unitarians who made up the bulk of the abolitionist movement and ALL of its major thinkers, and who explicitly denied the doctrine of the trinity and did not believe in the diety of Christ, or of atheists like Fredrick Douglass who pushed northern Christian abolitionists to put their money where their mouths were. Let's talk about the explicitly Christian doctrines of manifest destiny and the divine right of kings, of Jesus' and Paul's words about slaves submitting to their masters. Let's talk about Thomas Paine, who made the American Revolution possible and then was ostracized because he has the temerity to criticize his slaveholding colleagues and fight against the divinely-appointed French kings, who has no monument to this day because he cricized the Bible publicly.

Let's also talk about the Christian theocratic apartheid state of South
Africa.

Then we'll move on to who graduated the first women from college,

But, when we do, we should also point out that this is the same religion that opposed women's right to vote in both the U.S. and Britain, and also singlehandedly defeated the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, insuring that women are still legally second class citizens, to this day, in America. Let's also not forget that this is the religion that legislated the "Rule of Thumb" during the 16th century, which stated that men may beat their wives so long as they used a stick no thicker than their thumb.

We can play games like this all day.

which religion has fed the most people

No religion has. Norman Bourlog, a freethinker, bears that honor, having saved more than a billion lives with his work, at his own expense, in poor countries. He won the nobel prize in the mid '70s and **invented** (by bioengineering and hybridization) most of the food you and other people around the world eat today.

and started all the major orphanages

This is a sweeping statement, though it may well be true. Got any backup on this (including China, India, Japan, and the Far East)?

who decried slavery in America a hundred years before Jefferson even thought of doing so....

The Unitarians and the Quakers, the former is a non-Christian splinter sect and the second was a persecuted non-orthodox sect of Christianity (and is now basically Unitarian Universalist in persuasion). The orthodox Chrisitans were the slavery establishment in the country, not the leaders of the abolitionist movement. Some of the footsoldiers, yes, but not the bulk or leadership of the movement. More information on this from primary source and former slave Fredrick Douglass - a salient essay can be found here: http://www.dmuuc.org/lay/FrederickDouglass.html

Any takers who can deal with actual historical facts?

Done. Are you going to make good on your commitment and convert to Unitarianism or Diesm or Agnosticism now?

Yeah, I didn't think so. So sad, yet so common: Triumphalist bluster made up of rehtorical flourishes, deamagoguerey, and half-truths.

Unbelievers live off the fat Jesus left behind and they don't even know it.

Well, if that's the case, somebody had to do it.

The church had 15 centuries of control over the western world and certainly didn't do much with the "fat" that Jesus left behind. If these are the fruits of Christ, then it is freethinkers, unitarians, diests, and humanists who are the true Christians - as Jesus said: "By their fruits shall you know them."

 

[Rize]

...

pwnd

 

[MQTA]

awesome post! (#311)

 

[Eudaimonist]

Deconversion is like eating a plate of spaghetti that uses ingredients in it's sauce that you have never eaten before.

Yes, it is something like that!

 

[Riddick]

It feels good to not be part of the misenlightened

i hope You find comfort in that statement.

 

[Eudaimonist]

i hope You find comfort in that statement.

Doesn't everybody?

 

[spirit1st]

WHEN YOU HAVE THE NEW BIRTH.It is just like your 1st birth.
Except it is in our spirits.You know it when it takes place for what it is.I said?GEE LORD,SO THIS IS BORN AGAIN!
THIS IS OUR BEGINING IN JESUS CHRIST.Until we have this?We will not know GOD as FATHER .Nor have the spirit of TRUTh .To teach us !Very easy tohave this birth!
But we MUST come to HIm in spirit and truth.He will deal with us always.But we cannot lie to HIm.Because HE sees our every thought.we repent ,and tell HIm we believe,And ASK HIM TO ENTER OUR HEARTS!.Of course We MUST BE WILLING TO FOLLOW HIM AND OBEY HIM.ALLOWING HIM TO BE LORD AND MASTER,BECAUSE HE IS ALREADY!
THEN HE ENTERS AND CHANGES OUR HEARTS .Then we know salvation for ever more!

 

[radorth]

My problem is this Rad- I know all that, I've seen what people like Mother Theresa for example have done and also seen the love radiate out of her and many other Christians. I've also felt God's presence in my life for many many years, the reality of his presence lived with me and I would class myself as someone who was "born again".
I am not taking what you say as an insult, I can understand what you and CCWoody are saying- that once truly converted you cannot deconvert. What I guess I am finding hard to see is then, how does anyone who believes they are born again ensure that they have actually been born again, know they were truly converted? What do you have to do to be actually born again?

Well but I never said you personally weren't born again. Maybe you were and maybe you weren't. I merely opined that we can usually tell if someone in the church has a real testimony of conversion, not that we always know if someone outside was ever a true convert.

I have met and counseled Christians who were born again who decided they were atheists. Most left for the wrong reasons, or because their church was dead, legalistic or full of hypocrites. Read almost any story of "deconversion" and you hear almost nothing good about the church they left, do you? But then they come back again because Jesus never really let's let go of them, and they learn how faithful he is.

Rad

 

[radorth]

awesome post!

Thanks

 

[radorth]

Yes, it is something like that!

As is conversion, and much better as we see when comparing Robert Ingersoll's testimony to e.g. Charles Finney's

Rad