Dear all,
Thank you for all of your observations...
JAMES - Thank you for offering that you and your group question God and feel it's important to do so -- that it's part of being a good Christian.
LEIGH - Yes, the Catholics certainly have been doing a bad job of dealing with the pedophelia. I think the most blatantly wrong thing they did was blame it on "homosexuality" rather than pedaphelia. It's blaming the wrong group--who'd have thunk they could have done that with a straight face? Thanks for offering that Terri and you are of American Indian ancestry. Interesting!
DENNIS - I love the idea of the American Indian "berdaches" tho prefer the name "two spirits" - it sounds so poetic and wonderful and turns the angst and negativity into something so beautiful.
JESSICA - "Apatheist" - interesting. I hadn't heard that term before. Thanks!
VERY KNAWTY - I checked into the links that you mentioned. Wow. I pasted them into a permanent file I keep of what I feel are profound or insightful things. I especially liked the talk on what purpose we have on earth - it stated that trees don't ponder such things - it's somehow liberating to stop pondering every now and then. Thank you.
JESSICA - If only some self-professed Christians were as good as you are.
CHAUNTE - It's interesting that you're a science teacher and also have a strong belief in God. Yes, I'd heard that Albert Einstein believed in God, also. It's one thing that makes me STOP and think that, if he believed in it, then maybe there's something to this religion thing. His belief is worth more to me than books of ancient writings.
KIMBERLY - You and I agree that, just because society agrees on something, doesn't necessarily make it so.
TERRI - "Blood-thirsty women warriers?' Lol - and here I thought the two-spirited people were just peaceful people who could mediate between different factions.
CELIA - That God is inherent in the world seems, to me, the opposite of "truth and reality." I don't dispute that it may be so -- it's just that I'm not there yet.
MY (RELIGIOUS) BROTHER SENT ME HIS RESPONSE TO MY "SPIRITURAL JOURNEY" DISCUSSION. HOPEFULLY, IT'LL BE OF INTEREST. I ASKED HIM IF IT'D BE OKAY TO POST IT HERE AND HE SAID THAT WOULD BE FINE. HERE IS HIS REPONSE, PASTED BELOW:
Hi Teri Anne,
I very much appreciate all the thought that went into your and other people's notes. A lot of excellent questions were raised, and I found it very interesting to hear what other people who are not plugged into mainline Christian denominations are thinking. It's great to start the New Year with such a healthy dialogue about such important matters.
Your thoughts about your own spiritual journey (or quest?) are very interesting because I see many parallels with my own. Though you probably wouldn't believe it, I too was quite a skeptic in my college days. I hung around Christian people because their beliefs appealed to me. But I kept telling them that I want to be convinced that it's true and not just wishful thinking.
You mentioned that the most horrific movie you ever saw was "The Exorcist", and that you find that the existence of evil spirits is even more plausible than a belief in God. I can distinctly remember walking on Corona del Mar beach at about 10 pm with a friend telling me all of his experiences with the occult. Some of the stuff he told me sent shivers up my spine. I've also heard that some very weird stuff happened during the filming of that movie, like sets collapsing and people dying. It's almost like an evil spirit didn't want that film to be made. I can't vouch for the accuracy of these reports, but they are not implausible.
I very much believe that the existence of a devil very much explains the suffering in this world. But I don't talk about it much because many people seem to think the devil is nothing but a joke. I also believe the devil has been working overtime infecting a lot of the mainline churches, since his highest priority is to tear down religious people. So, I wouldn't take too seriously the televangelist who called transgendered people "butchers of their own bodies". I attribute a lot of the sick terrorism in the Muslin faith to the demonic too.
You said a couple of times that, when you try to reach out to God, nothing happens. I must admit that the two most dramatic answers to prayer I've had were my very first two. I was a senior at U.C. Irvine wondering what life would bring after I graduated, and very worried about being drafted in the middle of the Vietnam war and not being able to get into grad school. The morning that I arrived on a bus at the LA Induction Center for my Army physical, a strange peace overcame me as I looked out of the bus window at a beautiful sunrise. By the end of the day I was classified 4-F. Within a few days, I was accepted at the University of Toronto with financial aid, an added bonus I wasn't expecting.
For some reason, my answers to prayer since then have not been so immediate or so obvious. I still get that sense of peace from time to time, but a skeptic could easily explain that as psychological. I certainly don't hear Him talking to me, as one of your responders named "Cassandra" said. Not to doubt what she says, but my experience has not been that direct. But, I've thought over the years, if my prayers were so immediately answered as my first two, God would become my "Cosmic Bellhop". It's God who is calling the shots, and sometimes He answers right away, and other times He answers years and years later. One much delayed answer was my prayer about getting married. I remember one time getting so frustrated that I said to God: "Okay, I don't know if you're ever going to answer this one. But I've decided that, like Job, I'm not going to renounce my faith over this". Of course, by then I had completed seminary and had a very strong intellectual foundation for my faith. Well, soon after that prayer, Wanda came along, and in retrospect, I realize that waiting to work out my issues has made our marriage much stronger.
In any case, I've come to believe that anyone who believes that our contact with God is always very real underestimates how separated this world is from God. Even the great Christian writer C.S. Lewis said, in his book A Grief Observed, that after his wife died, he tried to pray to God, but was confronted with "a door shut, and double bolted from the inside".
After my prayer about getting into grad school, I was in Canada riding on a bus to a missionary conference. It was snowing very hard and the busses were kind of going in a caravan. In the seat behind me was a very joyful young woman who was engaged to be married. When we reached our destination, we received some very somber news. One of the busses (apparently behind us) had gotten into an accident. This joyful woman's fiancé was killed. But what absolutely appalled me was how people around me, including this woman, were saying it was God's will and that this fiancé is much better off in Heaven.
That really bothered me for quite a while, but I guess I came to realize that these people believed this stuff much more than I did. So, I went on the reading spree, trying to get my hands on every book I could about why Christians believe what they believe. I found it all very interesting, but not convincing. I'd dialogue about this with my housemates (who were all Christians) practically every night over dinner, asking them many of the questions you are asking. One of them did say something to me that stuck. He said, when evaluating the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, we have to be very aware of our presuppositions Many of us bring to that inquiry the presupposition that miracles are impossible. So we're very likely to believe just about any explanation for the resurrection accounts other than that it really happened.
Shortly thereafter I read C.S. Lewis' book called On Miracles, which convinced me that a disbelief in miracles comes from our Western naturalistic thinking that the universe is totally uniform, which can't be proven. He also argued that, if the universe runs by very regular laws of cause and effect which are inviolable, then free will can't exist.
But it all didn't come together for me until a couple of years later, after I'd returned to California. One night I was watching a science show on TV with dad. They went into some very complex stuff regarding Einstein's theory of relativity and atomic physics. I was awed, and came away with a thought I hadn't had before. The idea of a resurrection is no weirder that some of the things that scientists believe are true and have proven through scientific experiments. Look at relatively: the faster you go, the slower time goes, and time would stop if you could move at the speed of light. Isn't that bizarre? Funny thing is I never said anything to dad about my thoughts because I didn't think he'd understand.
So, as they say, the rest is history. I will say that, from that walk on the Corona del Mar beach to watching that science show with dad, about six years elapsed. So, the answers to these questions didn't come easy. And some people never get there in this life. What's going to happen to them? Wanda and most Christian's I've spoken with don't agree with my view on this. But I think God will give such people a second chance in Heaven if they've been searching, but have been distracted by all the devil's work here on earth. I like to point out that no less a Christian than C.S. Lewis seemed to hold this view, and wrote a whole book about it called The Great Divorce. I too am greatly troubled by the allegation that mom and dad might have gone to Hell. But am comforted by the fact that, in the few conversations I had with dad about this towards the end of his life, he told me that he was not an atheist, just an agnostic. He once said "there very well could be something out there".
Is God going to zap us if we don't believe? I don't think so. And it's helpful to note that the Bible isn't talking about an intellectual belief, but more the desire to follow Him. And it's not like He's being an egotistical despot for demanding that we follow Him. Rather, He's the source of all life, and we are only derived beings. For us to think that we can exist independently of Him on an eternal basis is like a vacuum cleaner that thinks it can get along without electricity.
Again, thank you for your e-mail on this. Sorry for the lengthy reply. I haven't been able to address all the points that people made. But there are two sermons I could send you, one on the resurrection and one on how we can believe stuff that happened long ago. I also have one on intelligent design. Let me know if you're interested in receiving any of these.
I look forward to more dialogue. May the Lord bless you in the New Year.
Love
(my brother)
