(no subject)
One of my greatest spiritual and psychological difficulties has to do with the fact that while I try to be a believer in God, in the past I FELT better when I was still an atheist. I grew up in an atheistic country, the former German Democratic Republic, and I had a good childhood and young age life there. While the Change and the Unification of Germany brought me some financial gains, they also destroyed the microcosm that I had learned to love, the microcosm that was my home.
Because of my schizophrenia, I often come to a place where I would be stalled and and eventually halted. I want to put my faith in a deity but it seems hard and fruitless. I experience weird temptations and obsessions. At that point my mind wants to reset itself and return to where it seemed best for it. And while I want to be spiritual and faithful to God, I had my best setup and my best times when I was an atheist. As an atheist I was healthy, as a theist I am not. I try to chalk my pains and difficulties up to fate and the concept of life being suffering, but it's hard when good feelings seem not far away yet giving in here would compromise the honesty of my faith, because after all I can't be an atheistic christian although exactly this is my main temptation in my spiritual walk. I have switched sides a countless times, being christian in the morning and an atheist in the evening. And the more I do this switching, the more I feel unsettled and dishonest and just plain weird.
I wish I knew a solution for this. I don't know of any research that was done into what became of people who had been happy atheists and then converted to serious religious theism.
Because of my schizophrenia, I often come to a place where I would be stalled and and eventually halted. I want to put my faith in a deity but it seems hard and fruitless. I experience weird temptations and obsessions. At that point my mind wants to reset itself and return to where it seemed best for it. And while I want to be spiritual and faithful to God, I had my best setup and my best times when I was an atheist. As an atheist I was healthy, as a theist I am not. I try to chalk my pains and difficulties up to fate and the concept of life being suffering, but it's hard when good feelings seem not far away yet giving in here would compromise the honesty of my faith, because after all I can't be an atheistic christian although exactly this is my main temptation in my spiritual walk. I have switched sides a countless times, being christian in the morning and an atheist in the evening. And the more I do this switching, the more I feel unsettled and dishonest and just plain weird.
I wish I knew a solution for this. I don't know of any research that was done into what became of people who had been happy atheists and then converted to serious religious theism.