How Christianity works for me! (And how I dig your religion too.)

[toothlesshag]

These are my beliefs: at least - today.
Discussion is welcome, but only if you are very nice and sweet about it (but my few readers always are.)

Comments

[twim_reborn]

Fascinating. Thank you. If I were Christian, I would likely be very much aligned to your point of view.

Is it condescending to say that I envy people with faith? I was talking about religion with someone and I mentioned that I wish I could believe and they told me I was being condescending though I couldn't understand how. I think having a faith would be a great comfort to my life and would put a quick end to the nasty existential crisis that has plagued my happiness for over a decade.

For my own part, I hope there is no afterlife, or if there is, it's in the form of reincarnation. To me, eternal happiness would get boring quickly and out of the context of life, would be meaningless. Instead, I hope for quiet oblivion that takes every anxious worry I've ever had and erases it from the universe.

[toothlesshag]

I actually get "I wish I could believe." Like I said - I do not believe every minute, but most of the time I do.

What if you no longer had a mind to be bored with?

Was just saying to David last night that I struggled with the concept of heaven sometimes because I am so connected to my body and my mind.

[toothlesshag]

If you want to believe...I think believing is a choice. Maybe. If you decide you are going to, you will.

[twim_reborn]

I had once hoped this was true for me, but I'm fundamentally flawed in my inability to believe in something I cannot either directly witness or develop a rational explanation for its existence. With regards to religion, I've come close a few times to crossing the threshold by arguing that something always comes before something. . .at first this led me to God but then the wretched question of what comes before God interupted that.

If I ever had the notion, I'd solve this issue by creating my own religion. God would be infinity since, to me at least, infinity is one of the things I know exists and yet also know I don't have the capacity to comprehend. If God were infinity, then God would stretch into and before the future and solve the chicken and egg quandry.

[twim_reborn]

If I no longer had a mind, I would no longer be me. If Heaven is a sacrifice of myself for eternal bliss, I'm not sure I want to make that trade. This is probably one of my primary sticking points with many religions. I feel as if to feel divine joy or to be saved, I must give up myself to some larger, maybe greater, good. And I would be fine with this if I weren't also endowed with a fierce sense of individualism and desire to be accountable not only for my failures, but my successes as well.

It's funny because I don't call myself an atheist because while I might not believe, I don't rule out belief that there might be something greater than ourselves. I just find it hard to say that I believe in that something when I can over no rational reason why it might exist.