Charity

I love your meme Raf - there are two currently living with me. Cats can at times be loving and comforting listeners as they lie and purr on your lap. Then again, these same cats can also be looking down on you from atop the bookshelf considering whether they are in a pouncing mood or not.

I did write asking about her wanting to pray for us and her answer was she was asking Papa for healing, she knows He hears her and she continues to ask and wait. This has been a learning experience. As I look back on things, my hope was that she would see living life outside her Christian worldview was simply a choice and not something that needed prayers. But that’s just the thing. Her Christian worldview is that I need “healing” because there is something wrong (meaning not according to scripture) with me mentally and/or spiritually. I would have thought the same way not that long ago. Being on the receiving end of such a belief now, I can see there is an inherent negative implication to it. My grandson does need healing as do millions of other people in this world who receive it or not depending on a body’s ability to heal itself and/or on the science of medicine. Waiting on an “all powerful and loving” god who can heal but has a hidden agenda as to who and why he will heal is not an option for me anymore.

I'm very sorry to hear about the loss of so many lives and for the massive destruction Hurricane Helene caused. If climate change is proven to be responsible in any way, I hope more will continue to be done worldwide to deal with it.

Why did you change my "could" to "should" – big difference. Could is a possible option; should is saying what one ought to do and can be judgmental as you mentioned. My posts have been about why tell someone twice you will still pray to God for them when they’ve just told you twice that they don’t think He exists and would detest him if He actually did. What prevents you from simply saying I accept your decision and love you still? I think it is a logical question to ask. Thank you for your replies Rocky – they have been helpful. Instead of letting it go very quickly though, I want to first reach out to her to hear her thoughts on this as I sincerely want to know and not just assume what her reasons are.

This woman is a very peaceful, accepting and loving person with a strong commitment to her Christian beliefs. (Even her seven cats are peaceful and loving with each other, accepting the new ones as they came along which always amazed me crediting it to her personal "aura.") I’m sure you are right that her prayers are a loving response as a Christian. I’ve been there and done that as a Christian many times with my adult children who did not believe in a god. But here’s the thing. I don't think it's so much about love as it is respect. If someone knows I do not like lasagna and one day they lovingly invite me over for dinner, what am I to think if they make me lasagna because they believe it's delicious and therefore want me to come to that wonderful conclusion as well? What I am questioning is that instead of accepting my clear explanation and decision about the non-existence of a loving biblical God as being a valid or correct one for me, she still presented Him as someone who can deliver me and my grandson because it is what she believes – IOW, it’s about her and her beliefs, not about me and my beliefs. Could she have shown her love in a way that respected who I now am like suggesting we get together to have a fun night of friendship together? I do love her and have told her that I am thankful to have known her, and I wished her well. I'm thinking now I should share the above with her as well to hear her point of view concerning it.

Thanks Rocky. Those ideas about learned helplessness and powerlessness come from the video I mentioned in that post. Trust and Obey, for there's no other way to be brainwashed My Christian woman friend sent me a reply after my last messages to her saying that she is still continuing to pray for me and my grandson. I know this implies that I'm lost and we both need God's help, but I'm letting that particular conversation with her go at this point.

One last thing for someone who is having doubts about their faith and might happen to read this post, this is one of the best video I've seen while deconstructing (it's a play on the popular Christian song that says "trust and obey, for there's no better way, to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey): Trust and Obey, for there's no other way to be brainwashed I like what he says about learned helplessness. "Learned helplessness is great to encapsulate what’s going on here. After so many attempts to question or challenge our faith are met with dismissal, shame, guilt, people give up. You learn to give up like a smaller dog rolling over and showing his belly to a bigger (alpha) dog, God is the alpha, the Bible is the alpha, your pastor is the alpha, you are not. In the vacuum of that powerlessness, “obedience becomes our comfort, submission becomes cathartic, trust becomes our crutch that helps us get through the day.

At first I gave her a thumbs up in reply to her suggestion that I can still ask God to reveal Himself but it bothered me afterwards that I did so. I wanted to make my thoughts about the idea of God clearer and more decisive so I sent her the following in a number of messages: ~~~~~ Please don’t mistake my “letting go of trying to figure God out” as something that was wrong or bad to do. I’m thankful I did it. The idea of “God says it, I believe it, that settles it and I will obey” is Biblical conditioning that demonizes critical thinking. Yet this is what is taught as you will see below. Repetition of such ideas as this one and others like it, such as “leaning not on your own understanding,” is an indoctrination process where they become a believer’s absolute world view, one’s core beliefs, one’s neural programing in the mind. Job is an example of this. Whether you believe the book of Job is a historical event that really happened or an allegory, God allowed Satan to do terrible things to Job and his family on some kind of a bet and in the end, God reproves Job for questioning His ways to the point that finally Job submits in 42:6, “Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” Only after that does God reward him, not by raising his previous children from the dead (so he and his wife could stop mourning them), but giving him new ones, and we’re supposed to praise God for this? This is simply a horrendous story that no one would critically agree is loving or just if an earthly father did such things to his children. But because of Biblical indoctrination, you have “God Questions” saying the following (the italic comments are mine): “The Book of Job reminds us that there is a "cosmic conflict" going on behind the scenes that we usually know nothing about. (What evidence is there that this is true?) Often we wonder why God allows something, and we question or doubt God’s goodness, without seeing the full picture. The Book of Job teaches us to trust God under all circumstances. We must trust God, not only WHEN we do not understand, but BECAUSE we do not understand. The psalmist tells us, “As for God, His way is perfect” (Psalm 18:30). If God’s ways are “perfect,” then we can trust that whatever He does—and whatever He allows—is also perfect. This may not seem possible to us, but our minds are not God’s mind. It is true that we can’t expect to understand His mind perfectly, as He reminds us, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9). (This is another Biblical doctrine that demonizes our ability to think logically and rationally.) Nevertheless, OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO GOD IS TO OBEY HIM, TO TRUST HIM, AND TO SUBMIT TO HIS WILL, WHETHER WE UNDERSTAND IT OR NOT.” (Capitalization of this sentence is mine.) I abhor this kind of thinking now so I will not ask God to reveal himself because He does not exist outside of the words of men written in the Bible and even if He did, I would not worship him and his ways. ~~~~~ It shows how irrational my beleefs were when I used to accept such an evil God as being all righteous and good and therefore worthy of complete obedience to him.

The following is something I wrote to a woman who I was very close to in a Christian woman's group earlier this year. She contacted me yesterday about how I was doing and I shared this with her. What's of interest is her reply. Me: The brokenness I experienced was six months ago and right afterwards, I spent time in the Word to try once again to understand this God that was nowhere to be found. Over the next few months, my questions led to more questions until I am where I am today. It’s not just how my grandson is suffering because of epilepsy; it’s the terrible suffering that is occurring in the whole world - that is the problem. I have stopped accepting the excuses Christians give to make God look loving and innocent and just in what is happening right before their eyes. But there’s more. The Bible says that when the grace period ends, life will become similar to the OT but much, much worse where the terrifying vengeful wrath of God and His eternal punishment against sinners will once again be considered “justified.” The fallacy of “God has given us free will” or “You send yourself to hell” cannot dismiss the doctrine that this almighty God knew from the beginning how this world would all play out but could think of no better way to have a relationship with his creation. I am no longer convinced God exists and letting go of trying to figure him out has made my life much more peaceful. Her reply: Letting go of trying to figure Him out with your head is a good step. You can still ask Him to reveal Himself to you and not lean on your own understanding of things. He will do it. I am still continuing to pray xx

Thank you for letting us know about your book. Your post reminded me of someone I personally knew with bipolar disorder about 3 decades ago when I was in twi. She and her husband eventually went into the family corps with their three young children. She did not do well living under the cultish and backstabbing conditions there. She ending up either leaving on her own or was kicked out (I can't remember which) while she was experiencing a manic episode and was immediately disowned by her husband who remained loyal to twi even after he had to leave the program. He also would not allow their children to see her which broke her the most. She eventually committed suicide. Having grown up with a strong love-hate relationship with my alcoholic father, I'm very interested in how your loyalty to your own father over the years played out. I look forward to reading your book.

Continuing then with both the topic of “beleefs” and this “Sin and the Need for Perfect Love” thread, the doctrine of sin - from its origin in Genesis to the need for Jesus’ life, death and resurrection to today’s Christianity - is a major beleef for which there is no evidence. It is also a harmful beleef in many ways. On the other hand, behavioral science studies human actions through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained. It includes the fields of neurology, sociology, social and cultural anthropology, psychology, and behavioral aspects of biology, economics, geography, law, psychiatry, and political science. The ancient explanation of negative and positive human behavior boiled down to a simplistic beleef in mythical and/or mystical gods whose histories can be researched. Today’s multi-disciplined understanding of negative and positive human behavior is complex and much can be learned from reading up on them. They are helpful in many ways. What does it take for people to want to question their degrading beleef in sin and learn more about human nature instead? Is it because their beleef in how sin can be overcome through a beleef in Christ is more fanciful to them?

I want to understand what you are saying in the posts above because as of now, I see "beleef," as you call it, as being the basis of Christianity. Belief is defined as follows: Oxford Dictionary = an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists - a firmly held opinion or conviction Cambridge Dictionary = the feeling of being certain that something exists or is true: Merriam-Webster Dictionary is very similar to the above except for its definition #3 which says “conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence. What I find noteworthy is that the word "evidence," or any form of it, is not included in the first two definitions and is used as an add-on with the third, meaning evidence is helpful but not necessary. This is important since evidence is the available body of facts indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid, and fact is a thing that is known or proved to be true. Without proven facts, a belief is subjective and is no guarantee of truth no matter how firmly held it is by someone. A child looking at a flower can hold the belief that it is a flower (which is a fact) but for the child to believe what someone taught her - that the flower is made by God, this would be holding onto a beleef since this is not a proven fact. Finally, since beleefs are not based on facts, evidence to the contrary means nothing to those who hold onto them.

Good one. Not so funny, though, is that the denials are resurfacing again through a recent podcast (and therefore continuing on in the news) with the blame for what happened in Germany being placed on Winston Churchill instead of Hitler. Stupidity is a far cry from what is behind such ideas.

I’m not advocating for there to be no more religion - I just wonder if religion was replaced with humanism one person at a time, would the world be actually worse for it. I don’t think so but many others might think differently because of the millennia-old Christian orthodox belief that humans are naturally wretched without the saving grace of a god. Believing you’re wretched can indoctrinate people to act accordingly. That's why it is sometimes said that if one deconverts from their religious beliefs, they will no longer have morals and, therefore, begin to behave more immorally. This religious bias-based logic is simply false. When humanism is encouraged instead of such beliefs, the idea of “the potential value and goodness of human beings” would help people to “emphasize common human needs” and promote “solely rational ways of solving human problems.” (Quotes are from the definition of humanism by the Oxford dictionary) In that sense, I think the world would be better off. One other thing, I often hear the point being made that unbelievers can do the good works that believers of all religions do, but in contrast, they will not do the harmful works that these believers can do to themselves and to others because of their beliefs.

Your post means a lot to me since I stopped believing in the existence of a god/s. Imagine what life would be life without any religions - I can only see it as being better.

I did take your comment "However, the problem-filled lives of teenagers trying to figure out how to become integrated into society IS a necessary burden for both sides to solve somehow." in the context of my post referring to different religious beliefs between parents and their children. You wrote "I believe we are millennia beyond blaming religious institutions for being part of the problem." Just checking for some clarification. Are you saying that religious institutions do not play as big of a role in today's worldly problems?

Thanks for sharing the song Waysider - love the lyrics. The link below gives info about the album this song was on and has an impressive video of Apollo launches. Here's a quote from the article, "The whole album is concerned with space travel, discovery and a better future for the human race." Reminds me of a definition of humanism: "an outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters. Humanist beliefs stress the potential value and goodness of human beings, emphasize common human needs, and seek solely rational ways of solving human problems." Oxford Languages Listen, hear the sound The child awakes Wonder all around The child awakes Now in his life, he never must be lost No thoughts must deceive him In life he must trust With the eyes of a child You must come out and see That your world's spinning 'round And through life you will be A small part of a hope Of a love that exists In the eyes of a child you will see Earth falls far away New life awaits Time it has no day New life awaits Here is your dream And now how does it feel? No words will go with you And now what is real? To Our Children’s Children’s Children by The Moody Blues

I agree .

You bring up another reality, Rocky, of the harm cult-like religious doctrine causes those leaving those doctrines especially if they grew up in that culture. I hope your daughter and grandchildren find growing peace and inner strength. Concerning religion playing a part in helping teenagers and others cope, I have to honestly say that as long as they teach "we are all sinners and have fallen short of the glory of God and need saving," they continue to be part of the problem. Don't you think the words "God/Jesus loves you" are a bit hypocritical when he is the author of this shame-based doctrine?

This is why many Christians will say God does not send you to hell, you send yourself by not meeting that condition. Things are never God's fault but man's. How frustrating it is to see God get a pass when he is responsible for the problem to begin with - He's like the Teflon D*n John Joseph Gotti Jr.

Here is how I came to accept the doctrine of the bible. I was brought up in the Roman Catholic church. The combination of being told for years that I was a wretched sinner plus the unhealthy choices I made during my teens resulted in a desperate need for God's help when I turned 18 and ended up going to my first twi fellowship. Those two realities in my life made me ripe for wanting what Romans 2 taught – the goodness of God, eternal life, peace, etc., and I remained indoctrinated with those beliefs up until a few months ago. My point is that, for me, believing in God and the scriptures was solely because of what I was taught as a child and my emotional and mental needs later on in life. I knew nothing, however, about the secular history of their origins. Having now learned some things about that history, I’ve come to see the bible as a man-made religion and that much of its ideologies such as Romans 2:4-10 are simply not true. We are not “sinners” worthy of wrath, tribulation and anguish but human beings with strengths and weaknesses. The problem-filled gap between believing parents and their unbelieving teenaged and/or adult children is an unnecessary burden for either side to bear.

Well there's Rom 8:38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. And Rom 5:8 But God commends his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Believing these verses then means you have to believe that God is loving those whom he places "in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death." A bit of cognitive dissonance is in order, I'd say.

Many times, I have heard that “God doesn’t send you to hell, you send yourself.” Romans 2:4-10 demonstrates this kind of blaming by teaching a strict dichotomy that we’re all bad and God’s all good in order to get us to choose God. Romans 2:4 Or despise thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leads thee to repentance? 5But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasure up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; 6Who will render to every man according to his deeds: 7To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life: 8But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, 9Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile; 10But glory, honour, and peace, to every man that works good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile: Is not this gaslighting and manipulation? Especially when you consider that our "evil" was by God's design according to the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3. What makes people prone to accepting this doctrine hook, line and sinker?

My apologies Nathan, I decided not to add the scripture references in order to keep the post shorter - each of the phrases are directly from the KJV and can be googled and the chapter and verse will come up immediately. The one you asked about is Romans 2:8. Please post what you learn about it - it'd be interesting to know. The phrases were simply about describing and/or declaring God's wrath in the past, present and future. Sometimes they were against the pagan nations and unbelievers and sometimes they were against God's chosen ones who disobeyed him.

The following quote by TLC on the "Scripture interprets itself" thread has brought up some thoughts and feelings that I continue to wonder about even after my deconversion from Christianity. The post said, "Maybe it’s virtually impossible to believe in the resurrection if a soul doesn’t first recognize or in some way acknowledge that all men are sinners and fall short of the glory of God, and concede to the need to be saved. That provides an understandable reason for the resurrection, which continues on to makes sense out of a whole lot of other things written in the scriptures. At least, know that it did for me." Unfortunately, accepting the condemnation from an "all-powerful Creator" that we are all sinners and have fallen short of His perfect glory is the antithesis of having any sense of self-esteem or self-worth. What’s even worse is that because of this indisputable judgment upon us, we are absolutely dependent on His “perfect and unconditional love” in order to be able to love ourselves and others. The interesting part of holding these beliefs is that they appeared to work, and I’m wondering now why this was so. Was it simply the placebo effect and if so, how sound or healthy was that really? The challenging part of letting go of these once-held beliefs is how imperfect, weak and therefore discouraging human love appears in comparison to such a "perfect and unconditional love." Does it cause one to "settle" for second best or is it really about learning to live happily in an imperfect world? I'll share more as time goes on. I'm hoping others will also share their thoughts and experiences of dealing with these or similar questions.