While I hope you will all stick around and keep having discussions, I know for some thing means they will think all past content is "tainted" and all future content is worthless. I hope that is not most of you.
Let's keep walking on this journey to explore the truth together as we see it in our own ways.
I think when people are struggling with faith, personal struggles, etc and people respond with intellectualizing, theology, or advice rather than first listening and providing unconditional support and love, we fail as Christians. I've been to many churches that preach theology, which I think has its place, but it can become irrelevant to us in our daily life when it applies to matters that do not apply to our own needs. There's a tendency to create barriers or labels about who "believes" and who doesn't, as if people all don't have their own struggles and doubts that change with time, which can create a rift and make people feel excluded if they don't agree o follow each point.
ReplyDelete2 Corinthians 5:20
ReplyDelete20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.
God works through people, that is His plan. How’s your community?
In light of your change of mind, can you now see how feeble (and painful) the, "You were never a true Christian," accusations are? Calvinistic doublespeak aside, some of us, as I would expect of you, truly did believe. We wanted our beliefs to be true, and made serious efforts to structure our lives according to them. However, despite our desires and efforts, we yet found our beliefs slip away, almost always with extreme grief. Then, after all of this, many of those whom we were closest to in our families and churches would cast us as lepers, "You were never a true Christian."
ReplyDeleteIt's been several years since I left, but it is still a sad memory for me.
Sad. Should be a warning today to many that are in apologetics for intellectual stimulation or love of philosophy. The trials and cares of this world will scorch the seedlings thrown thorny ground.
ReplyDeleteVery true indeed. It breaks my heart to see people deconvert due to life struggles. For some of us going through trials shakes our faith but if we make it through, it's only strengthened. I nearly lost my faith as a teen/ young adult. I attribute part of my perseverance on discovering apologetics and evidentialist arguments. However even that isn't enough now. I have a renewed hunger for spiritual food. I realise one of my issues was that I was very nominal in my faith and wasn't praying and reading the word anywhere near enough. I am glad I've had that test of faith because I know that it's more than just a surface level "life is good" fair weather faith. And I thank God I had a number of close friends who kept me on the right path. More than anything else I'm grateful to Christ and his gracious gift of faith.
Delete"gracious gift of faith" sounds kinda, I dunno, Calvinistic :)
DeleteI do wonder (not in a judgmental way) if compatibilism had an affect on your deconversion. How can you beg God and cry out to Him in crisis knowing that he deterministically brought about so much pain in your life? Why would you even like Him enough (never mind love Him enough) to cry out? Do you get what I'm asking? Is it easier to deconvert with the mindset that if Calvinism is the most accurate expression of Christianity then God will bring me back. I'm just curious.
ReplyDeleteThe beauty of being a genuine freethinker is it means you're free to take away any positive aspects you find from any worldview as truths people have stumbled across and integrate those into your own outlook. There's no requirement to go all the way to compatibilist - only to recognise that the human condition has been considered very carefully by great minds on every continent through the ages, and that it shouldn't be surprising that one or two of them had something positive and upbuilding to say.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that if I'm hearing Tyler correctly, one of the main issues in his deconversion was divine hiddenness. He came to the conclusion that the God of the Bible, who claims to be always present, is nothing of the sort. Initially, an experience like this can be quite devastating. I hope that he can find a measure of peace and contentment as he journeys through this life.
ReplyDeleteJesus too experienced the pain of loneliness and suffering at the cross and he was not comforted either. He did not "continue fighting for it" he remained obedient. But we are told that because of the "joy set before him" he endured the cross. Should we expect that god will spare us when he did not spare his own son? Life is tough but we are to take courage because he has overcome the world. I pray that you will truly consider what this new found worldview has to offer. As for me, I need a redeemer and I know this redeemer lives, and I hope that one day you can come back to him.
ReplyDeleteHi, I am a pastor's daughter, and my grandfather and uncles were theologians and preachers. In 1978 my grandfather studied about Constantine and the Nicene Creed and someone found out, and he was excommunicated from the church he founded. I left when he did and also gave up the Trinity, and shortly after that the virgin birth. My husband's dad was a Jew and his relatives asked me hard questions about Jesus the Jew. Finally in 2006 I broke up with Jesus. Now I realize what took me so long. It is because the New Testament is written from a Greek mindset. Greek entertains metaphors and allegories and it spiritualizes and philosophizes many concepts. Hebrew thought, by contrast, and thus the Hebrew Bible is concrete and simpler and factual. Once I totally set aside the NT for several years, learned to think Hebraically and was able to see the Tenach as a saga of the family of Jacob who was commissioned with saving or helping civilize the world using the Ten Commandments. It is a book of history, whereas the NT is a book of mystery. I have been eternally grateful to be out of the NT mystery religion of Christianity and learning to think like a Hebrew more every day.
ReplyDelete