PaulS

Deborah, I abandoned Christianity at 19 because I thought it unjust and man-made. When I started working I started to see the world in a different way and I felt anger toward Bible God, which in hindsight was probably more anger about feeling deceived all those years and wanting something to be true but knowing that it wasn't. I did feel a little lost because I had grown up in this community of like-minded believers for 19 years and now I wasn't part of their circle any more, but fairly quickly my work and life moved on and I didn't really give Christianity much more thought. All of those friendships pretty much went by the way The second time around I was 40 and it had more to do with anxiety and depression (i.e. mental health) than it did about Christianity itself. That was a very dark period and I felt completely lost, but thankfully I did come out the other side and I attribute that to a couple of people, plenty of reading, and participating in this forum. I don't think one can 'make themself' feel any better or acclimatized to new beliefs but I do think it's a process that people go through and over time, the means we use to adjust see us through and we come out the other end feeling relatively at ease. I hope that makes sense. Cheers Paul

PC (this forum and various authors) definitely helped me overcome my anxiety. By learning more about biblical scholarship and an alternate view to understanding Jesus & the bible (which I never knew existed) my anxiety eventually dissipated. What attracted me to PC was that it provided what I saw as a much more sensible approach to christian scripture, and one which didn't require me to suspend logic and reason. I don't say that to sound demeaning to Christians that do hold those beliefs, but rather that those beliefs didn't meet my test and made no sense to me whatsoever. I wouldn't mind a get together of the likes of this forum, but I have an almost phobic disinterest in rejoining any 'organised' religion, PC or not. I'm happy with the 'Church of General Life' and occasional discussions/forum with others. As for my wife, although we shared some of the journey it was a little hard for her to understand. She comes from a totally non-religious family and never understood the grip of fear my childhood indoctrination had in coming back to haunt me. I find it funny in fact I find that most adults I talk to now have no understanding of fundamental Christianity. What I thought was the norm for Christianity, is actually not all that normal here in Australia. Of the 61% of adults Australians who say they are Christian, less than 15% of that number actually regularly attend Church. And then of that small number of Churchgoers - how many are actually fundamentals? So to me it seems the number is actually quite minute in the big picture of things. That has also helped me understand that the fundamental view of Jesus and the bible is really quite a minority.

Sorry Deborah, I don't really know if there is any kind of emerging church in Mandurah. Googling 'Progressive Christianity Western Australia' seems to throw up some possible places to contact for further information. I moved here about 10 years ago and had no interest in Christianity. I grew up as a fundamental Christian but abandoned it around 19 years of age and never looked back. My intro to PC started about 2009 (at the age of 40) when I first experienced suffering anxiety - firstly about money issues which then morphed into anxiety over Christianity (it's a long story), my rejection of it, my eternal future, etc (now that was 9 months or so of Hell! ). For me personally I have no desire to go to a church but do enjoy my fellowship here. Here feels safe, friendly, fairly non-judgmental, and the right pace for me. Also, I save most of my philosophizing about Christianity for when I have a few red wines and Sunday mornings are too early for that! Cheers Paul

Welcome Deborah, It really is a small world - to think you used to live here 25yrs ago and now you live on the other side of the world! I hope this forum can offer you some of that community of which you seek. I completely lost faith/belief in Christianity nearly 30 years ago and really could have benefited then from a site like this. Apart from no internet in those days, I had no idea Christianity even existed outside the framework of fundamentalism and biblical literalism. Enjoy it here. Cheers Paul

Now winning the lottery IS something I pray for!

Joseph, I'd like to think I'm open to things, particularly new evidence, and so I would be open to somebody showing me how prayer actually worked for a party being prayed for. I haven't seen anything that would validate such answer to prayer and so I find it difficult to accept, at this point in time. Using the analogy of 'when God starts growing back limbs, then I'll start thinking that healing really works', I also think that prayer results limited to our circle of friends or community, have more to do with all the other things that might be going on moreso than God answering prayer. When God answers the prayer concerning starving Etheopians then I might start to think there's really something to this prayer thing ( and by God I don't mean sugar daddy God, but even God as simply existence). I just don't see examples of prayer working out that way. Cheers Paul

[quote name="JosephM" post="42833" timestamp=" Perhaps prayer works but not the way you might think it should? Mostly, i think we are transformed ourselves by it. As long as duality appears as reality there will be poor and starving people no matter how much food we send. And sending it is indeed a noble endeavor but it doesn't eliminate the cause of the suffering. I agree an individual can be affected themselves by their own prayer. As I said earlier, prayer as say meditation, which opens a person up to their own thoughts and feelings, could be beneficial to them. And I agree that we may always have starving people. But that doesn't align (for me) with your expressing that prayer works by sending positive thoughts or in the context of this thread of intercessory prayer being useful (for the one being prayed for). It seems to me that life will play out how it plays out regardless of whether one prays or not.

Joseph, If prayer worked then I don't think we'd have starving Ethiopans. People have been praying for them and sending positives thoughts for decades - yet still they starve.

I think we can benefit in the sense that if we are being compassionate, perhaps we will 'feel' compassion more than if we were in another frame of mind. But for me, it's hard to imagine all the positive thoughts in the world helping say the starving Ethiopian whose whole family is dying around him from starvation and malnutrition, other than to give him his own personal feeling of comoft (somehow). What I mean by that is that I think the 'positive vibe' concept seems very western (i.e. privileged culture). I'm not so sure 'god' responds very well to prayer in many situations.

Wonnerful, I'm afraid I don't have any real answers for you. My experience is that I have no idea what the writers of texts some 2000 years ago truly meant when they wrote it. I can guess, or postulate, but on the evidence available I simply cannot know for certain. And that's of course if we can even trust what we have to be the original text and not having been altered in the first few hundred years by alternate views, scribal error/mistranslation, etc. Paul may well have held the views the scholars you have read, propose. For me personally, I let the bible wash over me. What speaks to me speaks to me and what doesn't, doesn't. I feel free to disregard or write-off the bits that don't speak to me as somebody else's opinion/take on things and that's all. It certainly seems that scholarship shows that Paul held some distinctly different views to the message of Jesus. As Paul supposedly never actually met Jesus that wouldn't surprise me. Maybe Paul has some things right about Jesus but other things wrong. Maybe Paul has introduced his own thought processes and superimposed them over Jesus'. Then again, Jesus does seem apocalyptic in some verses so maybe some of Paul's 'death wish stuff' is aligned with the real Jesus of 0-33CE. Who knows. I appreciate your integrity for trying to understand the NT accurately, but I don't think anyone has that capacity, scholar or not. Unfortunately too much time has past, too many voices are represented/misrepresented in scripture, for us to really understand it as a whole. In fact, I don't think it can be read as a whole so to speak, but as a composite of many varied, even if somewhat aligned, personal views. Cheers Paul

I think of God as existence - ourselves, our environment, our planet, our universe, and beyond. We are living in and through what I think of as God. We are God and a part of God. Subsequently everything we experience is 'of' God (the good and the bad of which there is no good or bad, just God). To 'direct' prayer to God seems pointless to me because what will be will be. Asking God to 'intercede' is an impossibility for me - it's kinda like asking God not to be God for a moment. We live our lives the way we do and the results are the results. Other people live their lives they way they do and the results are the results. Sometimes other people's results affect our results and vice versa. But at the end of the day, how it all plays out is simply how it all plays out and there is no thing or being standing by to wait for our call to action. Now prayer as meditation so to speak, as opening oneself up to "god' (i.e. life) I think I can understand. Allowing ourselves to be open to thoughts and feelings can be beneficial I believe. But I see this as distinctly different to intercessory prayer. Just my two bob's worth. Cheers Paul

I thought that was eloquently put, Bill. I would agree that grace in a godly context has to be condition-free to be true grace, otherwise it isn't grace.

Hi Terri, All the best with the conference and welcome to the forum. Cheers Paul

Bill, I think Tillich went beyond pantheism and considered panentheism. I may be mistaken but I think pantheism describes God as being the universe, whereas panentheism says God is the universe and beyond, and everything that moves and happens within. So my understanding, and I could be wrong, would suggest God as a fishbowl and water would be pantheistic, but God as a fishbowl, water, the space in which the fishbowl sits, the fish itself, the water flowing through the fish and all its molecules being changed and used within the fish, is a more panentheistic understanding. Some say when the Apostle Paul says about God - “‘In him we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17.28) that he possible was considering a panentheism view. Cheers Paul

I've discussed my view before. I don't think we have a thing called 'free will'. We like to think we do and it is somewhat reassuring to think that we or others make decisions based on their own free will, but I believe our decisions are in a sense made for us, based on how we have wired ourselves as we have developed physically, emotionally and the life experiences we have been subjected to.

I guess simply put, there are highly intelligent people that believe the Bible as a whole is the inspired word of God, even where that God is represented as committing or facilitating acts of murder, genocide and other savagery. To me those 'dud bits' are so clearly a human interpretation of events and their use of 'God' to justify such actions. I think that due to their culture and upbringing even intelligent people are convinced this 'truth' is really of God and don't question it. It is often accepted as 'just needing to have faith' as though somehow such brutality is justified in a way we can't understand. Does that make sense?

It might be easier to believe the dud bits of the bible if one has a lower IQ, but there's plenty of high IQ people that believe in the dud bits too, so I don't think intelligence is necessarily reflective of reasons for belief. I think it's got a lot more to do with one's culture, upbringing, societal experience, and life experiences in general that contribute to how we think and what we do or do not believe.

Welcome Zeke, Like you, I was raised in a very similar home and around 18 I too started to question what I had been taught when I started to see how it didn't really marry up with what I was seeing in the 'real world'. I completely lost any faith and determined that Christianity was a man made religion and not the one sole 'way' it proclaims to be. For me I had no idea there was any alternate way to look at Christianity and it was until about 5 years ago ( and 20+ years since I left Christianity) that I learnt about Progressice Christianity, the likes of Spong and Marcus Borg, and resources like this forum. It's opened a crack to a window of a new way of looking at Christianity, Jesus and the bible that I wish I knew about at your age. Welcome to the forum and I hope you find it both useful and fulfilling here. Cheers Paul

Welcome BBQ, I hope this forum can help you out somewhat. Cheers Paul

What to do from here??? I must admit I don't have any answer for you. I myself left my church community of 19 years at the age of 19, and have never returned. Whilst there are elements of that community I miss, I could never imagine returning to that religious environment. But of course my views on religion and Christianity have changed too. However I can understand how disappointed or lost you may feel about not finding that right community. If you have been brought up that way like I was, it is very conditioning. To the point that without it there is most likely a huge hole in your life. All I'd like to say is go easy on yourself. There's no rush to square away a new church. Let your family be your community and see what comes. Maybe try out a visit here or a visit there, perhaps even secular groups like Rom suggests (Rotary), sporting clubs or other communities, and you'll probably find something becomes your new community by natural means. I think human beings by nature are communal, in general. We like spending time with like-minded people and often feel rewarded for helping one another. I'm sure given time you'll feel comfortable with somewhere. All the best. Paul

Ian, I can only imagine the difficulties associated with your sexuality and home life. And being an atheist myself, I'm probably not much good giving you spirtual support! But I am glad you have found something that gives you some peace in all that is going on in your life at this age. I do find much wisdom and comfort in the bible, although I don't think it is 'from' any God in particular. In contrast, I find some pretty awful stuff in the bible allegedly of God too. I think much wisdom in the bible also shines through in many other religions and secular ways of thinking. What I do think is best for our world is that we accept people for who they are and stop judging them, criticising them, and/or telling them they are bad or wrong because they don't fit the mould of what we define as 'normal'. Frankly, if who you are/what you do doesn't hurt anybody else, I'm good with it! Peace & goodwill. Paul

Hi Ian, Unfortunately like Joseph mentions, community participation has been a bit slow around here lately, although I do think it is a reasonably safe place to discuss your religous beliefs. Members are eactively encouraged to respect other people's differences. I'd like to think that most who participate here are open-minded and certainly refrain from insulting or harming others. I look forward to your participation here. Cheers from Australia Paul

No I didn't mean to sound like Rhino's spouse might be vindictive, rather the thread's title is Fear Of A Vindictive God, and although Rhino was making a connection between love and fear of dissapointing his wife, I was trying to point out that this doesn't compare with love and a vindictive God. Yes, the joys of interpreting the written word!

i think there is a major difference between the fear of disappointing one's spouse and fear of that spouse's vindictiveness. We can use love and fear in the same sentence as you did, Rhino, but it's not the same as them going hand in hand. Room for fear in love? I would suggest that what you fear is the disappearance of that love (e.g. your wife dying) but that there is no place for fear in love itself. Whilst not opposites they do not correlate either. You cannot love someone you are afraid of.

Fair enough Terry, but that's not how it reads to me, but I'm not losing a lot of sleep over it Cheers Paul