jonnyb

i'm still interested george, however i havent finished chapter 2 yet - i dont get that many opportunities to read at the minute. by all means keep going through the chapters and the slower among us can comment when we catch up Jonny

here is a related article which you may find amusing.... http://www.theonion.com/articles/god-distances-self-from-christian-right,30087/

just wandering..... got one myself a few months ago. i spent about a year deliberating over it, but i'm glad i did it now. the tattoo is on my upper arm and is a capital letter B from this font - http://www.dafont.com/andes.font it is the first letter of my surname but within it contains the initials of my wife and kids. i wanted to have something that had some personal significance to me. i'd like to perhaps get another one but not sure what. so anyone else have one? any spiritually themed ones? if not what would you get? Jonny

my family and I attend a church which is has traditional christian beliefs but is laid-back and informal. I don't adhere to much of the theology, but i get something from it and there is a friendly and uplifting atmosphere. I am happy to go because my wife and kids enjoy it and i think for me to attend a different church would cause too much upheaval and confusion for the kids. If the church were of the hell-fire and brimstone homophobic type then it might be a different story. Besides, i am not particularly interested in going to any other church, as my faith is personal to me and something that i am working on over time, and no matter how liberal or progressive the church, i feel i would be subjected to someone else's version of God. I love what Joseph wrote about his kids, and i am in line with this, in that i don't believe in telling them 'this is right, and everything else is wrong'. if they go down the route of trad christianity then that is fine, but i want them to be aware that they are free to believe/not believe whatever they want. I didnt have this reassurance myself, which cause me much torment when i started having doubts. Jonny

thanks, i loved reading that. i loved obama's quip to the evangelist 'this is God's house.' touche! it was interesting to read the history of fundamentalism, one can only hope that an interest in Obama's faith will lead to a rise in a progressive kind of christianity. jonny

the issue of having a gut feeling then reasoning to defend your instinct made me think of pro-life/choice - those who are pro-life see a 'harm' and reason that the unborn foetus is a person, whereas pro-choice do not consider the feotus to be a person, therefore see no harm.

welcome, i enjoyed reading your spiritual misadventures Jonny

watched it! very interesting, rather a lot to take in in one viewing. a few of the monologues stood out for me so i may revisit them. also found this which might be worth looking at: http://www.philfilms.utm.edu/1/waking.htm

looks like my kind of movie will bookmark for future viewing thanks Jonny

I myself have been a person who spent his whole life in the community of the church. all activities were with other christians - socialising, sport, music, church meetings. Now i find myself less involved in church, I am finding community elsewhere. I have started volunteering, and am involved in music, with people who arent from a christian background. If anything i have found it refreshing, and it has put an end to the 'keep with your own kind' and 'dont be part of "the world"' undercurrent that i was brought up with. Of course the result may be 'bowling alone', but the bonus of secular communities is that they are more likely to be open to all walks of life, and not just those who think/live/look like you do. J

thanks for those, it was especially interesting for me to hear (in the 1st article) about something that was going on in the university i once flunked my degree in!

hi guys, thought the book looked really interesting so have downloaded to my kindle! looking forward to the discussions Jonny

hi George, your post jogged my memory that I watched a slightly wacky documentary a while ago that featured her heavily. i found it online, it's called 'All watched over by machines of loving grace' here'd the link: http://vimeo.com/25966415 it's a fascinating documentary, but it's quite difficult to agree with everything she says! Jonny

thanks for replies, guys. Yeah Adrian, sounds very similar. for me, i want to make sure that i don't live up to the 'confused, lost person' thing, and keep my head held high and the smile on my face, to give the message that i am perfectly happy as i am. Jonny

Paul, you have basically written an exact list of my problems with traditional christianity, and, indeed, a list of things i was guilty of myself.

Hi, this is inspired by a comment PaulS made in another thread, where he said he cringed at the memory of presenting a creation v evolution argument to his school class. For those of you, like me, who have a background in conservative christianity, what are the things you did in those days that make you want to crawl into the nearest hole? a few i can think of (there are probably better ones that will come back to me): getting sucked into the 'end times' thing, namely Barry Smith and his Y2k/illuminati/masons conspiracy stuff (although, i wasnt as bad as one of my friends who stocked up on bags of rice and had a 'don't take the mark' sticker on his car. Gazing in wonderment at Ken Ham's 'answers in Genesis' presentation and his 6000 year-old earth and pterodactyl sightings. Being in a christian rock band where the drummer would give his testimony and ask all the christians to stand up. and you?

Hi, it's been quite a while since i have been on the site. Back then I was excited about discovering progressive christianity, and even wrote a post about what a great place I was in. However, the whole 'spiritual journey' hit a bit of a rough patch for a while. I wont go into all the details, but one factor was that my new found interest in the Bible began to dwindle, due to the 'good stuff' being more and more outweighed by the slightly dubious stuff. I started to wonder 'I know how to be a good person, i live a reasonably good life, what's the point in reading this at all?' Also, i was finding it harder and harder to be part of the music group and study group in my church. My 'beliefs' are very different from theirs. Essential stuff, too - like my lack of belief in divine intervention and the trinity. Relentless talk of 'God's plan' and the interpretation of every random occurrence as god's will was really getting to me. Also, i have a person close to me who has been on a similar journey, however they are now headed back in the direction of evangelical christianity so i'm not sure we are 100% on the same wavelength any more. So I wrote an email explaining why i was leaving the music group, which was shared with a lot of the church leadership. (i agreed that it could be, i dont want to explain why i left to each individual person). I find church a little bit of an endurance now. i just want to get to the other end without someone taking me aside for a little chat, or inviting me to a 'coffee, sometime?' i do feel like the person who has a little problem and just needs to talk to someone about it and i'll soon be straightened out. However i dont want to leave the church as my wife and kids enjoy it and i want to support them, and there are people i like there, too. One positive is that I feel the real clarity of mind that only comes when something is out in the open. I have wanted to still be a 'christian' of sorts, a follower of the way of Christ, but i found it very difficult when i am part of groups whose idea of christianity is very different than mine. you can never be anything more than the confused person who hasn't got it quite right. So with this new freedom, i find myself thinking of getting back into christianity (my own version ) a little bit. So i'm back here and finding your discussions as interesting and affirming as ever. There are a few books i'm wanting to read. I'll see how it goes! thanks for looking Jonny

Hi Jim, I'm from Northern Ireland (carrickfergus). started questioning my faith a while ago, too, and it depressed me because i thought i must either have the same beliefs as everyone else or be an atheist. I finally found satisfaction, though, in realising that i could cling happily to the parts i loved about my faith (eg the teaching of christ, and the more humanistic writings of the bible) and say 'I don't know' about the rest. i find most of the things traditional christians believe highly unlikely, but if i'm asked i say, 'I don't know'. It's reassuring to accept that you don't have to know everything, don't have to believe the same thing as everyone else. And never feel like your faith needs to be 'fixed'. your faith is personal to you. I came across a group called the 'open christian network' who have discussion groups in dublin and belfast. thought you might be interested. i havent made it to the belfast group yet due to work but i hope to. here's the link: http://www.ocnireland.com/index.htm Jonny

hi Brian, i'm looking forward to hearing more about the christmas memorabilia! Jonny

George, the film was based on Ronald's book, but Robert was one of the 'talking heads' in it Jonny

Hi Dutch, i watched a great documentary last night - surviving progress - and Robert Wright was on it. really interesting stuff Jonny

Hi, saw the amazing documentary film 'surviving progress' last night, which i thought would be of interest to many posters here. Anyone seen it? http://survivingprogress.com/ Jonny

steve, i am much like you when you say, 'There is very little "belief " involved in my faith journey . I have a sense there is a God.' when it comes to an issue like the trinity, i have to conclude that i just don't know. if i were to say i believed it, it means i first have to believe in a lot of other things - that God is interventionist and 'sent' Jesus, that Jesus is 'supernatural' and not just an important teacher etc etc Believing that there is a God, about whom I know nothing, is about as much as i can allow myself to have a 'leap of faith'. If discovering this new kind of christianity has shown me anything, it's that I am happy to accept that I don't know something, and forget about those things and just concentrate on the stuff that is meaningful for me. Jonny

thanks, Joseph, that's great Jonny

Hi Yvonne, I've recently discovered that a few people close to me have had trouble with their faith. when i talked to them it transpired that they were much the same as me - they had lost their traditional beliefs but were interested in still being spiritual and keeping a connection with christianity. Another person i know has completely lost their faith and doesn't want anything more to do with religion. this happened in quite a public way (he was heavily involved with church) and has been hard for him and his family. I would love to share with him the path I have found, to let him know that you can still be a 'christian' if you have lost our beliefs, just not in the same way that most other people are. My fear is that he would think i'm trying to 'win him back for the lord'. so i have to think about how i'm going to approach it. We have agreed that we would meet sometime and i think i will share about my own loss of belief. I know first hand that it is great to find others who have gone through the same thing as you. I have read Borg's 'heart of christianity' (as i believe you have) and i think it's a great tool to introduce someone to these ideas. I think the problem is that people don't know that a spirituality without traditional beliefs exists. They think - as i did for a long time - that you could either be a 100% bible-believing christian or an atheist. there is a wonderful middle ground, and we somehow just have to make people more aware of it. Jonny