Have You Always Believed As You Do Now?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
121

[quote]forlife wrote:
MBH, your thoughts and convictions reflect my own during my years of Christianity. I didn’t mean to imply that I only loved people out of fear of punishment or desire for reward. I’m sure nobody is that shallow :slight_smile:

The best way I’ve found to convince Christians that it is possible to be a true believer and subsequently “fall away” (per their world view) or gain “spiritual maturity/enlightenment” (per my new world view) is by sharing this passage from Hebrews:

[quote]Hebrews 6:4-6
For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame.[/quote][/quote]

forlife, there is no such thing as a true believer that subsequently “falls away”. You are confused on Hebrews 6:4-6.

The writer is referring to people who don’t believe that Jesus’ sacrifice was sufficient to take away all our sins. He’s saying that since Christ died for all our sins, it’s impossible to be brought back to repentance when it’s obvious that you’ve never repented, or changed your mind, to begin with. You’ve never changed your mind about what Jesus did for you at Calvary.

If I am asking God to forgive me as a saved person, what would He have to do to answer that prayer? He would have to die again. Why? Because without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. What would I be doing if I am asking Him to die for me again? I would be subjecting Him to open shame and crucifying the Son of God all over again. Why would I want Him to die again? Why would I want Jesus to suffer again so that I could “feel” forgiven? To depend on feelings is a repudiation of faith. I don’t need to feel forgiven, I am forgiven. For us to expect Christ to deal with sin again or to come back and be sacrificed all over is to grossly misunderstand the nature of what happened at the cross. It is an insult to the Lord Jesus.

What you are telling me about your “years of Christianity” is described well by a quote from Major W. Ian Thomas: “There are few things quite so boring as being religious, but there is nothing quite so exciting as being a Christian! Most folks have never discovered the difference between the one and the other, so that there are those who sincerely try to live a life they do not have, substituting religion for God, Christianity for Christ, and their own noble endeavors for the energy, joy, and power of the Holy Spirit. In absence of reality, they can only grasp at ritual, stubbornly defending the latter in the absence of the former, lest they be found with neither!”

122

MBH, the passage states that it’s impossible to renew them again to repentance. Clearly, you can’t be “renewed again” to something that you’ve never experienced. These are people that did repent, that experienced the Holy Spirit, and that received forgiveness of their sins through Christ’s atonement.

I was one of those people. I accepted Jesus as my personal Savior, and was cleansed through his sacrifice on the cross. I experienced the Holy Spirit on many occasions, and knew without a shadow of doubt that God was real and forgave me of my sins.

Now, I see things very differently. I realize it’s a disturbing idea that someone could deeply believe and accept Jesus as their Savior, only to see him in a different light at a later point in their lives. But that is what happened to me, and clearly Paul says that it is possible.

123

[quote]forlife wrote:
[…]
I agree, on both counts. My point was that quite a few believers have told me that I didn’t experience a true conversion, else I never would have subsequently left my faith. It’s hard for them to reconcile a person who deeply, sincerely knows that there is a God and regularly communicates with this God, who at a later point in life takes a step back and reinterprets those spiritual experiences in a very different light.

On your second point, I have never doubted the benevolence of people trying to (re)convert me to Christianity or other belief systems. Given the way they see the universe, it makes sense for fundamentalists to want others to believe as they do. I served a full time mission for two years trying to do just that.[/quote]

This is something I used to struggle with when I was still christian - in essence, this is another form of prescribing someone else how and what exactly to believe. I always cherished the diversity of views, and being schooled for my confirmation for two years in my teens has left me with many life lessons which I still remember 25 years later; but I was always turned off by some members in the community who would readily either criticise my personal religious experiences or the views that emanated from them. In a sense, their seeming need for internal prosyletising drove me far enough away to start doubting the message and look for answers in other places, eventually (and including many other experiences) leading to me becoming an atheist.

Makkun

124

[quote]makkun wrote:
This is something I used to struggle with when I was still christian - in essence, this is another form of prescribing someone else how and what exactly to believe. I always cherished the diversity of views, and being schooled for my confirmation for two years in my teens has left me with many life lessons which I still remember 25 years later; but I was always turned off by some members in the community who would readily either criticise my personal religious experiences or the views that emanated from them. In a sense, their seeming need for internal prosyletising drove me far enough away to start doubting the message and look for answers in other places, eventually (and including many other experiences) leading to me becoming an atheist.[/quote]

I’ve noticed a correlation between fundamentalism and intolerance for religious diversity. The more rigid your belief system, the less capable you are of acknowledging the validity of other belief systems. Your view of the universe is strictly black and white, and there is little tolerance for ambiguity or willingness to admit that you don’t have all the answers.

I’m convinced that the real evil is not religion per se, but the entrenchment of rigid thinking that characterizes extremists of all faiths, including some that profess no faith at all.

125

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:
Well, do you blame them for being confused? You just said you prayed to God and got answers, then you decided you don�¢??t know if he really exists. If you said you did that stuff, and it didn�¢??t do shit, it would make more sense. But if you claimed to have interacted with God and then say you don�¢??t believe he exists anymore, this will confuse people.[/quote]

I can see how it confuses them, given their world view. Since they believe God is real, they can’t understand how someone could hear the voice of God and later decide that it really wasn’t the voice of God. [/quote]

Well what was it? Is there a situation you’d be willing to share to illustrate? I understand if you don’t, I’d just want to understand.

126

[quote]Regular Gonzalez wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:
No, it cannot. Even if scientists knew the exact bio-electro-chemical make up of some one that is feeling love and could replicate it, they cannot make some “love”. It is more than chemistry, electricity and biology.
[/quote]

How exactly did you establish this?

[/quote]

Because love is a metaphysical object. Our physical make allows us to interact with it, but it is not something we can fake or replicate in a petri dish. There is not one feeling or emotion or thought involved with love, it encompasses the spectrum.

127

[quote]forlife wrote:
MBH, your thoughts and convictions reflect my own during my years of Christianity. I didn’t mean to imply that I only loved people out of fear of punishment or desire for reward. I’m sure nobody is that shallow :slight_smile:

The best way I’ve found to convince Christians that it is possible to be a true believer and subsequently “fall away” (per their world view) or gain “spiritual maturity/enlightenment” (per my new world view) is by sharing this passage from Hebrews:

[quote]Hebrews 6:4-6
For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame.[/quote][/quote]

Well you obviously ran into something you could not reconcile. I personally get the feeling your not lost, just really pissed off at church and God.

128

[quote]pat wrote:
Well what was it? Is there a situation you’d be willing to share to illustrate? I understand if you don’t, I’d just want to understand.[/quote]

It’s hard to say, but personally I think it was my own inner voice. At the time I believed I was communicating with a supernatural being, but now I think of it more as meditation and introspection.

129

[quote]pat wrote:
Well you obviously ran into something you could not reconcile. I personally get the feeling your not lost, just really pissed off at church and God.[/quote]

There are quite a few people that reconcile their religious faith with being gay, I just wasn’t one of them. If I still believed there was a God, I could easily find a gay friendly local church. And even if every church in the world decided to embrace gays, I couldn’t in good conscience return to my former belief system.

I’m not pissed off at anyone. To the contrary, I think there are a lot of good things that came along with my religious upbringing. I respect the people of my former religion, and find most of them to be sincere and well meaning.

As I said earlier in this thread, I have no desire to “convert” anyone to my world view. If you find happiness and meaning in whatever God you choose to worship, I think that is great and wish you well, particularly if you return the same sentiment to me.

130

[quote]forlife wrote:
[…]

I’ve noticed a correlation between fundamentalism and intolerance for religious diversity. The more rigid your belief system, the less capable you are of acknowledging the validity of other belief systems. Your view of the universe is strictly black and white, and there is little tolerance for ambiguity or willingness to admit that you don’t have all the answers.

I’m convinced that the real evil is not religion per se, but the entrenchment of rigid thinking that characterizes extremists of all faiths, including some that profess no faith at all.[/quote]

Well, for monotheistic religions, if taken seriously, there’s really not too much wiggle room for deep inter-religious tolerance - as they are, well monotheistic. Of course it’s possible to be strongly convinced, and show respect and (ambiguity) tolerance when feeling secure in your religious beliefs - I’ve seen that with people who combine science backgrounds and religious beliefs - prerequisites to dealing with a complex and contradictory world. As fundamentalism on the other hand tends imho to be driven by a need to simplify, and find simplistic answers to complex questions, the above doesn’t really work. But that’s not only valid for religions - basically any reductionist (political, ideological, moral etc.) world-view will serve the purpose of offering seemingly simple answers to complex questions. But that you’ll find in any belief or system of thought - including us atheists.

Makkun

131

Exactly. Reductionism, oversimplification, intolerance for ambiguity, unwillingness to question, and strident criticism of those who disagree with your own beliefs are hallmarks of the fundamentalist mindset, and apply to all inquiries of life rather than just religion.

I think monotheistic religions can be relatively tolerant, with the level of tolerance tending to reflect the tolerance and mercy attributed to the deity being worshiped. I’ve known tolerant Christians who focus on the principle of love as the center of their faith, in contrast to the modern day pharisees that Jesus condemned, who strain at a gnat but swallow a camel.

132

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

Well, I would post the scripture from the Latin Vulgate Bible, but I am not sure that anyone would be able to read the Latin. But the Douay-Rheims (DRB) is translated from the Latin Vulgate Bible and was translated in 1906 with authority of the Church. And since my faith is Divine faith, my religion comes from the Church and not the Bible, and the Church has said that the Latin Vulgate is correct beyond the Greek and Hebrew Bibles, and the DRB is next, plus it has all 7 of the books left out by Protestants, and was made before the KJV 1611, which has many errors (up to 30,000) so that is my reasons for using the DRB when needing an English translation. [/quote]

What I posted was from the New American Bible, from the Vatican website.

I think you would like the ESV. There is even a Catholic version:

What they did is go back to the original texts so that this translation is one degree removed from the original manuscripts. It’s the closest you can get with out knowing Aramaic, Greek, Latin and Hebrew.[/quote]

Yeah, I’m cool with the Pre-Vatican II official English Bible. It has better language, in meaning that I cannot just skim the text, I have to think of what it says since it is in Old English or whatever. I also like the fact that it was completed in 1609, before the KJV since everyone hails that is the best.

133

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Regular Gonzalez wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:
No, it cannot. Even if scientists knew the exact bio-electro-chemical make up of some one that is feeling love and could replicate it, they cannot make some “love”. It is more than chemistry, electricity and biology.
[/quote]

How exactly did you establish this?

[/quote]

Because love is a metaphysical object. Our physical make allows us to interact with it, but it is not something we can fake or replicate in a petri dish. There is not one feeling or emotion or thought involved with love, it encompasses the spectrum.[/quote]

You know this how?

134

[quote]forlife wrote:
MBH, the passage states that it’s impossible to renew them again to repentance. Clearly, you can’t be “renewed again” to something that you’ve never experienced. These are people that did repent, that experienced the Holy Spirit, and that received forgiveness of their sins through Christ’s atonement.

I was one of those people. I accepted Jesus as my personal Savior, and was cleansed through his sacrifice on the cross. I experienced the Holy Spirit on many occasions, and knew without a shadow of doubt that God was real and forgave me of my sins.

Now, I see things very differently. I realize it’s a disturbing idea that someone could deeply believe and accept Jesus as their Savior, only to see him in a different light at a later point in their lives. But that is what happened to me, and clearly Paul says that it is possible.[/quote]

forlife, I’ll further explain this verse, but don’t take it as me trying to convince or convert you. You will believe what you will, and so will I. We can agree to disagree.

The book of Hebrews tells us about the new covenant replacing the old covenant, the new priesthood that replaced the old priesthood, a superior priesthood representing a superior covenant, a new priest, a new sacrifice, a final sacrifice, and that there is no more sacrifice for sins. It was written to the Jews who were used to sacrificing bulls and goats to cover sins on the day of atonement. The writer says to put all that aside, it is over, there is no more sacrifice for sins, the cross is the final sacrifice.

In 6:4 he is explaining that certain people had been enlightened concerning the finality of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross; they had heard about it (like Judas Iscariot), they were exposed to it, they tasted (not drank) it, but they had never repented. They can’t be brought back to repentance because they can’t be brought back from where they have never been. They had been exposed to it and intentionally rebelled against it, which is proof they had never repented of their unbelief. And as a result of their rejecting this and continuing to ask God to do what He has already done (shed His blood), they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to open shame.

135

MBH, how can you say they never repented when the passage clearly states that “it is impossible to renew them again to repentance”? Clearly, they did repent and accepted the atonement of Christ, but subsequently rebelled against it.

You can’t “renew again” something that never existed in the first place, so the only logical conclusion is that they did in fact repent in the first place.

136

[quote]forlife wrote:
MBH, how can you say they never repented when the passage clearly states that “it is impossible to renew them again to repentance”? Clearly, they did repent and accepted the atonement of Christ, but subsequently rebelled against it.

You can’t “renew again” something that never existed in the first place, so the only logical conclusion is that they did in fact repent in the first place.[/quote]

forlife, sorry for the confusion, I have an NIV and it says “it is impossible to be brought back to repentance” instead of “to renew them again”, thus I was explaining they couldn’t be brought back from where they had never been.

With your translation I would say they can’t be renewed again to repentance because they never repented to begin with.

As you stated “you can’t ‘renew again’ something that never existed in the first place”. And that is what I’m saying, they never repented in the first place.

137

In order to be brought back to repentance, you need to have been there in the first place.

In order to be renewed again to something, you need to have been there in the first place.

It’s clear from the passage that these people felt the Spirit and were genuinely enlightened, yet subsequently fell away.

Not that it matters much to me, since I don’t accept the bible as being any more the word of “god” than any other holy book :slight_smile: That’s just how I read it, and it reflects my own experience.

138

um, sorry to interject, but I was really fascinated with the use of the term ‘charity’ in 1 corinthians 13. It jarred me because even though I went through a religious studies minor at UCSD, and outside of academia worked with some truly brilliant Biblical scholars (including the guy who wrote the second best selling book about the Judeo-Christian God – the first being the bible)*. I had never thoroughly read the King James bible because as a poetic example of Early Modern (‘Shakspearian’) English, it wasn’t worth my time as someone focusing on minutia as young would-be scholars often are (just to be clear that was a statement about my arrogance not a statement on the KJV).

To start, I think that the modern use of the word ‘charity’ isn’t powerful enough for this verse. Maybe in the late 16th/early 17th century, charity had more meanings than now, but here it just doesn’t work. In the various quotes of Jesus saying ‘love God and love your neighbor as yourself’ and in many if not all the new testament references to loving God or experiencing the love of God (it’s not like I looked them all up before writing this post), the term used is ‘agape’ (or a derivation of agape). Likewise, agape is used in 1 corinthians where you see all the references to ‘charity.’

From Plato and other writers, we know of three major words for love in ancient Greek (the language in which the NT was written) – eros (Barry White sort of love), philos (I love you man! brotherly love), and ‘agape,’ which is harder to directly translate into English and has been a source of debate ever since bibles started to be mass printed for people to read and study – probably well before that. I’m not dead set on a definition, but I’ve always understood agape to be the sort of love that one finds in a mystical experience – an overwhelming love for everything, the ‘oh man… all is one’ feeling from new agers and old time mystics alike. It’s a type of experience that is very easy to trivialize (and thus easy to be a subject of derision), and as a result most people who have felt this don’t always like to talk about it because it’s hard to describe without resorting to either bad poetry or cheesy hippy lines. But it is real, and is a part of human experience written about in many cultures across the world and across history.

I think many people have felt a moment of it, just a moment of love without any object or subject. It usually passes after whatever caused it subsides and one returns to daily life, but I think it’s a profound term that deserves attention and is difficult to debate simply because there is no simple expression in English for this term. It’s certainly more signifigant than any modern view of the word ‘charity.’

forlife – I don’t know if I got my point across (mostly because perhaps I don’t fully comprehend the subtleties of the languages in question), but is this the sort of love you were talking about in your discussion with that other guy earlier in this thread?

–

  • – in an assistant/curious outsider capacity, I don’t claim to be in any sort of ‘inner circle.’
139

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
For your paragraph to remain logically consistent, the last sentence should have read “It’s one thing to perform an act because you believe a god wants you to do so, and another thing to do the act for the sake of the voice inside your head.”

Deriving good and bad internally does not lead to doing an act for the sake of an act. You are doing it for the sake of your internal mystical conscience.

Don’t you get it? You may not believe in an external mystic being, but you do believe and put your faith in an internal one. You, in essence, are your own god. (not being critical of your beliefs, just making the observation)[/quote]

I see what you’re saying, and have actually gone through that thought process in defining my own values and beliefs. When I realized that we don’t have all the answers, I had to reconsider all the values that had been informed by the fake answers that I held most of my life.

Most of the values stayed the same, but I asked myself WHY that was the case. WHY did I continue to value love if there is no god or no afterlife? The best answer I could come up with is that my values are informed by my genetics and the way I was raised, irrespective of my religious beliefs. When you consider environmental influences, you can’t truly say that all of your values are internally derived. I agree with you on that point.

All I can say is that even after considering that my values are a product of my genetics and environment, I still derive happiness and meaning from them. They are still important to me. The difference is that I at least recognize this, rather than loving people out of the belief that a supernatural being is going to reward or punish me if I don’t.

I’ve at least discarded the environmental influence of religion on my life, so in that sense my values are more “internally derived” than they were before. That said, why should you deserve kudos for acting more according to your genetics than your environment? :)[/quote]

A couple of points:

  1. If there is no god, religion is nothing more than an environmental factor. Why would you strive against it’s influence any more than another environmental factor? Surely you don’t struggle with the same fervor against other societal influences. Why single out religion as something to try to delete from your belief structure? You have already stated that you agree with most of what major religions teach. Should religious teaching not be on at least an equal footing with what you pick up in school, or from your parents, or from TV or social networking cites? ALL of these influences teach both “bad” and “good”. Why don’t you struggle to remove other environmental influences from your belief system?

  2. If there is a god that is the basis for morality, you got your morality from him whether you believe in him or not. So the believer would argue that though you deny god you still base your beliefs on him because he gave you your inner guiding voice. Not believing in him is not the same as removing his influence. This is why “scientific” experiments to test the effects of god are impossible. You have to be able to control/effect/remove god and/or his effects. By definition this is impossible.

  3. If individual belief structures are exactly the product of genetics and environment, you cannot fault someone for their beliefs no matter what they are. From Christians to Neo-Nazis, they are the products of 2 things they don’t control. In your system you have no more right to say that homosexuality isn’t wrong than I have to say that it is. This is the main crux of individually derived morality, there is no standard of comparison. Without a universal standard, right and wrong are relative to the individual, to their genetics, to their past, and to their circumstance. If you can assign guilt to Hitler’s SS, or the crusading knights, or southern slave owners, est. then you admit to at least a basic moral standard outside of your inner quest for meaning. If you agree that irrespective of circumstance, what Hitler did was wrong, you have failed at your quest to expel basic religious principal.

140

[quote]LHT wrote:
forlife – I don’t know if I got my point across (mostly because perhaps I don’t fully comprehend the subtleties of the languages in question), but is this the sort of love you were talking about in your discussion with that other guy earlier in this thread? [/quote]

I was really talking about both agape and philia, but I like your point about the human capacity for a more holistic love that is unconditional and universally applied. Thomas Jay Oord defines agape as:

To proactively love people, even in response to hatred and bigotry, seems to be the purest and highest form of love. Not that people should be a doormat, and not that love is a sappy pandering to a person’s wants, but there is a certain power and freedom that comes from truly loving people regardless of what they choose to do.