The Evangelical Universalist Forum

I think I'm on my way back out of Christianity

Practices Christian Living
#21

The difficult thing, I have learned, is to distinguish what I ought to loath. I shouldn’t loath myself: God loves me and sacrifices Himself to save me (and even for me to exist at all).

What I ought to loath are my sins.

It’s very easy love my sins along with myself, when I’m in one kind of mood; it’s relatively easy to hate myself along with my sins, when I’m in another kind of mood. But then I am failing the second Great Commandment, since I cannot love my neighbor as I love myself if I do not love myself; nor can I be cooperating with God, Who loves me, if I do not love myself.

Yet if I am a sinner, I shouldn’t use love for myself as an excuse to keep fondling my sins either.

As it happens, I am the kind of person who is more likely to hate myself along with my sins, than to love my sins along with myself. (When I sin, I’m not usually thinking about how I have a right to do what I’m doing or whatever: I’m certainly being selfish, sometimes ragingly so, but not selfish in that way. I’m more likely to be unselfconsciously selfish, so to speak. :laughing: Which is its own kind of problem.) But I do run into people of the other sort. I don’t regard myself as being inherently better than them, though–that’s a temptation to forget that as a sinner I have no inherent advantage over any other sinner, down to and including Satan. It’s better to regard myself as the chief of sinners.

Anyway, I just wanted to say I sure appreciate your (and pretty much everyone else’s) comments in this thread, Cindy. :smiley:

#22

Perfect love casts out fear.

HIS love.

Our fear.

Nothing (no exceptions) is able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, the one who gave everything so that we could have abundant life. The one who gives generously and “adds no sorrow”.

#23

I tend to agree with this idea more than any other I’ve ever seen on this forum. Is God truly just and good? Then why would He torment or punish us any more than what we have already suffered? We want to dance around and twist all of the scriptures to fit our feelings and viewpoints as if they are unquestionably true and real, yet we deny ourselves the right to question every statement in the Bible that we know were written by fallible humans? Just because some people 1700 years ago told us we must believe them all to have an ‘orthodox’ faith?

The doctrine of Hell as it exists today is little more than a way for humans to enforce obedience upon other humans through fear. The inequality placed by humans as to who goes to heaven and who goes to punishment (finite or infinite) is nothing more than a way to deflect our own personal guilt onto others, and is nothing more than a complete falsehood.

#24

Hi Andre,

FWIW, when it comes to Christianity, I think it helps me when I focus less on the “ianity” part and more on the “Christ” part. Especially on the Christ-in-me-and-in-others part.

Religion nearly always gets me down, because religion is almost always obsessed with outward appearances… how I should behave, how I should speak, who I should hang out with, who I should avoid, what I should be thinking and not thinking, etc. Who can measure up with all of that? Certainly not me! Jesus Christ, though, is a real, living person… a savior, yes(!), but also a companion. I feel His presence in me whenever loving kindness is near at hand, whether I’m expressing it to someone else or it’s being expressed to me or when I see others… even people I don’t know… engaging in it. And it’s a wonderful thing that always brings me peace and always lifts my spirits and always rekindles my love for our heavenly Father and Jesus, His Son.

Jesus said the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love our neighbor. Understandably, I suppose, we tend to think that loving God is the part we need to focus on first and that loving our neighbor will flow naturally from that. But sometimes, I think it actually works the other way round. Sometimes, I’ve found myself trying so hard to love God that loving my neighbor takes something of a back seat. And, ironically, I’ll find it harder to love God… even to find Him and feel His presence than it was before.

Do good. Love kindness. Treasure every friendship and loved one in your life. Seize the joy you can find in the kindness of and to strangers. In other words, abide in Jesus Christ, who is unfailing, selfless love personified. If we abide in Him, He says He’ll abide in us. You know that passage in John 15, right? I’d encourage you to read it, not as a warning, but as both a description of reality and a really wonderful promise. If we abide in the love of the living Jesus, then He’ll abide in us. If we don’t abide in Him, then our faith and our joy will whither and burn up/out. And we’ll feel maybe just as you were feeling when you opened this thread. I know I’ve felt just the same at many points in my life.

I’m not very comfortable giving people advice, because it can so easily feel like I’m coming across as some sort of know-it-all. Boy, am I anything but a know-it-all! But here, all I can do is tell you what helps me, and hope that it can help you, too. I hope that’s the spirit with which you can read this post. And I hope and pray that you can find all the things you have ever hoped to find in Jesus.

Lots of love to you,

Andy

#25

Not sure where I stand now. I’ve invested so much into Christianity this time around that I don’t feel checking out is feasible. Also, I’ve been reading some Moltmann and having a back and forth with a member here and I feel like a new vista has opened as far as Christianity goes, but there is no change in my outlook on life. Is it possible to be a Christian and an antinatalist? Hmm…

#26

Hey bro, I’m glad you’re doing a little better, sounds like. :slight_smile: It’s always good to be a little more hopeful. :slight_smile:

Yeah, maybe you’re feeling a little like Peter… ‘where else can I go, Lord?’ That’s kind of how I feel sometimes, for sure… there’s something about Jesus that keeps me hanging on, as crazy and hard as it may be at times, if you know what I mean…

Sorry I never got around to responding to your thread here… so many things going on, and I wasn’t sure if I’d have anything really fresh to contribute, and you’ve gotten so much positive feedback already…

I will say though that I can relate… I struggle a lot, was even struggling today, with my faith…

If it weren’t for those experiences in my life that have encouraged me to believe that God is real and good, and at work in my life and in the world, or at least that there is something more going on that defies natural explanation, I probably would have given up a long time ago… but those memories and glimmers of beauty and meaning and hope keep me going…

I think that’s all we can do really… just keep going, and keep praying, and keep trying to find some light in the dark…

Blessing to you, and peace :slight_smile:

Matt

PS I’ve really gotta check out Jurgen Moltmann sometime… I flipped through one of his books years ago, and I remember liking it (cant’ remember which one… and that was before I knew he was a universalist), so I should definitely check him out sometime. :slight_smile: Any particular book of his you’d recommend? :wink:

#27

i’m sure it is, to a degree?
i’m quite often misanthropic and wish people would stop bloody reproducing and filling up this sardine tin of a planet (slight exageration but you know)…
there’s a cracking German industrial project called :wumpscut: which has a song called Embryodead, in which the songwriter recommends to a developing foetus not to be born into this world full of hate…
i don’t think there’s anything wrong with these feelings. i think it’s quite natural. some people in the Bible mourned the day of their birth…
God doesn’t condemn these feelings, but i think He wants to heal them. usually these feelings are a result of wounds either experienced or witnessed in others. it’s a dark, scary, hateful world.
God bids us to be of good courage, though as He has overcome the world. i believe (hope) one day that our wounds will be healed, and our tears dried, and all we suffered will be a distant memory.

but for now these feelings are valid…and can be used to draw us to other hurting people, and that can be a healing thing as we realise we are not alone

#28

I like your style, James :wink:

#29

thanks mate!

#30

The problem is that I still believe that I must be “good enough” to be accepted by God. I can assert intellectually that I don’t, but I really still do. Its something I can’t get past. So I scan my behavior and condemn myself. While I have experienced (I think) grace, it has been maybe two or three times in the last twenty years. Eventually the strain becomes too much and I flee to atheism; my mind able to logically accept it probably as a survival mechanism. I do know that if salvation is dependent on my “choice” then I will fail. How can I have faith in Christ and God if I’m told I must have faith in my own faith?

#31

Don’t know if this will help – or if I’m saying it in a way that you’ll be able to hear me, Brother, but get your eyes off yourself and look at your Shepherd. Seriously – just do it. Look at Jesus.

When I was (much) younger I was interested in learning the balance beam. One of the best bits of advice given me was to look, not at the beam, but straight ahead. Forget the beam, even the end of the beam, and look ahead in the direction you’re pointed. We are being formed into Christ’s image (that’s the beam), but we can’t focus on the next step of THAT process. We must keep our eyes on Christ Himself. The transformation is nothing we can make happen.

Look ahead. Look at Jesus and get your mind off yourself. Your feet will find the beam on their own if you only stop trying to direct each step consciously. Look at Jesus and in looking, you will become like Him.

Love, Cindy

#32

If God exists and if that God is not trustworthy (faithful) to fulfill his responsibility to the thing he created than all the belief/faith in the world will amount to no more than a wishful delusion that feeds the human need for hopium. This obsession with our faith/belief is neurotic. Christianity/Churchianity has placed this burden on people. Belief/faith is the Christian version of Torah obedience. Neither are the gospel. For the optimistic by nature and self-confident it comes easy to them; for those who are introspective and depressive it is an unbearable burden. It is not our lack of faith that is determinative; it is God demonstrating in a radically real (as in physical resurrection) universal way that He exists and can be trusted–nothing less than that will do. The resurrection of Jesus is the good news message of what happened to Jesus; what must come next is the gospel as an event: universal resurrection and transformation of all space and time. Yup, because otherwise we will continue on with various make do spiritualized place holders leaving most of us empty, depressed and in despair and the world has very little time left for that, because “Business as Usual” is rapidly coming to an epically tragic end.

#33

Do you love truth, beauty, justice, mercy, generosity, faithfulness? Do you seek these things, defend them, rejoice when you find them? If so, you love God, and you believe.

Stop angsting. God will care for you. You care for someone else. Go buy a bum a burger.

#34

Rob

I’m not sure what you mean by “experiencing grace”, but if you are talking about God’s grace it is there whether you feel it or not. Well, we look on it as grace, dragging in the whole issue of whether we deserve it and so on, but from his perspective, he is just scrambling, rushing, to get to the ones, the creation that he loves, being conciliatory towards us, wanting to convince us of his love, wanting us to be reconciled to him, so he can throw his arms around us and rejoice because he’s finally come home.

So don’t believe the lie that it’s up to us.

It is not up to us.

It is not our faith that counts, it is YHWH’s faithfulness.

It is not our wounds that heal us, but Jesus’s.

It is not our journey to God that will make us complete, it is his journey to us that makes the whole creation complete.

#35

excellent posts above.
my two cents are that you ARE worthy.
we should stop thinking of ourselves as “unworthy”
to a good father, his children are worthy of love and all the sacrifices the father might need to go through to keep them safe.
in fact “worth” is really the wrong way to think about it.
a father loves his family regardless of how they act or feel. nothing to do with behaviour (though they may exasperate him), everything to do with the natural order of things.
you are good enough because God created you.

but if you’re depressive, these words might not do much for you until the cause of your depression is dealt with. but if it helps at all, you are good enough because you are God’s child. it doesn’t hinge on anything you do or don’t do.

#36

Hi Rob

Mate, I really feel for you. You are so honest about yourself, I love that. I’ve spent most of my ‘Christian’ life feeling ‘unworthy’, a ‘failure’, a confirmed sinner, a hopeless recidivist, a lost cause, call it what you will.

When I do pray, I seem to end up offering up the same old prayers of repentance, a pledge to do better next time, to try harder to overcome my besetting sins. Sometimes, in those rare moments when God’s grace penetrates my introspective self-pity, I almost manage to believe that God actually isn’t worried about *my *sin, *my *failure - certainly not in the sense of wanting, or even worse, *having * to punish me for my endless screw-ups - because He’s got it all sorted in Jesus. All of it. The whole shebang. Always has had, and always will have.

But then the world and the church and religion and tradition and guilt and everything else come along and make me feel like a heel and a failure again. So I turn away, try to block out the guilt, and often fall further into the trap of rebellion. Which only makes me feel worse. It’s a vicious circle of guilt and failure leading to more guilt and failure, and so on into despair.

The only *possible *way out, I’ve found, is to embrace the truth of what grace *really *is.

The best guy I’ve ever read on the grace thing is the Episcopalian priest Robert Farrar Capon. He’'s so big on grace you wouldn’t believe it. True grace, the grace that never lets you go, no matter what you have done, are doing, or ever will do. Full stop. Period, as you guys say. :smiley: Grace that doesn’t care if you turn your back on it, trample on it, deny it, scream and shout and curse at it. It’s just there, always, forever, patiently waiting to bring you to God in the end. Sure, Capon says - and I agree with him - that there’s a faith thing too. But the great thing about grace is that it will give us that faith too. One day.

I’ve found Capon’s books really really helpful on this one. From Noon Til Three is a good one to start, if you’re interested, but he bangs the same drum in all of them.

I know we got off on the wrong foot a bit, thanks to my inveterate bolshiness, sorry :blush: . But as a kindred spirit, I do hope and pray that you find the peace you are seeking. In grace.

All the best

Johnny

#37

another fantastically honest post, Johnny.
i have often felt the same way…which makes it hard for me to read the Bible (fear of condemnation) or seek the Spirit in prayer (same).
in fact i once managed to convince myself i’d committed the “unpardonable sin” for about 18 months and reckoned i was beyond hope. my mind went into a strangely rationalist/atheist mode at the same time, though i continued to fight to believe and not give up. not a good time! thankfully it didn’t last forever, but it was long enough :frowning:

#38

Honestly, the only thing I can give a hard yes to is beauty. All the others are iffy for me.

Not good, I know.

#39

Thank you for that, Mr. F. I don’t know why I am so stuck on that thing where I have to prove to myself that I have faith; I guess its because its pushed and taught so much by the conventional wisdom of evangelical Xianity. Its crazy and circular; its as if we are told that faith makes something real that wasn’t before; but the truth is the thing we are supposed to have faith in must be true whether or not one believes it.

And I agree with your comment about introverts having a difficult time with the demand for faith, in contrast to the confident, assured type of person. In fact I was thinking that very thing before I submitted my post.

#40

Thanks, Johnny. I have read Capon’s books, including his scandalous Before Noon and Three. He is big on grace but he drops the ball for me when he goes out of his way to insist that universalism is wrong, that the individual must make the deciding vote. I tend to obsess and worry about that; it becomes a monumental burden. Only absolute grace, the ultimate and final Yes can bring out genuine faith; otherwise I end up striving to prove to myself that I really and truly believe.