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Posted

In. I don't have time to read everything but I too am on a spiritual journey. I believe we have a body but are a soul. The Atman in search of the Brahman if you want to use those terms. A little piece of light trying to find a way to the rest of the collective soul. I have two books over there in reach, one is by a Jewish fella and another is a Jesuit. I was brought up as a Baptist and graduated from a Cistercian school. One of my best friends told me one day he loves Krishna more than anyone else. 

We had a brass quintet yesterday at church. It was great. Had a sprinkle baptism of a little baby girl. I managed to keep my shit together until he started talking about his sister fighting off cancer and only reading stories that she knew the ending to. 

I have more thoughts and no time to tell them.

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Posted
I remember when I was 6 and my grandfather took me to Easter church. I had so many questions.

“Jesus sounds like a really cool guy!”
“Jesus died for your sins”
“So I don’t have sin?”
“No, you still have”
“Then why did he die”
“Well, god resurrected him to show he was more powerful than death”
“Oh that’s cool! So he is still alive?”
“No, he went to heaven”
“So he was dead? But he went and told all the people who killed him they were wrong?”
“No, the cave were his body laid was empty, so Mary knew he had risen”
“Oh, his mother, the Virgin Mary?”
“No, this Mary was a prostitute”
“So the prostitute said he was alive, but many other people saw him I guess? It must have been the talk of Jerusalem that a dead guy was alive”
“No, not really, but the gospels in the Bible wrote about it 70 to 150 years later”
“So why did he die again?”
“God works in mysterious ways boy”

giphy.gif

I can't believe we gaslight every new generation of 3 year olds with this bullshit. I did it to mine, too.
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Posted (edited)
11 hours ago, Clintonaldo said:

I put this here because it feels right. 
 

I go to church. I give back to the needy with my time and money yet I am not feeling it in church. We did Easter service yesterday because today would be packed but the whole time it felt like a Rolling Stones concert and it all felt so forced. I’ve never been one to raise hands and pray over people but I am one to actually help people. I just feel weird sometimes when almost everyone but me is singing and praising but I am just standing there. I wish I could get into it more but I just don’t feel ( that ).  I do give my church credit in that they do not get into politics so it isn’t that. I can say I’ve never felt closer to Christ than with a charity I do that helps special needs people run triathlons and half marathons. 

I just really wondered during the laser show yesterday am I the oddball or am I real ? Is this your 40’s??

Add my voice to those who have made suggestions to consider checking out a different service and or church.

Completely anecdotal but I shared some similar feelings as yours at times--I understood why some congregants preferred the pageantry of a *full-on praise and shout service but the day in day out once a week quiet contemplation was what resonated within my own family. Our children were early risers and in the community in which we lived at the time the church we attended held an **8:00 AM service in the chapel. Compared to the sanctuary with its large organ, two aisles, balcony, etc, the chapel was much more intimate. No stained glass windows, no choir. Just around a dozen or so pews, a piano, and the minister. It helped that the minister was quite focused on serving others and the sermon and scriptures and anecdotes shared were often intended to encourage that type of devotion. Aside from religion, developed over centuries, we forget that the human species would have never survived had we not cared for and served others, most especially 'the least of these'.

I miss that church; when we moved away, it was difficult to find another in which we felt that spirituality. Keep searching and questioning.

 

*If you ever watched the scene in the Spielberg directed The Color Purple where Shug Avery leads the juke joint denizens to her preacher daddy's church, you know just how amazing a service can be when it happens with the congregants in tune with the Lord's will and not their own. That was not a performance, that was a soul reaching out for love and forgiveness on Earth and in Heaven. In contrast, some of the services I've attended do have that feeling of 'performance' over substance.

**I have so many stories of attending this service as often the only family with small children among a  chapel congregation whose average age was probably 75. But this is not the time nor place.

Edited by Mrs Whiggins
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Posted
9 hours ago, Fastbreak said:

I remember when I was 6 and my grandfather took me to Easter church. I had so many questions.

“Jesus sounds like a really cool guy!”
“Jesus died for your sins”
“So I don’t have sin?”
“No, you still have”
“Then why did he die”
“Well, god resurrected him to show he was more powerful than death”
“Oh that’s cool! So he is still alive?”
“No, he went to heaven”
“So he was dead? But he went and told all the people who killed him they were wrong?”
“No, the cave were his body laid was empty, so Mary knew he had risen”
“Oh, his mother, the Virgin Mary?”
“No, this Mary was a prostitute”
“So the prostitute said he was alive, but many other people saw him I guess? It must have been the talk of Jerusalem that a dead guy was alive”
“No, not really, but the gospels in the Bible wrote about it 70 to 150 years later”
“So why did he die again?”
“God works in mysterious ways boy”
 

Props that 6 year old Fastbreak didn't ask: "Gramps, what is a prostitute?"

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Posted

Semi-connected thoughts:

1. I’d recommend reading and rereading the Sermon on the Mount. Contemplating everything in there and its application could be a lifetime exercise. Actually following it would make for a life well-lived.

2. We should remember that church isn’t a commodity or service that we shop for and purchase — or at least it shouldn’t be. If your church community is actively living out the Sermon on the Mount, it might be worth it to deal with services that don’t move you. If the purpose of the music is to worship God, then your feelings on the music aren’t all that important.

3. That said, church meetings are important for a healthy church. Congregational singing is important for a community and for our own spiritual well-being. It’s harder to hate someone if I’m engaged in music-making with them, even if the music feels asinine to me. You don’t have to jump around or act super emotionally, but I’d recommend making yourself sing along, even with the sillier songs.

4. I used to count the lyric references to self (I, me, etc.) vs. the reference to God (You, he, God, etc.) and see which was more. I figured that if we’re singing more about ourselves, we might be worshipping ourselves. I don’t do this anymore and think it’s probably unhealthy spiritually and overly cynical, but I still agree with the general premise. There are modern hymns-writers that don’t write the in the style of Cartman’s Faith +1. Maybe see if you can turn the worship folks on to them. They are much better sing along songs.

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Posted
12 hours ago, Clintonaldo said:

I put this here because it feels right. 
 

I go to church. I give back to the needy with my time and money yet I am not feeling it in church. We did Easter service yesterday because today would be packed but the whole time it felt like a Rolling Stones concert and it all felt so forced. I’ve never been one to raise hands and pray over people but I am one to actually help people. I just feel weird sometimes when almost everyone but me is singing and praising but I am just standing there. I wish I could get into it more but I just don’t feel ( that ).  I do give my church credit in that they do not get into politics so it isn’t that. I can say I’ve never felt closer to Christ than with a charity I do that helps special needs people run triathlons and half marathons. 

I just really wondered during the laser show yesterday am I the oddball or am I real ? Is this your 40’s??

I think I’m kind of there with you.  And I don’t want to chime in with a suggestion to try a different church, because clearly you’re at yours for a reason.

I think a lot of this is just seasons of life man. You have younger people who can just plunge into it because it’s just them and their head and lives can hold all this big stuff.  And you have the olds who also have the time and need to fill it up with meaning.  Me?  Kids, spouse, work, finance, older parents, health.  It’s not just church, my head can’t handle the big stuff and big thoughts.  Even the books I find time for, I’ve noticed need to be less demanding on me.  I’ve seen this happen with my own dad, who is now at the age of coming back around. 
 

I think it’s win at most services if I come and manage to take something small away or spend a few minutes thinking on things outside of the day-to-day.  There’s a point in our liturgy where the choir tells us to “lay aside all earthly cares” and no matter what persuasion or faith or non-faith you are, we should all take just a bit of time to pull back from the tyranny of the immediate demands.

It’s just super hard to do that in your 40s. You’ll never be more at the mercy of whatever someone else is needing.  So I think keep doing what you’re doing, especially the volunteer stuff, and keep going to church and looking for a small moment there of meaning. 

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Posted
24 minutes ago, Mole said:

Semi-connected thoughts:

1. I’d recommend reading and rereading the Sermon on the Mount. Contemplating everything in there and its application could be a lifetime exercise. Actually following it would make for a life well-lived.

2. We should remember that church isn’t a commodity or service that we shop for and purchase — or at least it shouldn’t be. If your church community is actively living out the Sermon on the Mount, it might be worth it to deal with services that don’t move you. If the purpose of the music is to worship God, then your feelings on the music aren’t all that important.

3. That said, church meetings are important for a healthy church. Congregational singing is important for a community and for our own spiritual well-being. It’s harder to hate someone if I’m engaged in music-making with them, even if the music feels asinine to me. You don’t have to jump around or act super emotionally, but I’d recommend making yourself sing along, even with the sillier songs.

4. I used to count the lyric references to self (I, me, etc.) vs. the reference to God (You, he, God, etc.) and see which was more. I figured that if we’re singing more about ourselves, we might be worshipping ourselves. I don’t do this anymore and think it’s probably unhealthy spiritually and overly cynical, but I still agree with the general premise. There are modern hymns-writers that don’t write the in the style of Cartman’s Faith +1. Maybe see if you can turn the worship folks on to them. They are much better sing along songs.

Interesting. Im a non-church goer. In the few times I go, I dislike the group singing aspect and too much (any?) of it would actually turn me away. Probably another reason why I’m not a good fit.

Posted

I don't know where you are in your faith, but as a former Christian it's hard to describe how enlightening it is to rid yourself of all the falsities and general bullshit. I'd encourage you to read the Bible and consider if any of it could possibly be true and if the god it describes is worth worshipping in the first place. 

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Posted
8 hours ago, Fastbreak said:


This is actually more than likely what happened. There were thousands of religious groups in Rome at the time. For them to single out Christians (doubtful) they must have been real assholes (probably).

ummm…no.  
 

Rome rightfully saw what this movement was doing to political order on the eastern edges of its empire, and in no way was it going to allow paupers and slaves who converted and were now feeling their oats to suddenly be empowered by a new political movement that preached the last shall be first, the poor are favored by god over the rich, and stripped the Emperor of its status as diety in place of one that flipped the entire socio-political order 180 degs.  They were taking no chances with any movement, especially a religious rooted one (they knew full well the implications of that).  It was tantamount to turning a blind eye to treason and inevitable revolution.  
 

so they decided post haste to exterminate the movement in its infancy and attempted to do so in a very public display of brutality and gave no quarter, knowing that those same masses have a history of getting back in line at the first hint of  negative consequences, this one being particularly heinous.  
 

In no way was it rooted in a disdain of the cocky, arrogant, power seeking personalities that is pretty much unique to American Protestantism by Rome.  That’s projecting a unique feature of the present onto the past.  

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Posted
11 hours ago, Satchel said:

I like to think of myself as one does not practice his faith casually, and as such I still attend church regularly. In most things, I am an advocate of modernity, but the changes in worship, across denominational lines has been dispiriting. One would have difficulty discerning the difference in the music at St.Ann and that offered at Gateway or some such. From the sterile, uninspiring, windowless auditoriums that typify most modern churches, to the annoying, loud, often poorly performed band music, churches have made change the calling card without mapping to anything remotely transcendent. In my tradition (the black church) the fadishness has reached riduculous levels, to the extent that choosing a worship style that motivates and inspires is virtually impossible. While I am theologically and doctrinally in sync with my local congregation, (“Christ centered, Justice Driven, Kingdom Minded), I struggle with the pandering to Gen Z and Generation Alpha that masquerades as disciplining. 
 

I believe the church must change or die, but I’m not entirely comfortable with all that’s being done in the name of change 

Rant over.

The black preacher who made headlines for “lock the doors in the back” released it as a song. I couldn’t believe it lol

Posted (edited)
41 minutes ago, Kyrie Eleison said:

ummm…no.  
 

Rome rightfully saw what this movement was doing to political order on the eastern edges of its empire, and in no way was it going to allow paupers and slaves who converted and were now feeling their oats to suddenly be empowered by a new political movement that preached the last shall be first, the poor are favored by god over the rich, and stripped the Emperor of its status as diety in place of one that flipped the entire socio-political order 180 degs.  They were taking no chances with any movement, especially a religious rooted one (they knew full well the implications of that).  It was tantamount to turning a blind eye to treason and inevitable revolution.  
 

so they decided post haste to exterminate the movement in its infancy and attempted to do so in a very public display of brutality and gave no quarter, knowing that those same masses have a history of getting back in line at the first hint of  negative consequences, this one being particularly heinous.  
 

In no way was it rooted in a disdain of the cocky, arrogant, power seeking personalities that is pretty much unique to American Protestantism by Rome.  That’s projecting a unique feature of the present onto the past.  

Early Christianity was uniquely dangerous and radical in multiple ways- it explicitly challenges (and really insults) the value system and power symbols of the empire.
It also directly mocks how Rome manages and co-opts regional clients and takes direct aim at the financial system. 
I’m tempted to write an essay here about how Rome became “Christian,” the role of official Christianity in precipitating the fall, and parallels between the official Christianity of Rome-in-fall and American Christianity today, but I’ll skip it and just suggest that Christianity is better understood through the lens of the Beatitudes and the parables of Christ than through the social behavior of people who pray on street corners.

@Clintonaldo your heart is sad  because your spirit is well. Focus on the basics and you will find joy in service and mercy. 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Mole said:

Semi-connected thoughts:

1. I’d recommend reading and rereading the Sermon on the Mount. Contemplating everything in there and its application could be a lifetime exercise. Actually following it would make for a life well-lived.

2. We should remember that church isn’t a commodity or service that we shop for and purchase — or at least it shouldn’t be. If your church community is actively living out the Sermon on the Mount, it might be worth it to deal with services that don’t move you. If the purpose of the music is to worship God, then your feelings on the music aren’t all that important.

3. That said, church meetings are important for a healthy church. Congregational singing is important for a community and for our own spiritual well-being. It’s harder to hate someone if I’m engaged in music-making with them, even if the music feels asinine to me. You don’t have to jump around or act super emotionally, but I’d recommend making yourself sing along, even with the sillier songs.

4. I used to count the lyric references to self (I, me, etc.) vs. the reference to God (You, he, God, etc.) and see which was more. I figured that if we’re singing more about ourselves, we might be worshipping ourselves. I don’t do this anymore and think it’s probably unhealthy spiritually and overly cynical, but I still agree with the general premise. There are modern hymns-writers that don’t write the in the style of Cartman’s Faith +1. Maybe see if you can turn the worship folks on to them. They are much better sing along songs.

You touched on some of my first thoughts after reading the post. @Clintonaldoyou are and will get a lot of different flavors of thoughts and inputs and advice, but from as strictly a Christian/biblical perspective as I can remember, a few encouragements:

1) Church isn’t a building or meeting or place. “We” the Christians, are the church. It’s written wherever two or more are gathered in His name, he’s there (I believe). We are also called to be in fellowship for a variety of reasons that are good for us, despite it being hard sometimes (or a lot of the times).

2) Singing hymns, songs, music playing, spectacles, etc. is supposed to be an act of worship to God, not for our own pleasures. As mole said, it’s not really supposed to be about us. There are angels and deities in heaven who were solely created to sing holy holy holy and worship, I think.

3) Modern American upper middle class white people churches (which I assume you are referencing) are very much in the land grab of souls business. It seems the modern church mission to win back and grab back the market share of souls they have been lost from Christianity as the secular world got more flat and available to all. Thus it’s a bunch of surface level, Christianity 101 churches just trying to catch the fish. 

4) My frustration has actually been because of 3, it feels like church is a waste of time. It’s just mother’s milk when you want solid food, as Paul says. I’ve found that seeking my level of Christian has helped (life groups, men’s groups, bible studies, mission trips, etc.) me to grow my faith, rather than check a box every Sunday and hear the same few stories ad nauseam. 

5) Lastly, nothing I’ve said matters and indeed nothing at all matters if your heart is not in it. You can do alL manner of good works and charity and even healing and miracles in His name but if you do it without love, it’s a clangy noisy cymbal. Better to take a break and search your heart maybe and rediscover your gratitude and love and faith then just trudging through luke warm IMHO.

Edited by Vegas64
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Posted

As a Black, church was always the one thing you didn’t fuck with when growing up. My dad is a deacon, my mom is very active in the same church, and I have several aunts and uncles who are preachers.

With that said, I did everything I could to get out of going to church once I turned old enough to realize what the fuck was going on and started asking questions. At 16, I started working and told my manager to 100% schedule me on sundays because I was available. That was my excuse to stop going to church, and I really haven’t been back since 2001.

This has caused a few arguments between me and my parents, but I stood firm on my reasoning and they learned to live with it. There were times where my dad would tell me not to come back home unless I was prepared to go to church on Sundays, and I responded with “okay, I’ll leave and you will never see me here on a Sunday ever again.” Since that conversation, they turned a new leaf because I was serious and yes I packed up my shit that one Sunday morning and headed straight for Houston, no hug no goodbye no nothing. 

I’m the only person in my family who doesn’t go to church—immediate family, cousins, aunts, uncles etc. I’ve only stepped foot in a church a few times the last 20 years to attend funerals, and that’s it. I won’t go for anything else. 

My main argument is this—how am I supposed to believe this is a religion that shares all of these stories and fables yet the church is one of the most hateful groups I’ve ever seen? And isn’t judgment of others itself a sin? And I thought there were no degrees of sin, so why does 1 sin outweigh another? Doesn’t your hated of a certain group of people constitute sin and you should be judged as well?

 No one can answer these for me so I I haven’t been back.

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Posted
13 minutes ago, Pancho said:

As a Black, church was always the one thing you didn’t fuck with when growing up. My dad is a deacon, my mom is very active in the same church, and I have several aunts and uncles who are preachers.

With that said, I did everything I could to get out of going to church once I turned old enough to realize what the fuck was going on and started asking questions. At 16, I started working and told my manager to 100% schedule me on sundays because I was available. That was my excuse to stop going to church, and I really haven’t been back since 2001.

This has caused a few arguments between me and my parents, but I stood firm on my reasoning and they learned to live with it. There were times where my dad would tell me not to come back home unless I was prepared to go to church on Sundays, and I responded with “okay, I’ll leave and you will never see me here on a Sunday ever again.” Since that conversation, they turned a new leaf because I was serious and yes I packed up my shit that one Sunday morning and headed straight for Houston, no hug no goodbye no nothing. 

I’m the only person in my family who doesn’t go to church—immediate family, cousins, aunts, uncles etc. I’ve only stepped foot in a church a few times the last 20 years to attend funerals, and that’s it. I won’t go for anything else. 

My main argument is this—how am I supposed to believe this is a religion that shares all of these stories and fables yet the church is one of the most hateful groups I’ve ever seen? And isn’t judgment of others itself a sin? And I thought there were no degrees of sin, so why does 1 sin outweigh another? Doesn’t your hated of a certain group of people constitute sin and you should be judged as well?

 No one can answer these for me so I I haven’t been back.

Glad your parents came around. People that try to use church attendance as some kind of cudgel or ultimatum make my blood boil.

Posted
31 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

You touched on some of my first thoughts after reading the post. @Clintonaldoyou are and will get a lot of different flavors of thoughts and inputs and advice, but from as strictly a Christian/biblical perspective as I can remember, a few encouragements:

1) Church isn’t a building or meeting or place. “We” the Christians, are the church. It’s written wherever two or more are gathered in His name, he’s there (I believe). We are also called to be in fellowship for a variety of reasons that are good for us, despite it being hard sometimes (or a lot of the times).

2) Singing hymns, songs, music playing, spectacles, etc. is supposed to be an act of worship to God, not for our own pleasures. As mole said, it’s not really supposed to be about us. There are angels and deities in heaven who were solely created to sing holy holy holy and worship, I think.

3) Modern American upper middle class white people churches (which I assume you are referencing) are very much in the land grab of souls business. It seems the modern church mission to win back and grab back the market share of souls they have been lost from Christianity as the secular world got more flat and available to all. Thus it’s a bunch of surface level, Christianity 101 churches just trying to catch the fish. 

4) My frustration has actually been because of 3, it feels like church is a waste of time. It’s just mother’s milk when you want solid food, as Paul says. I’ve found that seeking my level of Christian has helped (life groups, men’s groups, bible studies, mission trips, etc.) me to grow my faith, rather than check a box every Sunday and hear the same few stories ad nauseam. 

5) Lastly, nothing I’ve said matters and indeed nothing at all matters if your heart is not in it. You can do alL manner of good works and charity and even healing and miracles in His name but if you do it without love, it’s a clangy noisy cymbal. Better to take a break and search your heart maybe and rediscover your gratitude and love and faith then just trudging through luke warm IMHO.

I really appreciate this and agree with a lot of it. I love all of the opinions in here even those I don't agree with as it challenges me to think. 

Posted

Weirdly enough I hit that rut 18 years ago in the required REL 1310 at Baylor as a freshman where they treat The Bible as literature instead of as scripture and were taught about how the Baptist traditions of authorship and all that are just not historically accurate. I remember sitting in class and thinking "well shit" when going over the age of the Gospels for the first time.

Great Texts courses there just further entrenched that skepticism with the common themes from Mesopotamia that were centuries before the Old Testament and were rather obviously incorporated into the Abrahamic religions later on. 

 

I view these moments as key points in my life where it really checked my ego into, "you aren't that special cosmically" and also gave me a healthy distrust of anyone claiming to have all the answers.

 

Posted
26 minutes ago, Clintonaldo said:

I really appreciate this and agree with a lot of it. I love all of the opinions in here even those I don't agree with as it challenges me to think. 

Honestly, the best thing you can do is really learn about what you supposedly "believe". Learn about it's origins. Learn where it all came from. 

I had the same thing as a kid. All the supernatural stuff just seemed like extremely far fetched bullshit. When I asked in my Wednesday church "school" where to find evidence and proof for all this very difficult to believe stuff I was shut down. Told not to question it. Got a much nicer but similar reply when directly asking the priest for the evidence this is actually real.

That was my giant red flag. I got in a bit of trouble with my parents for asking the CCD teacher if she would pay $15,000 for a used car from a person that refused to show her the car or let her know the car even exists. Pay him the money only on his word and "faith". When she replied obviously no I asked "then why are you asking me to do the same thing with something far more valuable than $15k"? 

Anyway, that led to me deciding I need to know all about this religion and why it exists. Where it came from. I spent time off and on during college and my 20s, I'd say a few hundred hours total, finding out every archeological record I could of the origins of it all. Then also did the same for Islam and Judaism. That research project changed life for the better, because I could finally understand what I was forced to believe on a level far greater than you learn in church. 

If you dig in and it brings you closer to your religion, then at least you have a stronger foundation for believing it than "my parents made me" or "I was conned during a low point in my life". If, like me, you see it's all made up nonsense co-opted from various far older pagan religions? Then you're set free from it's mental and emotional shackles. 

Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Pancho said:

My main argument is this—how am I supposed to believe this is a religion that shares all of these stories and fables yet the church is one of the most hateful groups I’ve ever seen? And isn’t judgment of others itself a sin? And I thought there were no degrees of sin, so why does 1 sin outweigh another? Doesn’t your hated of a certain group of people constitute sin and you should be judged as well?

 No one can answer these for me so I I haven’t been back.

It seems to me that these are really easy questions to answer and it's interesting that nobody in your life has been able to answer these questions for you, as if you needed the wisdom of Solomon to answer.

The one thing I've consistently heard, which seems to check out, is that the biggest threat to Christianity isn't external or outside forces (e.g. culture, anti-christianity fervor, etc.), but it's actually an internal fundamental one:

Christians themselves have very little (if any) understanding of their own faith. Biblical illiteracy is rampant and epidemic within the Christian faith, and so you get very little wisdom and a lot of blind leading the blind.

Edited by Vegas64
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