[nofaith]

I am currently dating a man that is very religious. Not sure how we ended up together. I wasn't raised by a religious family and with everything that has happened in my life I am not convinced that there is a God. I also believe that if there is a God that he/she is not very nice for letting all the bad stuff happen in the world. I also wonder if the reason I have no faith and can't even imagine believing in a God is because of the things I have been though. I just can't believe no matter how hard I try. The whole religious thing to me just seems not logical.

I just wonder if anyone else has experienced this and if you think it may have to be partially due to your diagnosis.

[KidDanger]

im very religious but i have had several times where i seriously questioned why God would let such pain happen to me. then id look around me and see people in even more pain and it would make me question more. however, ive discovered that God has plans for us, and needs us to grow. we cant grow if we arent faced with obstacles and challenges. its like muscles. in order to get stronger, you have to lift weight, which tears the muscles, then let them repair themselves. when they repair, they are stronger. and this continues until a baby is able to hold up its own head, or sit up, or draw a straight line with a pen. life hurts us and tears us down, but its only so we can be built back up. thats what i know

[SunnyD]

Great analogy I will be thinking about.

The analogy works even if a higher power does not have plans for us. If there is a plan for me, it remains a mystery.

[Omers]

Faith begins where logic leaves off.

[pachyderm]

Originally Posted by nofaith

The whole religious thing to me just seems not logical.

I just wonder if anyone else has experienced this and if you think it may have to be partially due to your diagnosis.

I'd say the two might go together -- being "different" makes us more skeptical?

If you read about the history of religions, gods in general are not particularly nice. Like people (from whom, mayhaps, they are derived ).

[Hunny]

nofaith -

I remember going to visit the parents of a guy I was seeing on occasion. His dad was a forest ranger or something and had this very large bible in his trailer, when we went to visit, so I noticed.

When we visited the mom at their house she said to me not to date him because he was not fully into using the things of God, yet.

He was a nice person but, no, he was not into using the things of God yet, he was more into using people .

I just thought it was really neat that she didn't frown on me, who was a lil' lost sheep. I've considered that family from time to time, particularly how she stood up for the faith.

Well that is about all I've got...all the best to you and yours.

[swingbeatnik]

Remember that we have free will, and that is what separates us from angels, according to the Abrahamic faiths. The reason their is such evil in the world is because we can be tempted by earthly pleasures, selfishness, etc.

I don't personally believe in anything really, but I encounter a lot of people questioning their faith because they see such evil in the world.

Hello, nofaith. Mental illness can bring out the skeptic in me. Differing beliefs will make the relationship more difficult.

Good luck.

[lynn P.]

If you're content thinking this way, then your opinion is just as valid as a very religious person. I think people end up with no faith for varying reasons. If it's because of bad things happening, this wouldn't be logical IMO....because bad things do happen to good people - that's just life. If it was selective then only bad things would happen to bad people. If you're happy, that's a good thing.

Perception is subjective. An opinion is formed from perceptions. If we are told to do good and act accordingly yet are subjected to the same things as those who do not heed the call, I find no illogic in questioning the credo.

[DancingAlone]

yes, perception is subjective. and i would like to interject a bit of mine. this is not "religious" out of respect for this forums rules, however i will use the word "God".

i "know" something is there. i sense it, i feel it, i rely on it, i evoke it's name in times of trouble, when all else seems to be failing, and i send up thoughts for others to know it's grace and healing mercies.

(please allow me this, my own, view of things)
so when i heard that Stephen Hawking (physicist) stated that it has now been proven that, at the point of the Big Bang (the creation of the universe), that a force so incomprehensibly massive co-existed with this event, (and remains) and he called it "the mind of God", any doubts were totally dissipated. but it didn't really matter. i "knew" anyway.

each person has their own way of discovering faith in whatever "force" or "power" or "being" they prescribe to. i cannot make you see mine, nor you make me see yours. it's a journey of personal discovery. but i listen, and i learn, and i never disallow anything that might help me on my own journey in faith. i try very hard to keep an open mind. and my days of bitterness and doubt are gone now. i know that if i close off, or turn away, i will lose this precious connection with my god. it's just not an option anymore, even on the very bad days.

one thing i've learned along the way, and watched happen to others...if i don't give up, if i keep reaching out and asking for "divine" help, if i try my damndest never to stop trying to heal, to grow, to overcome my pains and sorrows by relying on my god to help me, i will, during and after each trial of life, be able to know this awesome, magnificent power within my own life force, to increase my awareness of it and faith in it, and to try and be a better person from the lessons learned. maybe that's the point after all.

[Ygrec23]

Originally Posted by nofaith

I wasn't raised by a religious family and with everything that has happened in my life I am not convinced that there is a God. I also believe that if there is a God that he/she is not very nice for letting all the bad stuff happen in the world. I also wonder if the reason I have no faith and can't even imagine believing in a God is because of the things I have been though. I just can't believe no matter how hard I try. The whole religious thing to me just seems not logical. I just wonder if anyone else has experienced this and if you think it may have to be partially due to your diagnosis.

Hi, nofaith!

You have to go with your own perceptions and your own understanding. Adopting those of someone else doesn't sound like being true to yourself. The problem you seem to be dealing with is called the Problem of Pain: How could a loving and forgiving God permit all of the incredible suffering and misery that goes on down here? I get the feeling that that's the biggest stumbling block to any kind of faith.

People have been dealing with it for two thousand years. One potential solution (though an unhappy one I have to admit) is simply that in His eyes and to His mind our sufferings here below are entirely minimal compared to the eternity of love and bliss which we are promised and on which he delivers. In other words, we're some strange kind of experiment he's involved in, and he makes it up to us in the next life. It may sound credible, it may not, but it's all I've heard that makes a kind of sense.

Take care!

Hawking: God did not create Universe
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/5...reate-universe

We are told we cannot know the mind of God. I can accept that. What I find curious is how hard some work to explain what is deemed to be inexplicable. See, for example: http://www.christinyou.net/pages/understandgod.html

Each of us has a way of explaining the unknown. If there is one true way of doing so, it has eluded a consensus. Someone is always ready to tell us there is a better way.

[Sunna]

I believe that the God that you believe in non-existing, that God that allows evil, does nothing when innocents suffer, lets injustice rule, I don't think God believes in that god either.

It doesn't sound that you know what God your guy believes in. I wonder if your guy knows. Could be that God arranged for him to meet you to shatter his religious dogma with your pain. Dunno. But I hope it'll be interesting for all three of you. So to stir a pot, at a risk of getting this post zapped, may I offer a different vision of God

from Deena Metzger's, Prayers for a Thousand Years

God, in Your form of Beauty, be with us.

May our hearts be broken. May our prayers be sufficient to feel the heartbreak of God.

We want to be God in all the ways that are not the ways of God, in what we hope is indestructible or unmoving. But God is the most fragile, a bare smear of pollen, that scatter of yellow dust from the tree that tumbled over in a storm of grief and planted itself again. God is the death agony of a frog that cannot find a water in time of the drought of our creation. God is the scream of the rabbit caught in the fires we set. God is the One whose eyes never close and who hears everything.

Even if nothing can be fixed, let the vision reconstitute us through a pinhole in time and space - a vision of the lonely God carrying the burden of universal sorrow. Let us take Her in our arms. Let us stroke His temples.

These are our tasks. Let us learn the secret language of light again. Also the letters of the dark. Learn the flight patterns of birds, the syllables of wolf howl and bird song, the moving pantomime of branch and leaf, valleys and peaks of whale calls, the long sentences of ants moving in unison, the combinations and recombinations of clouds, the codices of stars. Let us, thus, reconstitute the world, sign by sign and melody by melody.

Let us sing the world back into the very Heart of the Holy Name of God.


(...)

[madisgram]

Originally Posted by nofaith

I am currently dating a man that is very religious. Not sure how we ended up together.perhaps he sees goodness in you that you may not be aware of yourself. I wasn't raised by a religious family and with everything that has happened in my life I am not convinced that there is a God. i've found the bad things that happened to me were caused by people, not God, imho. I also believe that if there is a God that he/she is not very nice for letting all the bad stuff happen in the world. could these occurances happen due to nature? i believe that sometimes God may have a hand in these things to get our attention to be better ppl to mankind. we often stray from caring enough for others cause we get caught up in our own life stuffI also wonder if the reason I have no faith and can't even imagine believi ng in a God is because of the things I have been though. I just can't believe no matter how hard I try. that's ok too cause you're searching for your own truth. The whole religious thing to me just seems not logical. you're correct in the truest sense. i call it a "leap of faith" when we believe in a higher power.
I just wonder if anyone else has experienced this and if you think it may have to be partially due to your diagnosis.

*******
i'm not sure if my dx would affect me this way. but i had to search for a God of my understanding. i feel my religious training helped lay the foundation but the most of it was from my searching for truth and how i perceived my God.
enjoy your relationship and miracles may happen when you least expect them. you're not "less than" for feeling the way you do. many search. if you see a T he may be able to enlighten you one way or the other about why you feel the way you do.

[DancingAlone]

your words are very wise, TheByzantine. there is no consensus, other than we all agree to disagree.

for whatever reason, knowledge of things divine were left in a cloak of mystery, open to personal interpretation, faulty at best. but many, me included, find solace in written teachings to allow an "opening of the eyes" so-to-speak, to somehow try and understand how "god" works, or at least to turn to him in times of trouble.

as a side note, would like to offer this, about hawking, (who has been known for a long time to be an atheist)...

"We can get some further light on the mind of Stephen Hawking, if not of God, from his later book Black Holes and Baby Universes. There, in his interview for Desert Island Discs, he said that after all his theoretical work "You still have the question: why does the universe bother to exist? If you like, you can define God to be the answer to that question" (p. 159)."

...gives me cold chills!

well, enough. people seem to need a belief system, i know i do, and i deeply pray that we can all know one to help us through this thing called life.

I pray each day because I do not know.

[lynn P.]

I wonder why this no faith idea bothers some - not talking abut anyone here. I think what's important is whether the person is content or unhappy with not having a faith. Maybe it scares people when they think about someone not having faith or somehow it threatens their faith. Like I said, I'm not pointing at anyone here, just tossing around ideas.

[DancingAlone]

very interesting point lynn p. !!! guess it's natural to think people are "searching" when in fact, they may very well be content with the way things are!