@Tin-Man @skriten
Okay! I’m back. Firstly, I will address why I believe what I believe.
Please know that I am aware how extremely personal this is and that my experience may mean absolutely nothing to you.
I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I’m just answering your question to the best of my ability.
My approach towards God was not instantaneous. It was and is progressive.
As I have mentioned previously, I did not believe in an interactive God for most of my life. I don’t know how something instantaneous would have even affected me.
At that time, I didn’t even think about God enough to join a group like this. Y’all encounter the concept of God far more than I ever did.
Then I died.
My heart stopped.
I “awoke” to the wires from a heart shunt sort of dangling out of my chest and the expectant expressions of concerned family members, but that was it.
I learned that my heart had stopped while I was unconscious. But I remembered nothing.
Not a thing.
Now, everyone I had ever heard of dying had experienced something. I had never thought about it before but, perhaps I had expected to experience something too despite my lack of faith.
I didn’t start believing then, but the significance of life, had become noticably more profound to me and far less intentionally expendable.
Months passed without much of a change. That was until that situation with a crazy ex and a friend who read to me the passage concerning love in 1 Corinthians 13.
Until that moment, I was completely resistant to reading or even hearing about the Bible. But afterwards, because of the timing or content, or recitation…I no longer felt disdain towards the Bible. I just did not care about it. It was a book, with some potentially pleasant parts.
When a friend’s mother passed and I decided to read the Bible she’d left him to understand her notations in the margins-- for his sake, I read it in a completely different way than it had ever been explained to me.
As I read, over a course of time, I had various realizations that caused me to consider things in a way I once again never had before.
I started testing myself against those considerations such as my refined definition of love. As I did this, my life began to change for the better. I reacted differently to my external environment, thus my external environment adjusted accordingly.
I decided that I wanted to be a better person than I had been, but I didn’t know how to do that. My group was a mostly cynical and self-serving lot, and I found that I didn’t want to be that way anymore. So, I became a loner.
I eventually came across scriptures such as Galatians 5:22-23
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
and 2 Peter 1:5-7:
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.
As I learned more, I discovered what I wanted to be through recognizing those qualities I agreed with in the scriptures, on top of what I already recognized and agreed with elsewhere. I realized somewhere along the way, that my reactions were not the only thing that had become different…I had.
I started to recognize some influence interacting in my life and in me as it had with those very mortal writers of the Bible.
I recognized myself in many the scriptures: I recognized humanity’s often stumbling approach to the concept of knowing God.
We are doing right now, by the way: dissecting and considering, refining what we believe and disbelieve. When we do this, we are doing what those councils of old did in compiling the Bible in the first place.
What is meaningful? What is too superstitious? I’m sure a great deal of you have read what was disallowed in the final Canon for seemingly superstitious or potentially fallacious reasons.
I’ve found that I think of religious or “spiritual” experience like consciousness, and the rest of the living and material world: an evolution. Some things will die out as existence progresses. Some things will change or mutate by small, seemingly incremental stages, some things will transform suddenly, and become entirely a new creature.
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
I learned that the violence in the Bible was actually committed by men and was qualified by those same men and others like them as sanctified by God, even though the commandments say: DO NOT KILL.
And in just the same way people wage holy wars today in Jesus’ name even when Jesus himself said to love God is to love each other–even the least of us. Whoever does not know love, does not know God. (1 John 4:8)
I eventually came across scriptures such as Jeremiah 24:7 And I will give them an heart to know me, that I am the LORD: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God: for they shall return unto me with their whole heart.
By this time, I understood that knowing God and experiencing God was not meeting some bearded, magic man who sits down at a table across from me.
I realized that to entertain that expectation was to entertain a notion carried over from a perspective of belief (or tongue in cheek disbelief) that I do not, nor have ever agreed with.
@David_Killens Perhaps, I mentioned my children earlier because I experience a similitude of what I know of God through loving them. The only difference is that know that I have made and will make mistakes. I fully realize that I am NOT perfect.
Even so, I still want my children to listen to what advice I do know is good for them.
Simultaneously, I want them to be their own people. I want them to learn from me, not to wear me or my ideals like some heavy coat that I throw over their head to make them obey my directives.
I want them to know that I love and want the best for them so that they WANT to respect and adhere to what I do know.
But, I want to give them room enough to grow and make their own realizations and determinations. I want them to evolve from my love and what I have taught them to become something all their own.
I have to get to work and this is more hurried than I would like. I will probably edit it. Just FYI.
Thanks, y’all. I hope y’all have a good day.
