SteVen
Well-known member
I agree that it is much bigger than Christianity, But this is the horse I rode in on. So, I don't know how else to frame it and sort it out.
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God's character informs the purpose of his justice
- Thread starter SteVen
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Joker
Active member
Then I think I will ask the question after all.
What is it that keeps you tied to (or at least within bad-breath contact distance of) orthodox Christianity?
SteVen
Well-known member
That's a good question, thanks.
I suppose there are several reasons. And I do feel as if I am flying under the radar of "orthodox Christianity".
And I'm not sure if the Pentecostal/AoG church I attend is totally orthodox anyway.
But, it is WAY more evangelical than I prefer.
I tolerate it because it is a very fine fellowship of wonderful Christian folks. I love my church.
My parents raised me in the Christian church. My Mom is still alive.
My wife was raised in the church and we have attended faithfully all of our 44 years of married life.
She doesn't agree with my unorthodox theology for the most part. And hates it if I argue the points.
My wife and I are regular attenders. If I can't make it physically, I watch the service online.
The worship is fantastic. I used to play in a band with the worship team guitarist.
I know all the folks on the worship team. We talk often at church.
So, there is a lot of good there for us. (me included) And I spend my time during sermons agreeing and disagreeing.
But I mostly keep my mouth shut and don't make waves. There is another man in the church that is Universalist.
In small group meetings I will raise challenging questions. (within reason) It can make them rather uncomfortable.
There is an elderly former missionary the gets an Uber/Lyft to church. We drop him at home on our way home.
I still believe that God is worthy of worship and I am fully engaged in the worship service. A lead worshiper, really.
And there is still something to gain in the teaching and preaching. I usually let the Spirit direct my thoughts.
The messages I get are typically not in the sermon notes. - LOL
But it has been that way for decades.
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This strikes me as a classic description of "finding a convenient and appealing landing spot for family, social and/or economic reasons." It does explain a vast swath of "Christianity" and church attendance, but it has nothing to do with belief or Ontolological Truth. It seems to me to have things exactly backwards. I, at least, want first of all a belief system I actually believe, one that seems to me the closest to Ontological Truth that I can get in this lifetime. If it's naturalistic atheism, or a faith community filled with dour weirdos, or a one-man Church of What O'Darby Believes, so be it.
One of the greatest blessings of my life was that my alcoholic parents made absolutely no effort whatsoever to instill any religious or irreligious beliefs. I carry none of that baggage. A second great blessing was that my first wife - truly a saint if there ever was one - had been raised as a strict Southern Baptist but rejected it even sooner and more decisively than I did. So I had none of those pressures either.
"Worship" is "fantastic," it seems to me, only if one actually believes what is being worshipped. Otherwise it's just some sort of communal emotion-fest. I suppose one could participate with the attitude "I'm worshipping the God in whom I actually believe, even if he/she/it isn't the God most of my fellow worshippers think they are worshipping" - but this strikes me as an odd reason for participating in communal worship.
You seem to think Universalism solves all problems. For starters, it is only a marginally Christian doctrine and has been pretty firmly rejected for 2000 years. Most forms of it, as I previously stated, are really quite ghastly in their own right and scarcely describe a God most of us would call loving or just. If one moves in the direction of a more warm-and-fuzzy Universalism, it pretty well eviscerates the entire Christian message (which perhaps should be eviscerated, but that's a different issue).
It seems to me you've created a mental house of cards where you are "really a pretty conventional Christian except that I believe in Universalism." I don't get the feeling you've really confronted the implications or why you have adopted a Universalist position. Just playing amateur psychologist, it seems to me you want to have your cake and eat it too - i.e., play the Christian game for the family, social and perhaps psychological benefits it offers while avoiding through supposed Universalism the reality that what you actually believe really isn't Christianity.
Universalism, to paraphrase an old saying, might be described as the last resort of a Christian scoundrel. Too many implausible and unpleasant Christian doctrines are papered over by Universalism. Universalism becomes a "mental necessity" only because one doesn't believe those doctrines - doesn't believe in that God - in the first place.
Again, this begs the central question: WHO IS the God you believe is worthy of worship??? Is he the God your church is worshipping? Why do you feel the need to reinvent him with some notion of Universalism? I won't beat it to death any further, but I see great confusion in your responses. This is exactly what one expects as one moves through the Stages of Faith. You really should read the book and the many others like it if you haven't. It appears to amateur psychologist me that you are moving in the direction of a Stage 4 or 5 belief system but are having tremendous difficulty letting go of Stages 2 and 3 - not so much for reasons of what you believe but due to family and social pressures.
Hence, you try to keep a foot in two or more Stages that are just too difficult to harmonize. The breakthrough would be not in abandoning church but in an honest-with-yourself acceptance that your attendance is really for family and social reasons and that, down deep, you're actually a Scientologist.
Five cents, please.
I didn't see this before, but: It was certainly the horse I rode in on as well, in terms of an unanticipated conversion experience and early involvement with Campus Crusade and the SBC. The saddle started slipping early on, but I didn't fall completely off.
It takes courage to dismount, but it's really the only honest way. I'll bet at least ten times - the most recent not that long ago - I said, "Nope, nope, nope, I'm going to stop reading all this theology and apologetics and criticism, just stick with the Bible and deal with life as though the most conventional sort of SBC faith were True."
In no more than a matter of days, it was always "Nope, nope, nope, this is ridiculous. I don't believe this. I don't believe this could possibly be true. I'm not going to be this dishonest with myself and whatever God there may be (as though I could fool him anyway)."
The next highly popular stage is, of course, to attempt to reconcile what you actually do believe and are capable of believing with some sort of bastardized Christianity so you can tell yourself you're still within the fold - mostly due to the fear that being outside the fold just might have drastic eternal consequences. But this is equally dishonest, if not delusional.
The only really honest approach is to decide, as rationally and unemotionally as you can, what you actually do believe and are capable of believing - and then live with it. Any other approach is to live in a state of cognitive dissonance and fundamental dishonesty.
Don't start with "How can I fit what I actually believe into the Christian tradition in which I have so much invested?" but rather simply "What do I actually believe and why?" If the result is something that actually fits within the Christian tradition - OK, fine.
I actually think my religious life is deeper and richer than it was previously. I can't say that my communion and prayer life looks much different at all, with the exception that I'm communing with and praying to a creator who is far more of a mystery than Christians like to pretend. I can do this while acknowledging that conventional Christianity, like naturalistic atheism, might be entirely true - but even if it is, it simply isn't what I believe or am capable of believing.
SteVen
Well-known member
SteVen
Well-known member
I don't think anyone is immune from some level of cognitive dissonance. So, where is "honesty" in all of this?
Leaving Room for Faith - why we don't know EVERYTHING
At one time I was bothered by the fact that we don't really have ALL the answers. There was always a loose end somewhere. I chased the apologetics in every direction, but always came up short somewhere. And frankly, I don't remember the specifics, only the moment of my release from the tyranny...
whitehorseforums.com
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Sure it is, because then the Church of What O'Darby Believes will have its second member and I can shed myself of the janitorial duties. You can also head up the Sunday School if you like (and if we ever have one).
But the thread you linked really isn't talking about cognitive dissonance. Certainly we have to accept that our convictions about Ultimate Reality are uncertain because the truth of Ultimate Reality can't be known in this lifetime. This is true no matter how strong our convictions about Christianity or any other belief system may be. As you also seem to be suggesting in that thread, there is also the uncertainty that no belief system is a tidy, connect-the-dots explanation of Ultimate Reality - there are always aspects that don't make rational, logical sense.I don't think anyone is immune from some level of cognitive dissonance. So, where is "honesty" in all of this?
Leaving Room for Faith - why we don't know EVERYTHING
At one time I was bothered by the fact that we don't really have ALL the answers. There was always a loose end somewhere. I chased the apologetics in every direction, but always came up short somewhere. And frankly, I don't remember the specifics, only the moment of my release from the tyranny...
HOWEVER, if we are honest with ourselves about what we actually believe and are capable of believing, and we are diligent about constructing such a belief system, and we do our best to live according to those beliefs, then it seems to me that cognitive dissonance doesn't enter into the picture. Cognitive dissonance to me would be telling myself and others that I believe conventional Christianity is True while knowing viscerally and intuitively that I don't really believe this. It's honesty WITH YOURSELF that I'm talking about.
If there is a God, nothing we can say or do is going to fool him. Pretend belief - or willfully choosing not to confront what we really do (and don't) believe and really are (and aren't) capable of believing - is only fooling ourselves. I fail to see how any God could want anything but a sincere and diligent quest and a life lived in our accordance with our real convictions. If this isn't sufficient for God, he isn't worthy of worship. That's why I admired the atheist on Amazon who reviewed the lengthy work of systematic theology and said "I read and understood this, just as I have read and understood lots of Christian theology and apologetics. And yet I remain an atheist. What can I do? I can't simply will myself to believe things I don't believe and am incapable of believing."
The vast majority of people on religious forums want unchallenging discussions, mostly confirmation of what they already believe. Even fussing and feuding within the Christian context is acceptable precisely because it is within that context - i.e., it accepts the validity of the Christian context and doesn't raise the specter of the entire ball of wax being nonsense. The vast majority of people don't want to confront their own epistemology or the depth of what they say they believe. This is why the word "doubt" is anathema on Christian forums, even though acknowledging doubt is a vital element of faith.
I get virtually no meaningful responses to my posts, and it appears to me that you get few substantive responses to yours. My posts are just completely beyond the pale of what most people want or expect at a forum such as this. Hence my statement about self-banning in post #12 above. I enjoy engaging with you because at least you are honest about the issues you are confronting and the struggles you are having with them (as I likewise try to be).
SteVen
Well-known member
SteVen said:
If I do that, I'll probably end up like you. Is that really a good idea? - LOL
SteVen said:
I don't think anyone is immune from some level of cognitive dissonance. So, where is "honesty" in all of this?
The cognitive dissonance of my evangelical upbringing was the claim to have all the answers, while saying, "His ways are beyond knowing." when something couldn't be explained. (because we didn't have all the answers) Perhaps you need to bear in mind that while you were in evangelicalism for about ten minutes, I was raised there and didn't set my own course until I came of age.
Admittedly, I took the wrong course, but what I thought was a safe one. I was bothered by the notion that we here in the west that were part of Christianity had the idea that we were in with God and the rest of the world was out. What if I had been born in a third world country, then what? Would I not believe whatever environment I was raised in as well? I sought answers in Christian apologetics. (the wrong, but safe course mentioned earlier) It meant reading and studying the entire Bible. I basically hand-wrote my own chain reference Bible as I went. I literally destroyed that book. Had to get it rebound)
I also read many Christian authors. This led to a well-established Christian faith. Card-carrying evangelical apologist, teacher, church leader, open witness, Christian family. When it came to doctrine, I choose what I would believe and what I wouldn't. There was room for differences in non-essentials within evangelicalism. I wasn't looked into any doctrine really. And then I charted a path into the realm of Charismatic/Pentecostalism.
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If I do that, I'll probably end up like you. Is that really a good idea? - LOL
LOL
SteVen said:
I don't think anyone is immune from some level of cognitive dissonance. So, where is "honesty" in all of this?
My thread does not use the term cognitive dissonance, but that is most certainly what it is about. IMHO
The cognitive dissonance of my evangelical upbringing was the claim to have all the answers, while saying, "His ways are beyond knowing." when something couldn't be explained. (because we didn't have all the answers) Perhaps you need to bear in mind that while you were in evangelicalism for about ten minutes, I was raised there and didn't set my own course until I came of age.
Admittedly, I took the wrong course, but what I thought was a safe one. I was bothered by the notion that we here in the west that were part of Christianity had the idea that we were in with God and the rest of the world was out. What if I had been born in a third world country, then what? Would I not believe whatever environment I was raised in as well? I sought answers in Christian apologetics. (the wrong, but safe course mentioned earlier) It meant reading and studying the entire Bible. I basically hand-wrote my own chain reference Bible as I went. I literally destroyed that book. Had to get it rebound)
I also read many Christian authors. This led to a well-established Christian faith. Card-carrying evangelical apologist, teacher, church leader, open witness, Christian family. When it came to doctrine, I choose what I would believe and what I wouldn't. There was room for differences in non-essentials within evangelicalism. I wasn't looked into any doctrine really. And then I charted a path into the realm of Charismatic/Pentecostalism.
From my perspective, if we run away every time we encounter the group has a differing opinion than our own, we will find ourselves in a very lonely place. I knew an older couple that had come out of Catholicism, but they remained in the Church and had marvelous opportunities to witness to others in the Church. I would not call that dishonest in the least.
Agree.
No one is saved by doctrine. Only God can save. (and already has) - LOL
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SteVen
Well-known member
I agree.
But consider this, I was invited back to CB. Why?
Not to brag, but I have 7+ pages of topics many with thousands and even tens of thousands of reads.
I was providing content every day. Whether new, or brought to the top. A month of my absence may have been noticeable. - LOL
Thank you. I'm glad to have met you as well.
I don't need substantive responses. It actually helps my case if they CAN'T make a decent rebuttal. The readers may be smarter than the respondents. My LIKE ratings tell a story.
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