I’ve said quite a bit in this topic about having a sense of the presence of God, or in my case, not having such a sense. A number of my interlocutors here have concluded, despite my efforts to explain otherwise, that my problem is that I’m seeking some kind of emotional gratification experience, that I’m distressed I’m not feelin’ the faith, and that I won’t be satisfied by anything less than a mystic vision or being knocked off a horse and hearing the voice of Jesus. I don’t think this is what I am after at all. In fact, I have tried to intentionally reduce the influence of emotion in my life for a good chunk of my late adulthood.
Others are telling me that I am “experiencing God,” perhaps without realizing it, in everything. This appears to me to be a tautology, as in, if you are experiencing creation, you are experiencing the Creator. But this is not the personal encounter with God that many Catholics seem to claim they have, but which I am told here that I am wrong to expect.
I
am certainly overthinking this. But that’s the way my mind works when considering the “big questions.”
Unless I’ve missed something from earlier in the thread, you’re the only one, Roguish, who has brought up intuition. Can you tell me what you think intuition is?
Like anyone raised in the modern world, you’ve been thoroughly trained to trust your faculty of reason much more than your intuition, and so it is mainly (or entirely) through reason that you have related to Catholicism up to this point in your life.
This is true, and I have bought completely into the idea that reason should rule our minds and actions. I don’t blame the “modern world” solely for this development since I believe there has been a parallel modern development that selfishly privileges emotional expression and experience to a dangerous degree. I think emotion has gotten me-- and everyone else-- into trouble and should therefore be rightly controlled.
Further, I see intuition as just a small step beyond emotion, so I have taught myself not to trust my intuition, as well. (Intuition is problematic for me in another way that I might explain later.) As your concept of intuition might be a different from mine, I asked you to define it.
But maybe you’re being too harsh on yourself? You speak of your “hypocrisy”. But hypocrisy is the feigning of piety. I don’t think that applies to you at all.
That’s the problem. I think it does apply to me. I said in my original post that my faith is primarily intellectual and has never penetrated into my soul. That doesn’t sound like a pious person to me. Most of my friends think better of me, though, because I’m good at explaining the faith and am eager to do so-- but it’s always an essentially academic exercise.
(More in subsequent post-- I ran out of room.)
