What does ‘closed the time’ mean?
Everyone was seated in a main section and they would bring you over one at a time and sit you in a chair and like 3 or so who were baptized in the spirit themselves would pray over you. When you were done, they’d send you back. They ‘closed’ probably by just praying some type of closing prayer, saying ‘amen’ and sending me back to my seat.
You said they realized nothing was going to happen - what were they expecting to happen?
Tons of other people on the retreat prayed in tongues for the first time, laughed hysterically, had prophecies or were ‘slain in the spirit’… maybe something like that? Maybe just anything other than my extreme case of doubt?
You said you had started questioning everything there at the retreat and that was the first time in your life you had done so. Had you really not questioned before and just believed, or were the questions just stronger while you were at the retreat?
I just never really questioned Christianity at all before. I don’t recall ever establishing the factual validity of it… perhaps because my environment was Catholic grade school and high school? It was the first time those kinds of questions ever struck me – the oddity of believing a man actually rose from being dead, for example.
What was it that everyone else ‘had’ exactly, that you wanted? You say you were miserable. Were you miserable because they had something that you thought you should have, too, or was it this whole change in your outlook and this doubt that was making you miserable?
Many things made me miserable:
- they talked about a personal relationship with god. That sounded fantastic but I had no comprehension of how to achieve this
- they talked about the comfort and exhilaration of this relationship, which I wanted to experience
- they just ‘knew god’ or just ‘had faith’ which I considered normal and therefore felt very abnormal and like something was wrong with me
- searching for answers and not finding them no matter how hard you’re trying is not cool
You said you were convinced by the lives of other…do you mean just that since these were trusted friends, that THEIR witness somehow helped convince you at that time?
Don’t recall the context, but maybe moreso something like ‘convinced by their witness’ as in convinced that god was real and that I just was missing out. Their lives were believable is another way to say it perhaps? I had no reason to think that god didn’t really exist and therefore it created the environment that 1) I was wrong in my doubts and 2) they had the truth but I was prevented from having it somehow.
Do you think your young age had anything to do with it? If you were in the same environment now, do you think it would have the same effect?
To this combined with your not crying, I would say that I have wondered more and more if it’s my age. I used to be a
ridiculously sensitive individual. I cried all the time at events (wedding, daughter’s birth) or during fights with my wife… even when hearing the violin sometimes (that’s more tearing up though…)
I can’t remember when, but I have not cried in an extremely long time. It’s struck me as quite odd considering how much I used to at various things. The last time I can say for sure would have been my daughter’s birth about 1.5 years ago. After that I don’t remember.
I have wondered a lot if it is my age. In talking with my half brother (about 15 yrs. older than me), he commented that he began questioning the faith he was raised in at about
exactly the same age (25ish) as me. My dad has commented that this is when the brain is
finally fully developed. So… I’ve wondered specifically about age given 1) I’ve had doubts in the past, but not pushed to research them and now they are back in a way that leads me to believe that it might not be me who is outrightly wrong in having them 2) my recent shift in emotional response and 3) that my brother had a similar experience of questioning and deconversion at the same age.
Though the last one could surely be coincidental, it did make me wonder. There’s a lot more to genes than we realize or give credit to.
To return to your question about whether it would be the same for me now… no. I still go to these charismatic Catholic prayer groups every other week; I belong to a lay association of Catholic families who get together to pray and hear talks every other week. I went from believing, praying in the spirit, believing words/prophecies shared… to singing but not believing, conducting no external signs of worship (raising hands, praying out loud), analyzing the talks, and thinking that every ‘word of the Lord’ and ‘prophecy’ could have been predicted by me as coming in some form of obviously human thought: we need to return to the Lord, he loves us so much and wants to tell us, he is calling us to press on in times of difficulty, he reminds you of his special mission just for you no matter what difficulties strike, he calls to you ‘be generous with your heart my child’, and so on.
My theory is that they’re really the things we would tell to each other or want to hear from god ourselves or think we’re hearing from god in our prayer and extend it to apply to everyone… it would be convincing if a word was given that we should give half of our money to charity x and god would provide food for us if we trusted him. But… 1) I’ve never heard a prophecy stretch the mundane this much and 2) despite all the ‘amens’ with the ‘normal’ prophecies, I can guarantee that there would be much hesitancy if this one was delivered. But why? If they are really his words, why trust the seemingly ‘normal’ ones and not the extravagant ones?
So… there’s my answers!
What can I say? I’m cold. 
