@ HardRockGTR. Each of us is on his own journey to God, so no one can determine at what point you ought to be at any one point in your life. Don’t despair. God knows your struggle. But also, we need to ask the right questions of religion or we come to the wrong conclusions. We cannot treat it like any other study because it is more than facts and figures that determines who has God’s authentic word. It cannot be measured in a test tube.
It’s a matter of asking the Holy Spirit to guide you into the truth and then being truly open as you seek. This means divesting ourselves of our own opinions and wants and seeking what is true and best, even if it is hard to understand or accept. Anyway, God definitely hears the prayers of those who have your good in mind. You’re not at the point in which you can discern what is true, but with prayer and a good will, you will come to it in God’s good time.
I absolutely agree on not studying religion or philosophy in a test tube like so many people try to do. I am strongly opposed to scientism (using science to determine all truths about reality and unreality alike) but I still have, presumably, a God-given sense of skepticism, which, for a Christian, can be a good thing. Skepticism is sometimes what prevents people from falling into temptation, or a Christian from accepting a different, “false” faith.
The thing is, I don’t have any particular faith, but I’m very open to religion in general. I have, in the past, logically and rationally come to the conclusion that, assuming God is an existing entity, is personal, all-powerful and all-benevolent, combined with my openness and willing to know “the truth” (which to mainstream Christians is fundamental), will eventually “allow” me to find the truth in due time. The possibilities are the following:
1 - God
is as described; I shall find the true religion eventually (which, from your point of view is Christianity, of course).
2 - God
isn’t as described; either nonexistent, non-omnipotent (something I’d be skeptical about) and/or non-benevolent (not necessarily evil, but neutral or deistic; this is more something that challenges my understanding of God because it’s a quality that is taken for granted in theology). I may or may not find the true religion, if there is one, but God wouldn’t have helped me directly.
3 - Omnipotence does not mean that I can be directly helped; for the same reasons God cannot create a square circle or a mountain so heavy that not even He can lift it, it would be contradictory, for one reason or another, for God to help me directly, in that way.
4 - We just don’t understand “God”; we might as well not even try to understand God. As a matter of fact, we probably shouldn’t use the term “God” in its hazy definition as it suggests an anthropomorphic, personal, monotheistic (and for some reason, here in the west, Christian) deity, rather than “whatever is out there”. With time, I’ve floated towards this quite a bit, because we are mortal, thus finite, and God, in the case of the Christian God, is transcendental and immanent at once, thus infinite. It would therefore mean that we cannot “fit” God in our heads, even when having the Beatific Vision itself.
Above all, this just means that until I “know” the truth (note the quotes), I can’t really be found guilty of any crime that wasn’t something I did consciously (I know murder, in a loose sense of the term, is
most likely immoral in 99.99% of cases, regardless of my agnosticism and skepticism combined). My only gripe with this concept is that it feels borderline rather irresponsible, “waiting” for a “reason” to “behave”.
All in all, thanks for the reply
It’s over three years later and our** divorce** will be finalized next month.
Hang on, hold the phone.
This is a
Catholic marriage?
Also, I feel your pain. I’m sorry for what happened (at least, before the optimism you found in God). I once had a friend I loved and cherished dearly. The very last person in a 1,000,000 light-year radius that I wanted to lose. Not a single time taken for granted. One day,
literally overnight, she flipped and completely changed into a different person I no longer recognized, without warning. Just one day, bang, and she’s someone else. The person I felt closer to than anyone else, even my own family. It hit me so hard I’d never felt so much pain before, and it screwed me up so much you have no idea. I still am affected by it, by the way, and this happened over a year ago. I couldn’t imagine the same happening with someone I married :\
This is, by the way, why I’m incredibly skeptical of love, in a philosophical sense.
), God answers our prayers in three ways: