Doubts about faith and Satan

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PeaceBeWithYou

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Is Satan responsible for thoughts coming into your mind doubting the Church? How do you fight these thoughts (if you have experienced them)?
 
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Your temptations are from the world, the flesh, or the demons/devil. You can ignore the thoughts, you can reject the thoughts, you can direct your thoughts to be something else.
 
‘Now the other stones which you saw cast far away from the tower, and falling upon the public road and rolling from it into pathless places, are those who have indeed believed, but through doubt have abandoned the true road. Thinking, then, that they could find a better way, they wander and become wretched, and enter upon pathless places.’ - The Shepherd of Hermas
 
Satan and the world are responsible for these thoughts. I have experienced these thoughts so many times. It is important to remember that Satan wants you to think bad thoughts. When I feel doubts coming on, I say " Get away from me evil one, God loves me and I belong to him."
 
We give Satan a lot of credit for things that are simply natural. Your priest, spiritual director, would be the best for this question about your particular situation.

Scripture talks about people being led away of their own passions.
 
What is there doubt about ?..Christianity’s core doctrines
or teachings developed later on ?
 
He tempts you, but the thoughts are yours.

James 4:7 “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”
 
Stories such as the Garden of Eden and the great flood seemingly being taken directly from the Epic of Gilgamesh for instance. This text pre dates Genesis by hundreds of years by many accounts. I have found other examples as well of many biblical stories having uncanny similarities with stories from neighboring civilizations. This was first pointed out to me by somebody i know that is hostile towards my faith. I have further researched this and find myself questioning my faith. I can’t shake these lingering thoughts and can’t help both to think it is Satan tormenting me.
 
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I’ve always thought a 21th century Bible produced by God would be VERY
different from what we have now. The NT would be about the same.
Not gonna happen, though…time is running out on mankind’s drama !
 
I’m guilty of having walked away from my faith for 30 plus years, and only came back under extreme circumstances 9 years ago.

The flesh had won me over during that time, religion was boring and God seemed very distant. But then one night something terrible happened (demonic attack), suddenly I found I believed more than I thought because reality was in my face then and there, and all the years of doubts and nitpicking reasons of not wanting to believe were irrelevant.

When that happened I knew without a doubt everything else in Scripture was real too. No one on this Earth could have made what happened to my wife and I occur, and no one on this Earth could have made Psalm 23 come out of my mouth that night.

My suggestion to anyone having doubts is to get interested in Scripture, you probably already know the things you should do and not do, so maybe examine the miracles and supernatural power of God. All those stories in Scriptures about demons were just that, distant stories before that night.

My first day back at Mass after the attack, the Gospel was Jesus casting out the demons (legions) into the swine. No coincidence, and it was no coincidence when the priest walked down from the podium and to me sitting scared behind everyone else and looks me square in the eye and says this “You better believe demons are real!”

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom. Fear of the Lord is not just being scared of what He might do to you, the real fear is what would it be like without Him. Those thirty plus years before the attack were full of doubts and Satan was cunning. Now after nine years of solid belief there is one thing I can say with all certainty, God is very real, and He does not lie. Satan is also real and does lie, and he does want you to doubt your faith.

There really is a spiritual warfare going on, the Spirit vs the flesh. Choose wisely, if you choose the flesh and succumb to your doubts you have nothing to gain, but if you choose the Spirit you have everything to gain, for there is only ONE Way, and that is Jesus Christ, our ONE Lord and our only Savior!
 
A good way to find out is to recite a prayer like the St. Michael’s prayer. If the temptations almost immediately subside, then it might have been from the Devil. If not, then it’s either the flesh or the world.
 
People were talking about how the earth began long before Genesis was written. They would be strange people if they had not talked about such an important event!

The Bible was never meant to be a Scientific History text book.

The Old Testament shows us the plan of Salvation History from the time when God created everything from nothing (in which manner he did this is something we will not know this side of heaven).
 
PeaceBeWithYou said:
Stories such as the Garden of Eden and the great flood seemingly being taken directly from the Epic of Gilgamesh for instance.
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If they really are true, then you would expect other civilizations besides the Jews to talk about them. Adam and Eve were the parents of all humanity, not just the Jews. PS. A lot of those stories, especially with the New Testament, are much less similar to Scripture than non Christians make out.
 
Yes that may be but there are several other figures from previous or contemporary belief systems that are unmistakably similar to Jesus Christ. Mithra and Osiris for instance. I truly feel like I’m at a crisis of faith.
 
PeaceBeWithYou said:
Mithra and Osiris for instance. I truly feel like I’m at a crisis of faith.
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First and most important, I will pray for you. However, I don’t think that these similarities hold much water. It’s been a while since I read Egyptian mythology, but I seem to remember Osiris’s “resurrection” to have been entirely contingent on his wife piecing his body together and performing some sort of magical rite - that can hardly compare with rising from the dead on your own power. More in the next post.
 
You might have heard of the “virgin birth” of Horus. This doesn’t exactly pass muster as a virgin birth because his conception was a result of his mother manufacturing a prosthetic phallus and getting impregnated by it. Right. That’s virgin all right. I can’t remember what Mithra was all about, so could you please supply details?
 
If you have doubts about something taught by The Church that is fine… Just do your research to work out the doubt. The Church allows for that. The Church can stand up to scrutiny because it is from God and it tells he truth.

No need to bring the devil into it at all. He likes when we doubt but doubts can be settled, so why give him any thought?
 
What you’re having a dilemma with is what actually brought me into the Church. The best way to look at these mythologies which predate Christianity is to see them as imperfect prefigurements of the Truth that is to come with Jesus Christ.

You cited the Epic of Gilgamesh as a potential influence of the Genesis story. What you’re seeing there is an inherent truth to the myth, which was later completely revealed to the author of Genesis by God. The pagans have a fragmentary or rudimentary idea of creation passed down through generations, but it wasn’t until the Revelation of Genesis that humanity was given the fullness of the Truth.

You can look at the passing similarities of Osiris, Mithras, or even Baldur (who I believe was inspired post-Christianity) as having elements that prefigure the Incarnation.

This line of thought is what brought CS Lewis to Christianity, as illustrated by Tolkien. The stories of scripture and Christ are not pure myths, but “true myths” as they have common elements with mythology but are firmly rooted within history because they really happened.

I hope this helps.
 
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