B
Beaver
Guest
Yes, I have always been in love with Jesus, and My Broom has made MARRIAGE with Him enjoyable.
Squirt ~When I was a non-believer, I had lots of misconceptions about what it might be like to believe in God.
For one thing, I thought that life must be easy for somebody who believes. Even the worst hardship would be tempered by the joy of knowing that God was there.
Now, I sometimes think :Hey, this isn’t what I signed up for! Faith is amazing, coming to know God is wonderful, but wow this is hard!!!
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade this for the peaceful indifference of my agnostic or atheistic periods in life, but it certainly doesn’t ‘feel’ like what I had imagined.
So this poll is just to get an idea of how faith is perceived by others.
Is faith enjoyable?
Yes and no, when my faith is strong it is very enjoyable, when its not strong it’s a struggle.
When faith is strong worldly concerns don’t overwhelm me. I can take great joy in family and friends. I can see the good in people and the opportunity in situations. Its not like I’m walking around being Mr. Joyful, joyful wearing rose colored glasses. But I ‘m not micro focused on problems.
When faith is weak it is a struggle because I start wishing I was free to do things that in the long run would be bad for me, or those around me. Like verbally slap down someone I find annoying. Or skip mass or skip prayer. Discipline and habit keep me acting like I should be it isn’t easy. Especially because when faith is week I tend to see the shadows more than the light.
That almost sounds like I have a split personality but I don’t just some days its easy being me and some days its not.
Unfortunately for me faith is like an ocean with high tides and low. But just as low tide on the ocean is a good time to gather drift wood. Low tides of faith are a good time for me to read on the saints, or study church history, things to prepare me for the next high tide or storm.
Scott
that bore repeating.When things go well, we enjoy our faith. when things go badly, we practice our faith.
I don’t know whether or not it’s a better question, as I’m kind of partial to my question.A much better question would be, is faith important to me? Yes, definitely. It is an extremely important part of my life and has seen me through many dark times during the past few years. I look back to when I did not have faith, and I cannot imagine how I made it through all those years.
John
This is a good point, Scott, in that it is not “easy” to enjoy the faith sometimes. But then I guess that if faith was something so easy to enjoy, the Devil would get hold of it , and corrupt it for us. . . Perhaps he does, by making it seem so hard. . . .Deacon Tony.
that bore repeating.
Actually when things go badly I appreciate faith more than ever, its just not as easy to enjoy.
Scott
Yes! Exactly!Still, the only thing worse than being Catholic is *not *being Catholic, so there must be *something *enjoyable about faith…