Fellow Christians, which came first?

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The chicken or the–oops, wrong question!

The actual question is: Which came first, for you, your belief in God, or your belief in Christianity? To be more accurate, do you believe in God because you are a Christian, or are you a Christian because as a Theist your search has brought you here? Or, to borrow a multiple choice tactic, “Other (Please explain)?” 😛

Feel free to share the story of your path, and to elaborate on your spiritual and philosophical journey toward where you are now. I don’t envision this as a thread about debate–although questions and dialogue are certainly welcome–but rather about finding out what makes us tick as fellow believers, figuring out how we think.

Obviously super-detailed testimonies and philosophical treatises will probably be beyond the scope of any single post (or even multiple posts) but I’m sure that even sharing the “jist” will make for a fascinating discussion. 🙂

I’ve gotta give some thought to how I myself would answer these questions, but I want to go ahead and “open the floor” so to speak. 🍿

Blessings in Christ,
KindredSoul
 
My search for God brought me to Jesus. I didn’t know Jesus at all. I didn’t know He was God incarnate. I just knew there has to be something, someone, in charge of the universe. I rejected Christianity at first, probably because I didn’t understand or want to know Jesus. I looked at eastern religions, even Wicca. Eventually God made his presence known to me, and right after that, my aunt called and invited me to her church, where I accepted Jesus and found out that He was God. 🙂
 
CHICKEN! 😃

I was raised in a christian environment so i believed in God first, then became Christian. Then, once grown, i searched and became a Catholic in relationship with God. Totally different from believing in God and being Christian is being in relationship with God.
 
My belief in the person telling me about God, about Jesus.

John Martin
 
My belief in God due to a near death experience at the age of 4. Christianity came later.
 
dee_burk said:
CHICKEN! 😃

I was raised in a christian environment so i believed in God first, then became Christian. Then, once grown, i searched and became a Catholic in relationship with God. Totally different from believing in God and being Christian is being in relationship with God.
Click to expand...
same response for me … especially the CHICKEN introduction.
 
Thanks for the responses so far! Really interesting!

As for me, I wasn’t a fully practicing Christian until I was baptized at 17, but I was raised to believe in the Bible from as early as I remember. So I guess you could say that I first believed in God due to believing in Christianity. Since then, I’ve learned and reasoned that there are other reasons to believe in Him too (and reasons to believe in Christianity itself for that matter, so that it’s not longer just that “I was raised to believe it”), but it was my belief in Christianity (of a sort) that first made me believe in God.

Keep em’ coming! 🙂

Blessings in Christ,
KindredSoul
 
As a cradle Catholic, I was first exposed to the Holy Family, which included Jesus, who is God. Faith is a gift, no matter what path God has led us on.

Verbum
 
KindredSoul said:
The chicken or the–oops, wrong question!

The actual question is: Which came first, for you, your belief in God, or your belief in Christianity? To be more accurate, do you believe in God because you are a Christian, or are you a Christian because as a Theist your search has brought you here? Or, to borrow a multiple choice tactic, “Other (Please explain)?” 😛

Feel free to share the story of your path, and to elaborate on your spiritual and philosophical journey toward where you are now. I don’t envision this as a thread about debate–although questions and dialogue are certainly welcome–but rather about finding out what makes us tick as fellow believers, figuring out how we think.

Obviously super-detailed testimonies and philosophical treatises will probably be beyond the scope of any single post (or even multiple posts) but I’m sure that even sharing the “jist” will make for a fascinating discussion. 🙂

I’ve gotta give some thought to how I myself would answer these questions, but I want to go ahead and “open the floor” so to speak. 🍿

Blessings in Christ,
KindredSoul
Click to expand...
I’m a Christian because I already possessed a hope that was more than a hope, more like an insight into the fact that something “bigger” than myself was in control in this universe, something good even if my fellow humans, the “biggest” beings I was immediately familiar, with didn’t always display that goodness so well themselves. There had to be something greater. And after a great deal of searching in various systems claiming to have the truth, that hope was satisfied sufficiently in the teachings of the Christian faith, actually in the person of Jesus Christ.
 
I believe that my faith in Christian Catholicism really started when I was baptized when I was about 2-3 yrs old. I didn’t necessarily practice what I was taught in Catholic schools but I was indoctrinated in Catholic belief. Being orphaned at 5 yrs old, I found myself in a very lonely world. I was controlled by everyone, not allowed to be myself. I regressed into myself. I prayed, and God came to be my Father in place of my natural father. I had one of several tragic events that lead me to commit my self to a Catholic institution were I met some very kind, and holy religious nuns. they by their love for God and love for the boys gave me inspiration by their lives. I wanted to emulate them. I found myself growing in grace and belief. I finally entered the Seminary to be a missionary, but I had a stigma, a stigma of stress that often happens to orphans, so I couldn’t continue my studies. I then realized that what really mattered in life was not to do my will, but to do God’s will no matter where I found myself. I had several more tragic events that made me turn more to God. It hasn’t been an easy life, but God kept me going. And now I see my faith in Christ blooming, and I in retrospect definitely see God’s controlling hand and care, and love in my life in spite of all the tragedy. God disciplines with a loving hand those He loves, and love Him.
 
A bit hard to say actually. I had a bit of Sunday School when I was a kid at Newmarket Presbyterian Church in Brisbane. I don’t think it exists anymore.

Since I didn’t feel particularly welcome at that time, I drifted away from the church and became an atheist from about the age of 15. But at the age of 28, at the tail end of the worst four years of my life, when I was wondering what was the point of life if the frustration I was going through was all there was, I started getting this sort of spiritual pressure to start going back to the same old church, that is, the Newmarket Presbyterian Church.

But there was a strange precursor. A few months previously I’d been in Perth, and one night while sleeping on the floor of a friend’s house, I had this strange “dream” one night. Someone was walking along wearing a gown with tassels on the bottom and as he walked past I reached out and grabbed one of these tassels.

I suspect it was Christ giving what might be called a visionary precursor of a forthcoming change. But I had to return to Brisbane first.

Anyway I acted on the “spiritual impulse”, went to the Newmarket Presbyterian Church where I’d had a bit of Sunday School years before, met the new pastor and his family, and a bunch of agreeable young people, along with a generally welcoming environment.

Some years later I became a Catholic, after a similar spiritual push that guided me towards the Newmarket Presbyterian Church. No doubt my old Presbyterian mates would have been surprised and a bit dismayed, but my old Presbyterian pastor would not have been surprised. He predicted it, along with some other things.

So which came first? Well, I had what might be called a token Christian experience even as a kid, so when God did call me, He wasn’t calling me to something entirely new. So it’s a bit of both - I had some awareness of Christian teaching aka Christ, but I also had what might be called a distinct spiritual push aka God. And I think for most of us, as we live in a “Christian” society, that’s still true. That’s why it’s a lot harder to evangelise people who have no, or very limited, or a distorted, perception of Christ in their own society - Shinto Japanese, Buddhist Burmese, Moslem in Moslem countries, Indian Hindus and the like. There’s no background data to begin with.
 
I was a cradle Catholic. Then I went through a long phase of total disbelief in God, but with great devotion to the suffering Christ and Our Lady of Sorrows, and St. Francis (although nothing supernatural). I saw God the Father (if He existed) as basically a bully- and more likely just a metaphor put together by all the other bullies and jerks who pushed me around and made my life Hell.

Then I came to believe in God again, for the reason that I no longer believed in the world, society, family, humanity, the possibility of happiness, myself, life or existence, or anything. All deceptions. So, then, in the utter void, I saw that God, and God alone, must exist. The alternative was to ghastly even to consider…

So, this is the faith history of Nihilist…
 
Nihilist said:
I was a cradle Catholic. Then I went through a long phase of total disbelief in God, but with great devotion to the suffering Christ and Our Lady of Sorrows, and St. Francis (although nothing supernatural). I saw God the Father (if He existed) as basically a bully- and more likely just a metaphor put together by all the other bullies and jerks who pushed me around and made my life Hell.

Then I came to believe in God again, for the reason that I no longer believed in the world, society, family, humanity, the possibility of happiness, myself, life or existence, or anything. All deceptions. So, then, in the utter void, I saw that God, and God alone, must exist. The alternative was to ghastly even to consider…

So, this is the faith history of Nihilist…
Click to expand...
I assume that what might be called your faith by reduction is what led to your electronic pen name of “Nihilist”?
 
My conversion story is too long to tell here.

Suffice it to say that my first conversion was to God. Then I lost faith. My second conversion was to Christ, and it was abundantly apparent to me at some point that if God ever revealed himself to us through anyone in human history, it had to be Jesus Christ … God and Man.
 
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