I’ve already made a thread about it, but I can’t seem to find it, but I’m having trouble again.
I don’t know why but I pray every night. It seems like it gets harder and harder to pray because the though constantly comes back into my mind.
“Is he real?”
“Why and how is he real?”
“Are you just wasting your time?”
I want to get these out of my head, and I’ve been fighting and fighting and I just need your prayers to help me.
Also, how do you guys believe in Jesus so confidently? Have you ever gotten these thoughts like me?
Thank you so much, bless you. Happy Thanksgiving by the way
XSteven
People have offered some good practical advice for the short-term when you are feeling “insecure” about your faith. I am going to offer something well from “left field” that probably won’t help in the short term but may be a small “star” for long term directions.
Understanding what it means to be a human, from a Catholic point of view, might be helpful in putting your changing emotions and contradictory convictions in context.
In Catholic theology the soul “penetrates” into the body to different depths. Bit like a triangle. At the top of the soul, closest to where we relate to God, are the spiritual faculties of intellect (made to know/understand God) and will (where we ultimately and freely decide to love or reject the things that the intellect shows us).
In the next layer down the triangle are more bodily related faculties such as imagination and affective feelings which are controlled just as much by our bodily environment as by our intellect/will. The next layer down is more about raw emotions and learnt habits arising from our perceiving bodily senses and our instinctive reactions to situations we meet. Finally there is the layer closest to our bodies where we experience physical pain/pleasure.
All these layers should be in harmony but they are not. Hence daily the battle of life. It takes a lifetime for the highest faculties of our soul (intellect and will), which for believers seek God, to bring the other layers into line. We never do, but over time we get better. The lower the layer the wiser we have to be in finding ways to harmonise them. You cannot just “tell them to”. One has to learn healthy and indirect ways and means to do this. I cannot help you there, just follow the commandments and a wise spiritual director regularly.
What I do want to suggest is this.
You are absolutely fine and on the right path. Faith is primarily to do with the “will” not the intellect. Indeed, if your convictions of the existence of Jesus all came from intellectual conviction then it would not be faith! We cannot be pleasing to God if our minds alone assent to Him.
The thing about faith is that the good will races ahead of the poor grasp of the intellect and loves what it cannot properly see. This is what you seem to be experiencing and the experience is become an anxiety for you. Do not be anxious, this is completely normal experience for those deepening their relationship with God.
Most believers with strong faith aren’t really that strong. Their “felt conviction” is really coming from those lowers layers (e.g. many staunch “cradle Catholics” are pretty much like this. Its more hormonal habit than a conviction of the mind if you catch my drift).
Maybe you were like that once, it now seems the Spirit has withdrawn that superficial support from the more “bodily” layers of your psyche so that your mind/will be further strengthened. Its usually cyclic, like the stars the various layers line up in harmony…then go out of synch again. Just keep to the core practices - personal prayer, Sacraments, good works. The details of your style in these areas may need to change as you mature.
Re doubts about Jesus’s existence. Of course he existed, even seculars accept that. (You probably mean is He the person the Church says he is).
Keep in mind that pure acts of will/intellect may be very very dry without conviction or emotional feelings to support them (basically what I just said above). These are very very pleasing in God’s sight. Mother Theresa of Calcutta, in letters discovered after her death, appears to have had no felt conviction that God existed for much of her later life. Yet she still kept on going and loving into the darkness.
Very few will ever get it that bad ( or that pure), but more temporary experiences cannot be avoided by anyone seeking God. Nothing to get anxious or insecure over. The more you can accept it generally the quicker it passes. Its all up to God - we have to follow regardless.
By the way the intellect is important in faith - otherwise we could believe in fairy tales and end up with fideistic Jonestown fideistic distasters. Doubts do have their place. But your doubts seem to be irrational feelings coming from the lower layers not from the intellect. If in your darkest doubt you are unable to firmly** deny**, say, the Resurrection or God’s love then your Faith is on solid ground. That you may be unable to feelingly
affirm the truths of faith is not the point.
For myself, if it was one day conclusively proven that the bones of Jesus had been truly found…then I would probably become a Jew as it would mean the Apostles either lied or were deceived. That day has not come (despite sensationalist fabrications).
All the best, you are not the first and not alone
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