J
joebobsteve
Guest
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus, 9/7/11
Peace be upon you and may you truly be piece in Christ. I write to you today in hopes of gaining clarification on matters of faith. It is my opinion that faith takes many forms and formulas but we, as Christians, try to make good the true faith shown us through the One who was sent for us to follow not by his word alone but through his actions also. I feel confronted today in many areas that for me don’t flow together but fight and separate us. After reading “Introduction to Christianity” by Pope Benedict XVI I feel comfortable for the first time in my own faith in the one true living God. I will say that I by no means have the intellect or for knowledge to say I fully comprehend the book. It did occur to me throughout that what I had been fighting against for the past several years and the points that had made me fall away from the church to the extreme of being a self-proclaimed atheist and denying God all became what appeared to be misinformation or misinterpretations. As I read about a God who is love I said yes! As I read about Hell being a state of being removed and not a fiery pit, I said yes! Further I read on to discover that Heaven is, for the lack of a better word, assimilation into God and not a place with roads paved with Gold, I said yes, yes, yes! There are many other points I could state here but the point I am trying to make is as the cloud of myth and magic was removed and the reality was more and more in sight I was very excited that God was never things that go bump in the night. So all my excitement lead me to reintroduce myself to the faith I was raised with and compare what the Pope had written with what is commonly believed, and find out where I had gotten it so wrong. First I was blown away when I started looking and discovered that it wasn’t just me that was way off, it is the majority opinion of our religion. I was saddened by the definition of Hell I found when I went looking. I had thought that I would look it up and realize that Dante’s picture was not the ideal Hell that was taught by the Catholic religion, but there it was closer to what the Jehovah’s witness had described than what I had read from “Introduction to Christianity” with all its reference to pain and suffering in mortal views and even the fact that it is in some way it is the will of God to punish sinners for divine justice? I really would like to continue this great time of repentance that I am experiencing in my life but I feel that I will just fall away again when the smoke and mirrors return to the forefront. I plead with anyone to make these things fit together in some way. I feel it necessary to add that when I had finished reading the Popes book I was exhilarated by the fact that I was almost as scared of Heaven as I was of Hell. In this I found for the first time how it isn’t about the reward any more than it is about the punishment. It truly is about the relationship with God and man every moment which is true eternity.
Sincerely,
Joseph R. Stevens
Peace be upon you and may you truly be piece in Christ. I write to you today in hopes of gaining clarification on matters of faith. It is my opinion that faith takes many forms and formulas but we, as Christians, try to make good the true faith shown us through the One who was sent for us to follow not by his word alone but through his actions also. I feel confronted today in many areas that for me don’t flow together but fight and separate us. After reading “Introduction to Christianity” by Pope Benedict XVI I feel comfortable for the first time in my own faith in the one true living God. I will say that I by no means have the intellect or for knowledge to say I fully comprehend the book. It did occur to me throughout that what I had been fighting against for the past several years and the points that had made me fall away from the church to the extreme of being a self-proclaimed atheist and denying God all became what appeared to be misinformation or misinterpretations. As I read about a God who is love I said yes! As I read about Hell being a state of being removed and not a fiery pit, I said yes! Further I read on to discover that Heaven is, for the lack of a better word, assimilation into God and not a place with roads paved with Gold, I said yes, yes, yes! There are many other points I could state here but the point I am trying to make is as the cloud of myth and magic was removed and the reality was more and more in sight I was very excited that God was never things that go bump in the night. So all my excitement lead me to reintroduce myself to the faith I was raised with and compare what the Pope had written with what is commonly believed, and find out where I had gotten it so wrong. First I was blown away when I started looking and discovered that it wasn’t just me that was way off, it is the majority opinion of our religion. I was saddened by the definition of Hell I found when I went looking. I had thought that I would look it up and realize that Dante’s picture was not the ideal Hell that was taught by the Catholic religion, but there it was closer to what the Jehovah’s witness had described than what I had read from “Introduction to Christianity” with all its reference to pain and suffering in mortal views and even the fact that it is in some way it is the will of God to punish sinners for divine justice? I really would like to continue this great time of repentance that I am experiencing in my life but I feel that I will just fall away again when the smoke and mirrors return to the forefront. I plead with anyone to make these things fit together in some way. I feel it necessary to add that when I had finished reading the Popes book I was exhilarated by the fact that I was almost as scared of Heaven as I was of Hell. In this I found for the first time how it isn’t about the reward any more than it is about the punishment. It truly is about the relationship with God and man every moment which is true eternity.
Sincerely,
Joseph R. Stevens