My faith is at 0%

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PazFeAmor

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I would call this a crisis of faith but I don’t have faith anymore. It has been over a month since I last visited CAF and stopped going to church as well.

I know many of you will say that if I am here at CAF posting then it must mean I have faith but I can honestly with 100% of my heart say that I have no faith at all and cannot even accept the Christian concept of God.

I reverted to the faith around 4 years ago and had doubts in my faith before that have come and gone as I am sure many of you here have experienced but this is so much worse now.

Lately, I have started reading some old books I have on Buddhism… but other than that I don’t do anything even remotely spiritual. I no longer pray and feel like a hipocrite having statues of Christ and the saints…so I stored them away in my closet.

I guess I am here at CAF because I am wondering if any of you have gone through extended periods where there is a TOTAL absence of faith?..because this is exactly what is happening to me now.

note: I reposted this thread for a second time since my first attempt was eaten by the server… should the first attempt pop up please delete it moderator.
 
PazFeAmor said:
I guess I am here at CAF because I am wondering if any of you have gone through extended periods where there is a TOTAL absence of faith?..because this is exactly what is happening to me now.
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I have.

I left the Church a year and a half ago or so. The first few months were tough. But eventually things got better.

If you don’t think that Catholicism is true, you really shouldn’t try and force yourself to believe it.

And you don’t need to replace one irrational belief system with another, by the way. Faith isn’t a neccessary part of life by any means.
 
Hey!
I just read you…I totally identify with your predicament because I’ve had my share of suffering from depressing doubt.
I’ve tried looking for answers elsewhere too,buddism et cetera.
The BEST thing u could do(if at all u want to stay with the Lord Christ and the Church) is PRAY.
 
First know I am praying for you.Romans 12:3 tells us God gives to every man a measure of faith.There is mis-directed faith.Even atheism “believes there is no god”.Faith is a nessary part of life.Prepareing for the future(school,training etc)is having faith you’ll live long enough to reach your goals.Sometimes faith is irrational,even though you can’t see it,smell it,touch it you believe it.I thank God that sometimes I can “feel faith”.But sometimes faith is dicision to believe even though we can’t or don’t feel it.Sometimes faith is a choice.(11Co.5:7).Faith comes by hearing the word of God(RO.10:17.Don’t give up.Jesus loves you and will take care of everything.Peace
 
And among the Saints of our Church there have been several who have repeatedly been plunged into the utter abysses of doubt and confusion.Let me tell u a secret;it sounds a little scary in the beginning,though.;)Sometimes,even for long periods,God purposely WITHDRAWS from us! Of course God assures us that He’ll never leave us nor forsake us…true.But withdrawing from us is a mysterious method that He uses,only to actually bring us closer to Himself! Blessed Teresa of Calcutta faced such excruciating times of ‘abandonment’,as it were.In fact her confusion lasted for years on end.
The trick is to PERSEVERE and understand that God is allowing u to doubt; He knows you an infinite times more than uknow yourself! So plz PRAY candidly to God;tell Him out aloud that u know He’s watching you go far away from Him.
Of course,if you insist on shutting the doors on the face of Jesus,these methods are useless.
I’ll pray for u (now) nonetheless.Al the best!👍
 
I have been there a few times. One thought that always haunts me is when Jesus is giving a particulary difficult teaching and many of his disciples leave. He asks the 12 if they too are going to leave - and Peter says what I keep thinking in those difficult and faith-less times, “Where else would we go? You alone have the words of eternal life.”

I think faith is a lot like marriage. Sometimes you take your spouse for granted - you shouldn’t, but you do. A relationship that is worth saving takes work to save it. It takes spending time with the other person and the commitment not to take them for granted.

As somebody already said, pray. Try that same prayer that so many others have prayed - “Lord, help me in my unbelief.”
 
My thanks to all of you that have posted. I think I may not have been too clear as to what is happening to me. I have no faith at all and do not even believe in the Christian concept of God. If I cannot even believe in the basics of a Christian God then how am I to pray?

I am not seeking faith but am wondering if others have gone through a complete and total absence of faith and whether it was permanent or temporary.

In the past I have gone through times of doubt that have been short-lived but this is not doubt anymore. It is a complete absence of faith where I am not able to accept the concept of a Christian God and Catholic teaching.

I know as Catholics you are suppose to tell me to pray but I can no longer do so. As to whether what I am going through will be long-term or short-term I have no idea.
 
You need to pray even though you don’t believe!

Many saints went through crisis of faith and what is a crisis of faith if not a terrifying lack thereof. It scared these saints because they thought they had great faith in God, but He was showing them how little good they can do - even in the act of believing - without His grace. He was showing them how much they depended on Him for everything - even faith. The only way to break through this wall of doubt is to pray. You will gain so many graces by persevering in prayer that when you come out of this darkness, you will wonder how you ever doubted.

Do not put your statues in the closet. They are there to remind you to pray. The person who said that “faith isn’t a neccessary part of life” was right when it comes to this life on earth. You don’t need faith to survive on earth - But you do need it to have eternal life. If you do not have God you have hell. Plain and simple.

Praying for you.

Joyful_1
 
Hi PazFeAmor,

In answer to your question, I’d say that yes I have gone through the sort of periods you’re describing, but would like to qualify my answer. There were times when I thought I had no faith and thought I did not believe the Christian God. In time, I came to realize (thanks to some really helpful insights from others) that the problem was in my conceptions of what faith and the Christian God were.

I had thought that faith had to do with a feeling of, or intellectual certainty in, the existence of God or in the teachings of His church. I did not have these, so I thought I did not have faith, and that absent this I was unable to really enter into the church as an active, participating, honest member (not wanting the feelings of hypocrisy you spoke of). It was later pointed out to me that faith had nothing at all to do with thoughts or feelings, but was instead determined by or manifested in our decisions. When I make a decision and choose to follow Jesus and His church, I have faith. It’s the decision of the will, not the feelings or thoughts, that counts. This may sound obvious, but this took a while to hit me, and when it did, it opened the door for me back to the church (for a while, I was also drawn to Eastern spirituality, especially Zen Buddhism, and lived in Japan).

As for not believing in God, well that also turned out to be a problem in my conception of Him and not a shortcoming of Christianity. Many people have a poorly formed to downright goofy idea of who God is understood to be in Christian thought. I know I did. But if you read more and study more and especially, as others have rightly suggested already, pray more (even if this just consists of sitting in silence and listening while making yourself available to Him, reflecting on a verse of scripture that speaks to you, which is how I started), He will reveal himself to you more. I found the writings of St John of the Cross and the “Cloud of Unknowing” to be especially helpful in this regard. A spiritual director may help as well.

So in summary, I wonder if the problems you’re experiencing are more the result of in incomplete understanding of the Christian conceptions of faith and God than a real absence of faith. I know this was the case for me. Based on what you’ve written here, I would also seriously consider the possibility that rather than being pushed away, you are being called to a deeper, more mature, and more personal relationship with God and His church.
 
Dear PazFeAmor,

One time a priest confessed publicly in his sermon how in his younger days he came to doubt the Catholic Church so badly that he literally ran away from being a priest two or three times by getting out on the highway and driving away, and even became suicidal once … what stopped him from killing himself was an image of his three-year-old niece who loved him, and a tiny “grain of faith the size of a mustard seed” connected to a teaching of the Church that he didn’t name directly.

He described the doubt he formerly had even while saying the Mass … when it came time to say the words of Consecration, "This is my Body … " he felt like a hypocrite because he didn’t believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

His faith returned, so the loss of faith was a temporary thing, but as I said he struggled with it more than once and had to go through the humiliation of knocking on the rectory door and asking to be let back into the parish he had deserted … again.

Eventually, this priest grew inspirationally strong in his faith. By the time I was privileged to meet him, I had a great admiration for him.

His name was Rev. Thomas Sheehan, and he was an absolutely gifted homilist as well as writer in defense of the Faith. He even reminded me of the similarly sounding last-named Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.

He eventually retired and if I remember right went into a nursing home and died … in any case, Father Sheehan struck me as a very holy priest … I would even call him saintly.

So if someone like him could have such trouble and come through with faith even stronger than he started out with, there’s definitely hope for the rest of us.

~~ the phoenix
 
PazFeAmor said:
My thanks to all of you that have posted. I think I may not have been too clear as to what is happening to me. I have no faith at all and do not even believe in the Christian concept of God. If I cannot even believe in the basics of a Christian God then how am I to pray?
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The same way you show love for your spouse even when you aren’t “feeling” like you love them. You just do it. As somebody said, it isn’t a matter of how you feel. Feelings come from practice, not the other way around.
 
As one poster mentioned, we often come to faith with a biased idea of who God is, especially when we use the endearment of “Father” to address Him. Recent catechist training was a two hour session on the “Our Father.” My original reaction was how could that much time be spent on a single prayer. We could have spend another two hours and never grasped the reality meant by “Father.” It is a radical idea to see God as more than a diety far away from the very lives that each of us live. Yet he calls us into sonship. When Jesus taught the “Our Father,” He empowered his followers to enter the same relationship that He shared with His father. If our perception is clouded by our own human relationships, it is easy to doubt the reality of God.
A friend of mine talked candidly about being an atheist. It is only when he married his wife and had a child that he understood what it is to love. God is Love and he who abides in love abides in God. It is in loving that my friend came to accept and believe in God.
 
I can’t say that I’ve ever completely lost my faith but I can say there have been times (and lately has been one of them) where I feel like God doesn’t hear my prayers even when I am desperately down on my knees, tears streaming down my face. But I just have to tell myself that just because He hasn’t shown an answer yet doesn’t mean that He won’t…

I pray that you can make it through your darkness and feel warm from the light of the Lord soon!
 
I completely rejected my Christian faith when I was about 12 years old and did not return to it until I was 19, a sophomore in college. I also became very involved in eastern religious, particularly Taoism. I learned a great deal, much of which I still use now in my Catholic life (such as meditative prayer).

But there was one problem I had with my Eastern mysticism - it could not explain Love. In Taoism, the “Tao” is an impersonal force, not a loving presence. But if that were true, then there is something that we weak and finite humans experience something which is far greater and more powerful than anything the ‘Tao’ could amount to - we experience Love, we see Love, we see its power. If there is some vague and impersonal Life Force out there, it cannot be the source of Love - there must be something else, something much higher and personal which is the source of it. When I discovered this, I discovered that it is far more likely that God is a personal, loving creator than some abstract and indefinite Force.

The problem I had with Buddhism was this: In Buddhism, there is no ‘love’ - no self-sacrifice or altruism - because there is no self. The self is only an illusion. If there is no self, there can be no Love as we understand it. We can only express some detached form of egalitarian compassion, but the deep power of Love is only an illusion. But if the self is just an illusion, how on earth can something like altruistic, sacrificing love exist? How can it be so real and so powerful - how can it convince us that it’s the only thing worth living for? I don’t think Buddhism can answer this question.
 
Dear PazFeAmor,
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I am not too knowledgeable about the Catholic Faith – but I am sure that many saints have gone through this. I have heard of St. John of the Cross describing something about this in one of his books (Dark Night of the Soul or something like that where God puts a soul into these problems.) I have also heard of St. Faustina go through this just before she was to take her final vows.  

I have also heard of Mother Thresa going through this. “Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith” [time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1655415,00.html](http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1655415,00.html) – an article in a secular magazine like the Time highlights this. This "dryness," "darkness," "loneliness" lasted almost from the time she started working in the 1950’s till she died in the 1990’s. That’s a lot more than what you are going through. 

God wants to test your soul. If He put you through this – he only wants to perfect the love that you already have had for him. Persevere and you would be rewarded.
O.O.
 
There are times in life when faith, like love, is a choice. No good feelings, no positive feedback, just a choice. And, after you make that choice over and over and over again, eventually you pass through the valleys of shadow and back into the presence of God. Sometimes it takes a lifetime of perserverance.

I don’t know if it is a “test,” or Satan at work, or just the way the human mind works . . . but it does seem to be part of our lot in life.

I will remember you in my prayers.
 
I have no faith at all and do not even believe in the Christian concept of God.
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The Christian “concept” of God is not a concept. It is not the result of a bunch of spiritually-inclined people imagining what God may be like. It is the result of direct revelation by God, telling us through the prophets, apostles and saints, who He IS. The apostles got 40 days worth of quantum-leap education about God from the resurrected Jesus. They took the Gospel far and wide after learning this truth about God, and most died defending it.

Having a hard time with Catholic faith is not unusual. But don’t ever think of it as a concept. Nobody dies for a concept.

-Tim
 
I want to apologize for not responding to all posts as I feel that my response will turn into a way too long essay so I will just respond to certain points made. I thank those of you who are keeping me in your prayers.

**SPQR ** It’s not that I don’t have a good understanding of the Christian concept of God. I had a good faith formation with the foundation being 12 years of a Catholic school Education and then went on to study the faith more in-depth on my own by reading the early Church Fathers, St. Thomas Aquinas, the Catechism…etc.

My problem is that I no longer believe in the Christian concept of God and it no longer makes sense to me intellectually as well as in my heart. My lack of faith starts with Adam and Eve all the way to the need of offering up ones suffering to Christ and suffering being redemptive.

As the saying goes “you can’t get blood from a stone”, so how can I use my will to force myself to believe in something I no longer believe in? That is the root of the problem.

phoenix I thank you for relating the story of Rev. Sheehan but at least he had that tiny grain of faith. I no longer have this. I am not closed off to God having an affect in my life but I can no longer relate to God in terms of belief. If God decides to radically change me in terms of the absence of faith I have then he will have to do something radical to change that as I cannot do anything at this point.

Stratiotes I hate to sound like a broken record but how am I to pray when I don’t even believe in the concept of a Christian God? It is like trying to tell a crippled person to walk.

EB4304 I have the opposite opinion on Buddhism. It does indeed stress doing good deeds and the concept of metta (Loving-kindness) which I don’t see as something cold and distant. For Buddhists love is the desire to want to see others happy. Of course an extreme attachment when it comes to love is looked down upon in Buddhism. I think the Buddha’s middle way when it comes to feelings is admirable.

I think the problem is that you are trying to find an answer as to the source of powerful love and in Buddhism you will not find its source since it is a feeling and anything in excess that brings an unhealthy attachment goes against the Middle Way Buddha taught. So my question to you is “why would you look in Buddhism for proof that a feeling is the only thing worth living for?”

**
timotheos** I stand by my words in using “concept” since in the dictionary a concept is “an idean or notion”. So The Christian idea or concept of who God is what I am having a problem with.

And I have seen plenty of people kill themselves over the ideas/concepts they have concerning God as well as for ideas regarding non-religious matter.
 
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