Needing help to restore faith

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Needs_Guidance_1

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I am currently a student in a Catholic high school and recently I Have begun to doubt my faith. I have been raised in a Catholic family and attended catholic elementary and middle school. Recently however i have begun to have trouble with my faith. I’m not turning atheist or agnostic, as in my eyes history and creation point to a God, but have begun to see doubts in my faith from a scientific standpoint. The concept of the soul confuses my and it seems like there is no reason to believe it outside of the bible. I have had trouble with belief in the Gospels and the Catholic faith as a whole. At the same time i want to believe and feel empty without my faith. What I’m looking for isn’t proof that God exists, but rather reasons to have faith. I used to look to the miracles of the saints for strength but this hasn’t been enough for me. Answers from former atheists or people who have undergone similar struggles of faith would be appreciated.
 
Been there done that, at about the same point in my life too… Junior year of High school for me…

It’s a perfectly normal part of growing in the faith. I turned Atheist for a few years, then after being convinced of the existence of God (while trying to prove scientifically that He didn’t exist) I started wandering through every religion I could find. That led me inexorably back to Christ. So I was a Protestant for a few years, studying Scripture, which led me to (surprise) the Catholic Church. I learned much in those 12 or 13 years and I thank God now for His patience and guidance, getting me through it.

I believe that God wants us to question our faith, knowing that an intellectual exploration will always lead us back Home to Him and His Church.

God bless and enjoy the journey. I’ll keep you in my prayers.
 
Thanks forbthe support and prayers, if you have the time it would be great if you could post some of the things that brought you back to the church it would be great.
 
Needs_Guidance said:
I am currently a student in a Catholic high school and recently I Have begun to doubt my faith. I have been raised in a Catholic family and attended catholic elementary and middle school. Recently however i have begun to have trouble with my faith. I’m not turning atheist or agnostic, as in my eyes history and creation point to a God, but have begun to see doubts in my faith from a scientific standpoint. The concept of the soul confuses my and it seems like there is no reason to believe it outside of the bible. I have had trouble with belief in the Gospels and the Catholic faith as a whole. At the same time i want to believe and feel empty without my faith. What I’m looking for isn’t proof that God exists, but rather reasons to have faith. I used to look to the miracles of the saints for strength but this hasn’t been enough for me. Answers from former atheists or people who have undergone similar struggles of faith would be appreciated.
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I know exactly where you are at, or at least I can identify with what you are describing.

My advice, be honest w/God about your doubts, your concerns, your cynicism, skepticism, whatever it is you are experiencing.

No use in trying to fool Him. He knows what your struggles are.

Tell Him, “Lord, in one hand I have all these doubts, etc etc. …But in the other hand, please bless me with an open mind”

For me, that was the key. Trying to keep an open mind amid the doubts and skepticism.

He can handle both. It’s just really important that you keep an open mind, and continue to pray

God Bless.
 
Needs_Guidance said:
Thanks forbthe support and prayers, if you have the time it would be great if you could post some of the things that brought you back to the church it would be great.
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Sure, thanks for asking!

When I was a teenager, I was so mad at God that I decided He didn’t exist. One day in college a group of like minded folks that were also mad at the non-existent God decided to prove Mathematically that He didn’t exist. We began to compute the probability that the universe as we know it was the result of random chance. After trying to fudge the numbers to match our non-beliefs, we were stuck with the simple fact that the probability that God did NOT exist was so small that it was virtually impossible.

Then I began looking at the “Nature” of God. I started in the Eastern Religions and found them all lacking in one way or another. Eventually I read the Holy Quran and began to look more and more at Islam, which naturally led me to the Old Testament and Judaism, and through the prophets to the New Testament and Jesus.

That journey took about 5 years and I found myself very nearly back at where I started… I was a Christian again. But I was certainly not a Catholic. It was the heresy and apostrophes of THAT Church that led me astray in the first place. And as a non-Catholic I could now have Christ on MY terms! So I started to compile a list of reasons that Catholics were all wrong… Here’s a condensed version of that list and where those reasons led me…

1 ~ Call no man Father! Clear as day. Catholics have to be wrong about everything because they call the priest Father and Jesus said not to! — That kept me going until I noticed that Paul refereed to himself often as the spiritual father of those he wrote to… and how Jesus used the term Father in describing Abraham in a parable… and how Steven, while “filled with the Holy Spirit” and speaking before the Jewish elders began his talk by saying, “Brothers and Fathers”…

2 ~ OK, so that one didn’t hold up too well, but what about Mary?!? Those Catholics say she never sinned and was born without original sin! Now THAT’s unbiblical… Until you read of the people that Paul said never sinned… Well OK, but that doesn’t explain the whole “born without sin” thing… Then I learned the Bible was written in Greek. And I began looking up the definition of Greek words. It seems that the angel that came to Mary said something pretty interesting when he came to her. He called her by the name “Having Been Filled with Grace”… Filled with Grace, not having a lot of Grace or even a whole bunch of Grace… Filled… But the most striking part for me was the “Having Been”… This was before She had conceived our Lord. Before the angel had even asked Her about it. And she had already been FILLED with GRACE?!? When did that happen? OK… Shaky ground again. Clearly the Bible never mentions a sin of Mary’s and seems to state pretty clearly that she received some special preparation for the unique task She was to fill… But what about :

3 ~ Purgatory! They wouldn’t weasel out of THAT one! No where in the Bible was the word Purgatory even mentioned! That’s when I discovered, while studying the history of the Bible, that I wasn’t reading the whole thing… In 1825 several books were removed from the Bible. My reaction was immediate and predictable (considering where I was at the time)… Those Catholics HID stuff!!! So I went looking for the HIDDEN books, and was rather surprised to find them, in the Catholic Bible… And when I read Maccabees 2, there was Purgatory… At this point I was somewhat confused about who was hiding what from whom… So I talked to a non-Catholic preacher I knew for guidance. And he explained :

4 ~ The Eucharist! Those Catholics believe they are eating Jesus every Sunday! And drinking His Blood!!! Talk about gross… Jesus just wanted us to symbolically share bread with each other. That whole Eucharist thing is a horrible distortion…Then I read John 6… Then I scratched my head and read John 6 again… Then I prayed about John 6, and read it a third, forth and fifth time… Then I read John 6 some more… Then I read the accounts of the Last Supper, looking for our Lord’s call for us to symbolically share bread… “This is My Body”… “Eat This in remembrance of Me”… Not eat bread, but eat THIS. What’s THIS? “This is My Body”…

Only one place left to go… Confession

That’s 12 years of my journey in a nutshell… There were many other little battles along the way, but this is already longer than I meant to drone on for…

I’ll be praying for you… Let us know how you’re doing on your journey…

God bless
 
Myqyl said:
Sure, thanks for asking!

When I was a teenager, I was so mad at God that I decided He didn’t exist. One day in college a group of like minded folks that were also mad at the non-existent God decided to prove Mathematically that He didn’t exist. We began to compute the probability that the universe as we know it was the result of random chance. After trying to fudge the numbers to match our non-beliefs, we were stuck with the simple fact that the probability that God did NOT exist was so small that it was virtually impossible.

Then I began looking at the “Nature” of God. I started in the Eastern Religions and found them all lacking in one way or another. Eventually I read the Holy Quran and began to look more and more at Islam, which naturally led me to the Old Testament and Judaism, and through the prophets to the New Testament and Jesus.

That journey took about 5 years and I found myself very nearly back at where I started… I was a Christian again. But I was certainly not a Catholic. It was the heresy and apostrophes of THAT Church that led me astray in the first place. And as a non-Catholic I could now have Christ on MY terms! So I started to compile a list of reasons that Catholics were all wrong… Here’s a condensed version of that list and where those reasons led me…

God bless
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Thanks again for the support and prayers. I found myself going through a similar cycle regarding looking at other religions and came the same conclusion as you. I’ve startd to look at the Bible and how it relates both to history and the modern world. Although I still have my doubts i feel strengthened in going back to my faith.

God Bless
 
“Life is not a simple product of laws and the randomness of matter, but within everything and at the same time above everything, there is a personal will, there is a Spirit who in Jesus has revealed himself as Love.”

–Pope Benedict XVI (Encyclical on Hope)

“We believe in God. This is a fundamental decision on our part. But again the question has to be asked: is this still possible today? Is it reasonable? From the Enlightenment on, science, at least in part, has applied itself to seeking an explanation of the world in which God would be unnecessary. And if this were so, he would also become unnecessary in our lives. But whenever the attempt seemed to be nearing success - inevitably it would become clear: something is missing from the equation! When God is subtracted, something doesn’t add up for man, the world, the whole universe. So we end up with two alternatives. What came first? Creative Reason, the Creator Spirit who makes all things and gives them growth, or Unreason, which, lacking any meaning, yet somehow brings forth a mathematically ordered cosmos, as well as man and his reason. The latter, however, would then be nothing more than a chance result of evolution and thus, in the end, equally meaningless. As Christians, we say: “I believe in God the Father, the Creator of heaven and earth” -I believe in the Creator Spirit. We believe that at the beginning of everything is the eternal Word, with Reason and not Unreason.”

– Pope Benedict XVI (12 Sept 2006 Homily in Regensburg)
 
"The resurrection, then, is not a theory, but a historical reality revealed by the man Jesus Christ by means of his “Passover”, his “passage”, that has opened a “new way” between heaven and earth (cf. Heb 10:20). It is neither a myth nor a dream, it is not a vision or a utopia, it is not a fairy tale, but it is a singular and unrepeatable event: Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary, who at dusk on Friday was taken down from the Cross and buried, has victoriously left the tomb. In fact, at dawn on the first day after the Sabbath, Peter and John found the tomb empty. Mary Magdalene and the other women encountered the risen Jesus. On the way to Emmaus the two disciples recognized him at the breaking of the bread. The Risen One appeared to the Apostles that evening in the Upper Room and then to many other disciples in Galilee. "

-Pope Benedict XVI Urbi et Orbi message 2009
 
 
I actually appreciate doubts. I was raised an atheist and as a teenager had my first doubts about the atheistic dogma. So, doubts brought to me to faith.
 
Needs_Guidance said:
I am currently a student in a Catholic high school and

I am a former atheist who has investigated the claims of Christianity and Catholicism tand found them to be sound and absolutely reasonable.

It is true, we are constantly led to believe that science and Christianity are opposed to each other. Honestly, this misconception has been made worse by the position of fundamentalist Christianity which holds, in the face of a mountain of evidence, that the earth is really only several thousand years old. But the Catholic position is based upon evidence and reason and constantly incorporating human knowledge into its worldview.
The Catholic Church doens’t hide from the world.

So let’s start with the reasonableness of having faith in God in an age of science.

First we have the big bang theory, (first proposed by a Catholic priest, Fr. Georges LeMaire, by the way) which says that something the size of a speck exploded and expanded into our universe. Right off the bat, while not proving the Bible right, this has amazing parallels with what we find in Genesis. (Even though Genesis is not teaching science) That’s why the scientist who discovered the background radiation that proved the big bang, Arno Penzias said, “*The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole” *Before this theory was set forth, scientists always assumed that the universe was eternal. The idea of a “beginning” was seen as scientific heresy.

Many people cannot accept that this is good evidence for God. They say–science may yet be able to prove that there are other universes or what was going on before the universe. But this is a false position. Science deals with what can be observed and analyzed. There is nothing to observe or analyze with what was before the big bang. This is a metaphysical question, not a scientific one.

A common argument from atheists is that the universe is so big, what kind of arrogance is it to think that it’s all for us? Well, according to the Big Bang, there was a time when it was not big at all, In fact there was a time when it was very small. Even some scientists have called it miraculous. Isn’t it ironic that it was a Catholic priest who set the stage for 20th century astrophsyics?

There are many things that atheist scientists for example believe in without any proof. Pick up a popular science magazine like Discover and just read through some of the articles about the universe. It’s amazing to see how many of these scientists who don’t believe in God because “there’s no proof” gleefully proclaim their belief in parallel universes—even though there is no proof for them. (And even if there was it wouldn’t disprove God) They believe that there are **multiple versions of each of us **in various universes, all doing slightly different things.!

Same thing with aliens. Atheists are usually obsessed with alien life, even though there is no proof for them either. (And even if there were that wouldn’t disprove God either) (And why do they always assume that these creatures would be friendly??? )

Another area is the increasing belief among many skeptical scientists like Michio Kaku who wrote a book called Hyperspace, about higher dimensions. In it he says this:

*Imagine being able to walk through walls. You wouldn’t have to bother with opening doors; you could pass right through them….Imagine being able to disappear and reappear at will….You wouldn’t need an airplane to visit far-away places, you could just vanish and rematerialize where you wanted….We would truly be miracle workers, performing feats beyond comprehension of mortals….What being could possess such God-like power? The answer: a being from a higher dimensional world.” P 45-46 *

Interesting that science is now imagining exactly what has been claimed by Christians regarding Jesus for 2,000 years. Might Jesus have been telling the truth about who he was?

String theory is another area of interest to us as defenders of the faith. String theory is a theory which would hopefully unite the two great physical laws of the world----the larger world of gravity and the smaller world of quantum physics ( the atoms) Many people are not aware of this area of seeming contradiction. For a 100 years or so since Einstein and others in the early part of the 20th century discovered it, this has puzzled scientists. The basics are like this:
*Gravity is predictable. It holds to certain laws that apply everywhere. The quantum world however, is not predictable. Things are kind of crazy in that world. *

They seem to contradict each other and yet they are both true. This fact has troubled many scientists who were used to seeing the world in a predictable way. Many of the atheists who wrote in previous centuries were only familiar with this world. They knew nothing of this other seemingly strange, even “super natural” world, as some have called it. The irony is that, even as so many atheists believe that it’s stupid to believe in God, there may be no better time in the last several hundred years to believe. That’s why there are so many scientists who have come to believe.

So anyway, string theory proposes to embrace this paradox. But the interesting thing is that for it to work, it has to allow for 10 dimensions! They believe that there are several other dimensions surrounding us in addition to the four that we know of. So, one might ask–if so, why not another dimension where God exists? Physicist and Anglican minister John Polkinghorne has written about this, as have Fr. Spitzer and Stephen Barr, who has an interesting book out about the new science.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I’ll try to write more soon.
Know that there are good reasons for faith in Christ.
God Bless
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I gather you want your live faith again. How badly do you want it? It is very easy, if you
follow this message from your mother from heaven to you.

Here is some important info about the Miraculous Medal, one of Mother Theresa’s
favorite gifts she herself used.

“Have a medal struck… All who wear it will receive GREAT graces; they should wear it
around the neck. GRACES will ABOUND for persons who wear it with CONFIDENCE.”
From the mother of Jesus spoken to sister Catherine Laboure 1830.

“Great graces are often attached to what seems trifling.” St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

“The devotions we practice in honor of the glorious Virgin Mary, however trifling they be,
are very pleasing to her divine Son, …” St. Teresa of Jesus

During this apparition, Mary’s hands had 3 rings on each finger. Each ring gave off
rays of colored light. A few rings did not. Mary said that the lights radiating from
the rings are graces that people ASK for. The rings that didn’t radiate she said
were graces not given because they were NOT asked for.

Have it blessed. The devil hates blessed objects. Keep it on all all times.
Wear her medal in her honor because the devil can’t stand her either.

Then say, “Mary I am asking now for great graces, especially faith, which
you promised to those who ask and believe in what you said.”
Trust her, it works. She is the mother of God. Would she lie?
Your mother wants to help you. It is her gift to you. She promised and she will diliver.
“Great graces are often attached to what seems trifling.” St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
Code: 
 legionofmary.org/miracmedal.html
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“Yes, blessed is she who BELIEVED that the PROMISE made her by the Lord would be FULFILLED.”
(Lk. 1;45) St. Elizabeth
 
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