What more can be done?

[Aleii]

I’ve seen it said a lot in these forums and other places that people who are atheist
-deliberately turn away from God to be ‘free’ because they don’t want to be accountable for their actions/don’t want the guilt of doing immoral actions
-have chosen to close the door on God even though God stands right there hoping to be let back in and waiting for the opportunity.
-don’t want to have a relationship with God/do not trust God
-are self centered/put themselves or their needs ahead of God
-have let themselves be influenced by the Devil
-don’t care
-they were never a true believer or real Christian and failed a test of their belief
Etc

But have seen intimate details of cases where people really struggle with the faith trying to find ways to get closer to God; those above points don’t apply to every atheist.

In my early life I had no doubts about God and lived out my Catholic life as best I could. However for the past 12 years, my faith has been an issue. I recently was discussing religion with a friend. He said “everything that I have faithfully asked of God in prayer, I have gotten”. He asked me if I have ever spoke to God, with true love and faith and humility in my heart, and had my prayer unresponded to. I said yes, during a terrible period of my life I gave myself wholly in prayer to God, asking for help, and was not answered or helped or comforted by Him. In fact, my life got significantly worse for several years after that point even though I continued to pray and ask God for help.

I have come across the life story of a woman who seems to do everything possible to enhance her relationship with God, only to lose her faith even more. (Note: this is a link to a locked 4 page thread which contains only the posts about a woman’s faith journey in and out of Christianity. It will most likely be considered controversial to some, at some points, but I asked the CA staff and it doesn’t seem like this is against the rules to post this link) (Yes, I know she’s not Catholic, but is considered a Christian, and the basic underlying points would seem to still apply)

iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=72552&

My question is, what more could/should this woman have done? She read books, prayed, visited the Holy Land, spoke with religious leaders, got counseling, really put her faith in God, and none of it turned things around for her. It seems to me like she reached out to God over and over, went to every avenue, put forth a more-than-reasonable effort, struggled to keep and strengthen her faith, but with no resolution even though she went to great lengths to try to keep God in her life.

I feel as helpless as she was in the middle of her story. I want to find God but everywhere I have turned for the last 12 years has only lead my faith to continually weaken, even though it was strong before(simply put I had no doubts in my early life, I went to Catholic school, prayed, did private adoration every morning, etc). I have also read books, gone on Catholic retreats, talked with priests, prayed fervently, studied, and it has not helped. I don’t feel as if I have deliberately told God that I don’t want Him in my life, nor hardened my heart, nor shut the door on Him. I don’t feel like I made a choice to deny God. Quite the opposite, in fact. I feel like I have done everything I can to be a good person and have tried over and over to connect myself with God. The more I go on my own personal faith journey, the more it seems to me that the signs point to the Christian God simply not existing. I have to say, I feel like the woman in the linked story really tried, and I don’t see her as a bad or evil person in concluding that the Christian God is not accurate after her years and years of struggle to say otherwise. – The background information about myself is just to show that this is a serious post/serious question, and that it has meaning to me to hear the responses.

**So I ask of you all the 2 encompassing questions of my post:
-What more could this woman in the link have done to save her faith which was so strong in her childhood and early adult life?
-how does it make sense that this woman turned her back on God when for years she did everything she could think of to connect with Him? **

What is considered reasonable effort? If over and over and over in your life the signs point to the opposite side of what you originally believed in, how much is reasonable to persevere before you start to think that the other side might be right?

 

[Della]

I will use myself as an example, so you won’t think I’m talking out of the clear air. Over the last few years things have gotten worse and worse for my dh and I. We’ve had financial setbacks one after another. He can’t find a good permanent job and there have been other difficulties that have strained our marriage to near breaking (no, not infidelity).

All the while I have been praying for all our needs and difficulties and nothing has gone the way we’d like. So, do I blame God for not doing his job and giving us what we want? Is God a mere slot machine into which one puts his prayers and out pops what he asked for? I think we all know the answer to that.

God has never promised we will not have problems nor to give us what we want. He gives us what we need. And our primary need is himself. As the Psalmist wrote: “You are my portion and my cup.” It is God alone whom we are to seek, relying on him to care for us as he sees best, not just for our lives in this world, but much more importantly, for our eternal salvation. For God is our ultimate goal, not the things we ask for in prayer, no matter how good those things might be.

 

[water]

Her story is long and my time is limit, but here are the two things she wrote:
On first page, she writes,

“Paul was merely a product of the times he lived in and more a messenger of the values of those times than a messenger of some inspired Truth”

Go on to the third page, she writes,

“Because of course there’s Paul, the guy that definitely seemed to have a pebble in his sandal about all things relating to sexuality. Paul was really starting to get on my nerves. The more I thought about it, the more nonsensical it seemed - and Stacy pointed out much to my embarrassment that indeed, Jesus himself never addressed the topic of homosexuality. I felt rather stupid for not remembering this, despite having read the Bible and particularly the New Testament more than once in its entirety. So what did that leave us with? Paul again, and some of the other NT writers. In the hours after this lunchtime conversation that I thought about these things, it seemed more and more curious to me that if homosexuality was such a grievous sin, Jesus wouldn’t have thought to mention it. He hadn’t, after all, been a shrinking violet when it came to speaking of vice and virtue, sin and salvation.”

To me, these thoughts were her initial problem - that’s where Satan started to really work hard to mess up her mind and weaken her faith.

Maybe someone can have a comment on this and how this had lead her into disbelieving in God?

Thanks!

 

[Equus_Pallidus]

God must really love you. He wants you for something.

 

[calchiquita]

Well, I don’t think God is finished with her yet. Perhaps she is doing just what needs to be done. Since God wasn’t presented to her in his truest sense (love, not condemnation) maybe she needs to shed that “god” entirely so she can see the Truth.
I believe just by telling her story she is sending up a prayer, and I’m sure that those of us who read it are sending up prayers on her behalf also.
God Bless Her.
Yes, I know this sounds simplistic. But God has worked his way through so many of my idiocies, whether or not I knew I was wrong, that I know He must be watching over her.

 

[Aleii]

I appreciate all your responses.

God has never promised we will not have problems nor to give us what we want… For God is our ultimate goal, not the things we ask for in prayer, no matter how good those things might be.

I know, and I don’t expect to have every prayer answered in the affirmative. But I would think that after 12 years of dedication and prayer, that I would feel something, anything towards God, just even a sense that God is with me. But as I continue on my journey the uneasiness about Catholicism being false grows as does the sense that God is imaginary, even though I’ve spent most of my time reading Catholic authors or neutral sources about general world information, not atheist authors. I’ve been reading and posting to this site for 8 months(the forum crash summer '06 deleted my first couple posts) and have only read that ‘freethinkers’ site for about 3 weeks, for example.

I don’t see how the devil has been steering the woman in the post wrong or me wrong for the past 12 years when I’ve done what I’m “supposed” to do to reach out to God to keep my faith strong. The woman in the link even considered the possibility of the devil influencing her and seemed to do all she could to prevent that. It seemed like the woman in the link did everything I have done and more (like the visit to the Holy Land), trying for years to get her religion back to its original strength, and they all failed. I feel like I’m going down her same path and I guess I was just looking to see if there was anything she had missed that I hadn’t thought of that would help, because I felt her story was quite poignant.

 

[TOP]

Pertaining to the woman in the link, I only read up to where she started to persue the other woman. Even if it is gradual, it seems that she was still turning away from Gods will, however subtle. The enemy likes to divide and conquer. Tim

 

[Aleii]

Even if it is gradual, it seems that she was still turning away from Gods will, however subtle.

How is she turning away from God’s will? This doesn’t make sense to me because all her actions for years were done with the deepest intent to strengthen her relationship with God. She feels certain at one point that the Devil is manipulating her and does all she can to stop that, yet, nothing changes. She threw herself at God’s mercy and put her trust in God over and over. I think she shows her clear determination and desperate desire to connect with God in how she writes. I don’t see what other actions she could have done, or, what she did wrong in her early life, and that’s what I’m asking for anyone to show me. She seemed to try for years every action, every rationale, every reasoning she could to get closer to God and strengthen her beliefs, and nothing worked for her. (So what is she missing that will work for me?)​

“Despite the questions that had begun percolating in the back of my mind, I was still determined to further my knowledge and felt absolutely certain that in the end, the information I acquired would serve to vindicate my faith and provide me with the “full armor of God” (another Christian school allegory) for rebutting the arguments of those who might seek to disarm me.”

She goes to the Holy Land
“On that day, forty-five minutes seemed to stretch on for an eternity, as I brought myself before God, humble and broken, and asked for guidance and “anointment”. With every minute that passed, my heart grew heavier and more distraught; I had the strangest almost panicked feeling of being on a telephone with silence on the end of the line when you were urgently trying to reach someone. For the life of me, I did not understand why it had, over the past few months, become harder and harder - and now impossible - to feel His presence.”

She decides the Devil is manipulating her and goes to Bible Study and stops seeking outside information, yet:
“I was irrationally angry with myself; I didn’t understand why I was having these thoughts when I was no longer “making myself vulnerable” to doubt by seeking outside knowledge. What was I doing wrong?!? I was obviously doing SOMETHING wrong! What else could explain the infernally unremitting slew of puzzling observations that came to me with almost every new round of study?”

• “Could it be that I had, in my desire to be a faithful servant, become too focused on the teachings of man (through the church) and not focused enough on my personal relationship with Christ? This would certainly explain why, the more I tried to buttress my faith with fellowship and seek understanding through the leadership’s teaching, the less things made sense.

I experienced a burgeoning sense of determination and again, the allure of hope. Perhaps all was not lost! Perhaps I still had that “direct connect”, but had merely been getting static on the line due to relying too heavily on the interpretation of others. Perhaps I was not actually “losing” anything - but gaining a new perspective that would serve to guide me onto a path of deeper understanding.

I didn’t realize how right I was.”*

 

[water]

How is she turning away from God’s will? ”

One will is to listen to God’s disciples, but she failed to do so, she doesn’t believe what St. Paul was saying:

Here is what she says:

“Paul was merely a product of the times he lived in and more a messenger of the values of those times than a messenger of some inspired Truth”

From here, she goes on and denies about homosexual is a sin.

The will of God is also to believe in His teaching with faith.

 

[Valke2]

**So I ask of you all the 2 encompassing questions of my post:
-What more could this woman in the link have done to save her faith which was so strong in her childhood and early adult life?
-how does it make sense that this woman turned her back on God when for years she did everything she could think of to connect with Him? **

What is considered reasonable effort? If over and over and over in your life the signs point to the opposite side of what you originally believed in, how much is reasonable to persevere before you start to think that the other side might be right?

I don’t know what more she could have done. Maybe nothing.
I don’t see how anyone can determine for someone else how they are to pursue or not pursue a relationship with God. You either live in a world with God or you live in a world without God.

 

[Della]

I appreciate all your responses.

I know, and I don’t expect to have every prayer answered in the affirmative. But I would think that after 12 years of dedication and prayer, that I would feel something, anything towards God, just even a sense that God is with me. But as I continue on my journey the uneasiness about Catholicism being false grows as does the sense that God is imaginary, even though I’ve spent most of my time reading Catholic authors or neutral sources about general world information, not atheist authors. I’ve been reading and posting to this site for 8 months(the forum crash summer '06 deleted my first couple posts) and have only read that ‘freethinkers’ site for about 3 weeks, for example.

I don’t see how the devil has been steering the woman in the post wrong or me wrong for the past 12 years when I’ve done what I’m “supposed” to do to reach out to God to keep my faith strong. The woman in the link even considered the possibility of the devil influencing her and seemed to do all she could to prevent that. It seemed like the woman in the link did everything I have done and more (like the visit to the Holy Land), trying for years to get her religion back to its original strength, and they all failed. I feel like I’m going down her same path and I guess I was just looking to see if there was anything she had missed that I hadn’t thought of that would help, because I felt her story was quite poignant.

I read her story up to the point where she talked about reading Bertrand Russell and others such people. The poor girl didn’t know a few elemental things that might have helped her. And apparently the “apologetics” she was reading either wasn’t good enough or of the right type to give her what she needed to know.

First off, her education was extremely one-sided, and to put it plainly, very limited. Her whole faith depended on what she had been taught as the whole truth. Sadly for her, it wasn’t.

Secondly, she was reading works way over her head, and not little bias and, in their own way, limited. If she had read G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, she may been able to deal with some of their objections. And if she had been taught any real biblical scholarship, not simply what her sect believed about the Bible it might have been quite different.

This poor gal was one of the lambs that gets eaten up by the wolves who wait, ready to gobble up those whose faith is based much more on their feelings than on truth. She was right, that her truth was incorrect/incomplete, but in her innocence and ignorance, she could hardly have known that there is an answer to all the objections of the skeptics that does make sense. She simply didn’t know about them nor, in her limited sect, have access to them. It’s such a sad story, mainly because it didn’t have to end with her complete loss of faith, and whatever else she lost along with it.

 

[Nick]

Hi Aleii,

I don’t know if you are familiar with the works of St. John of the Cross, but I would highly reccommend that you read ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’. I think that it really addresses the problems you are having. It is important to remember that it is extremely dangerous to over emphasize our feelings to the neglect of the realities of faith. It is not necessary to ‘feel’ God in order to have faith in Him. Faith is a grace from God that is obtained through humble submission and it cannot always be ‘felt’, but if you make the firm committment to believe whether you feel like it or not you will have faith, and I think that when you have this faith without being dependent on feeling you have come to a much deeper relationship with God. Indeed this could very likely be the reason that you have not ‘felt’ God in your life for so long. He could be calling you to put your trust completely in Him without the aid of sensory feelings. I know it can be tough and the temptations to despair of His love or even existence can be many, but do not give up! You know deep in your soul that He does exist and that He does love you even if you cannot understand what is happening to your life. Don’t give up hope. I will be praying for you.

 

[TOP]

One will is to listen to God’s disciples, but she failed to do so, she doesn’t believe what St. Paul was saying:

Here is what she says:

From here, she goes on and denies about homosexual is a sin.

The will of God is also to believe in His teaching with faith.

Thank you

 

[TOP]

A few years ago I was dieing of cancer/chemo. So close to death they had to stop the treatments a week early. I never felt so alone. I had to come to grips with leaving my family in Gods hands. I was scared to even go to sleep, my body would convulse to stay awake. Nothing could comfort me and God was nowhere to be seen. I thought I would turn into dirt and that would be it. Three years later, I still cry about it. I almost completely lost my faith following that. Then one night, when I needed God the most, He revealed Himself to me in a profound way. All I went through became apparent. What a wonderful gift I was given. Don’t lose hope! No matter how dire it seems. He will be there for you when He see’s that you need Him. Keep the faith! Tim

 

[maryalene]

I appreciate all your responses.

I know, and I don’t expect to have every prayer answered in the affirmative. But I would think that after 12 years of dedication and prayer, that I would feel something, anything towards God, just even a sense that God is with me. But as I continue on my journey the uneasiness about Catholicism being false grows as does the sense that God is imaginary, even though I’ve spent most of my time reading Catholic authors or neutral sources about general world information, not atheist authors. I’ve been reading and posting to this site for 8 months(the forum crash summer '06 deleted my first couple posts) and have only read that ‘freethinkers’ site for about 3 weeks, for example. .

I don’t know that I have anything horribly constructive to add to this thread, but I wanted to respond because this really is quite similar to the reason my DH stopped practicing his faith. After so many years of praying and not feeling anything, he gave up. It’s hard for me to relate because I have had some very incredible experiences with God and felt his presence heavily in my life. On the one hand, I want to say that our emotions and feelings shouldn’t dictate our faith. On the other hand, I can see where not having any type of spiritual “experience” with God after years of prayer would be incredibly discouraging. My other thought is that sometimes I think, at least in my DH’s case, he is closed to seeing God’s work in our lives. We’ll have things happen - like an unexpected check show up right when we need it - and I’ll see it as God providing for us and he sees it as a coincidence. I don’t know what to tell you but I think it is a hard path you are traveling.

 

[Aleii]

One will is to listen to God’s disciples, but she failed to do so, she doesn’t believe what St. Paul was saying:

Here is what she says:

From here, she goes on and denies about homosexual is a sin.

The will of God is also to believe in His teaching with faith.

actually you only quoted a portion of a sentence. She isn’t stating that as fact at that point, she’s stating it as a question/concern “…wondered aloud if, in fact, Paul was merely a product of the times he lived in and more a messenger of the values of those times than a messenger of some inspired Truth…”

and the next paragraph she states she still believes and has faith even though she has questions, and figures the answers would probably be forthcoming.

“Despite the fact that I still believed, still prayed with a faithful heart and felt certain that the answers to my questions would be forthcoming, I could not help but feel that I lost something I had until then taken for granted as a given “fact””

She didn’t start thinking homosexuality wasn’t a sin until many months (years?) later, after she had serious questions about the validity of the Bible itself.

Maybe you disagree but it seems to me that she followed God and had an enormous amount of faith in Him for a very long period of time, despite many troubling thoughts, and did all the right “actions” she could to get closer to God in spite of these concerns/questions until her. I don’t see it as unreasonable to have questions or troubling thoughts and try to seek answers to them, even if your faith is strong or shaky. I see how you can force yourself to follow certain traditions/writings/teachings, but I don’t see how you can force yourself to agree that they are truth when they make no sense to you. Many Catholics don’t agree with all the teachings of the church but still follow it anyways because that’s what the Church says to do.​

Valke2, I know we can’t really determine for her, It just seems like I’m on such a similar path, and I’m at a loss as to what more she could have done to save her faith, which is why I posted her story.​

Della:

I read her story up to the point where she talked about reading Bertrand Russell and others such people.

So you read 5 posts out of 89? You missed the majority of her journey then; she only read Bertrand Russell for the purpose of being better able to better debunk the non-Christians out there and strengthen her faith (stated in the same paragraph). Her story spans many years. She read a lot of Christian authors such as C.S. Lewis and McDowell, apologetics, did Bible study and other research in the following posts. I don’t see this woman at all as not well-read or unintelligent whatsoever.​

Nick, thanks for the book suggestion and the prayers. It isn’t just that I haven’t felt anything, its that I’ve got increasing uneasiness/problems with Christianity in general, and found that the arguments by agnostics and atheists encompass a lot of the same problems I’ve had with the religion, and make a lot more sense to me than the counterpoints made by Catholics. I don’t see how its possible to force myself to believe whether I like it or not. I feel its like someone’s telling me a piece of blue paper is yellow. I don’t see how its possible to force myself to agree with that; I’d just be lying if I said I did.​

Thanks Top and Maryalene; I appreciate the compassion and support you both show. I feel like I’ve needed God so desperately, and prayed with complete faith already and nothing happened. This coupled with increasingly troubling thoughts about the Bible, and I don’t really know what else to make of it besides the idea that religions’ version of God isn’t real. Yes, it is quite frustrating.

Thanks again to all the responders, I’ll look into the book suggestion and continue to research both sides now instead of just Christianity, and live my life being the best person I can be, whatever happens in the end. Have a good weekend.

 

[calchiquita]

Aleii -

Not that it might be any comfort, but you might be being called to be a great saint. Those of us who are blessed with being able to see all that God is doing in our lives each day don’t need a lot of faith, whereas in your perseverance thus far you have shown great faith. Mother Theresa and St. Theresa both did not feel God’s presence very often.
You know we are praying for you, that goes almost without saying.

 

[TOP]

Aleii,
Please consider the time that you have been faithful and havn’t seen the results, as you storing treasure in heaven. Even though I have been giving a gift, I feel like I have “cashed in” on alot. After this had happened to me , I felt as though this happened without the help of the Church , for I wasn’t practicing. I tried to do it alone for a while. I was torn to shreds by the enemy and had some great setbacks. It wasn’t until I humbled myself and accepted the help that the body of Christ provides, that I finally found some peace. Though now that I’m not seeing the divine intercessions that helped me turn around, I feel the protection of the Church and “no news is good news” best describes how I feel now. Now I can rebuild what was spent. Don’t spend your treasures like the prodical son did. Remember the gates of hell will not prevail against Christ’s Church and His body is your refuge. Tim