Association, Disassociation

[Deva]

AM,

Yes, thank-you! I don't know how to catagorize myself as I don't know all the philosophies out there. Going to spit out a few "real basic" concepts of my belief.

 

1) I believe there is grace to be given to everyone

2) I think an afterlife is real

3) I can rationalize most stuff in the Bible, but don't have complete understanding.

4) Nature, infinity, agreement of many "types" makes me believe in God.

5) Associations in theory are good, but fall short of providing an inner peace that they are designed to fix.

6) I don't like to see people hurt.

7) I think truth is found in steak and cheezy potatoes

 

End I think its great that you are thinking things out and being honest with setting out what you believe.

I do admire that you have stuck with it and stayed around here. My little opinion on your points, for what its worth:

1. I am not exactly sure what "grace" means, but that sounds good to me.

2. I agree.

3. Here we must part ways, since I am through with the Bible. I say there are some things of value in it, but few and far in between and mostly said better elsewhere. It's world view (or several different world views) is ultimately something I rejected. This did not happen overnight. But, hey, that's why I'm here at ex-christian.

4. I can probably agree with that, but you have to define what you mean by God.

5. I don't understand what this means.

6. I agree.

7. Yes, that's true.

[Guest end3]

I would like to attempt to better word a few of the seven, as I can see there can be different meanings with just the change of a few words. (And by the way, thank-ya'll for the posts). My meaning of "associations" would be similar to the meaning it has out here in west Texas..."I am a member of the rodeo association". In my mind, I would call the church or ex-C associations....I think most of these would fit my use of the word.

 

1. an organization of people with a common purpose and having a formal structure.

2. the act of associating or state of being associated.

3. friendship; companionship: Their close association did not last long.

4. connection or combination.

5. the connection or relation of ideas, feelings, sensations, etc.; correlation of elements of perception, reasoning, or the like.

 

I think you bring up an excellent point AM about an organization/association intended as a tool. I think that for a time I was using it for more than that. Bad choice on my part. And, I think the organization evolve into more than just a tool sometimes...

 

Grace- being able treat others with kindness and respect with regard to their lives, knowing full well I have needed help in my life. Understanding, empathy. The "pull the plank out of my own eye" thing....

 

Afterlife- Heaven, after physical death, a continued existence.

Heaven also for me can be glimpses of this existence while we are here on earth....those special brief times in life that stick and won't let you go.

 

Life, God- still working on those multilevel concepts.

 

Thanks again all, I am grateful for the conversation.

 

AM, just going to start sending my brain dredgings over for you to edit before they go into publication....I am willing to pay a nominal fee.

Let's be sure and be clear on the def. of nominal beforehand....

[Antlerman]

AM, just going to start sending my brain dredgings over for you to edit before they go into publication....I am willing to pay a nominal fee.

Let's be sure and be clear on the def. of nominal beforehand....

Hey... I charge a premium price for that... that was a freebee

[Legion]

I think if you keep hanging out with heathens End then you may find yourself throwing some stuff at your church buddies that they can't handle.

[Antlerman]

I think if you keep hanging out with heathens End then you may find yourself throwing some stuff at your church buddies that they can't handle.

[Alice]

Grace- being able treat others with kindness and respect with regard to their lives, knowing full well I have needed help in my life. Understanding, empathy.

 

wow - I take back what I said about maybe having a different understanding of grace. I love this definition.

 

Let's be sure and be clear on the def. of nominal beforehand....

 

 

hey Antlerman!

[R. S. Martin]

End, just so you know, I caught up on reading this thread now. I'm still a fairly new deconvert myself and don't know much about helping others. I think I'll just watch from the sidelines.

 

In case you didn't notice, I'm Ruby. Just changed my display name; sig is the same.

[Astreja]

End, I like that definition of 'grace' too.

[R. S. Martin]

End3, I am really seriously confused about your position. I thought you were giving up on Christianity. Yet on this thread you are defending god.

 

Maybe AM or Alice or someone who has seen more deconversions than I have can explain what is going on. I like to understand but I really am thoroughly confused. How can a person say one week he is deconverting, then a week later defend God? This is so opposite of anything I have ever seen or what my own experience was that I need help understanding, if anyone care to explain or lend insight.

[Alice]

End3, I am really seriously confused about your position. I thought you were giving up on Christianity. Yet on this thread you are defending god.

 

Maybe AM or Alice or someone who has seen more deconversions than I have can explain what is going on. I like to understand but I really am thoroughly confused. How can a person say one week he is deconverting, then a week later defend God? This is so opposite of anything I have ever seen or what my own experience was that I need help understanding, if anyone care to explain or lend insight.

 

Hi Ruby,

 

maybe this will help ...

 

In my own experience I first left literalism ... then Church ... and then wavered between belief in some sort of god or not, back and forth for sometime. I had so many separate questions - the answer for which had previously been 'that would be God' ... that I had to find 'new' explanations for. Some people can remove 'God' from their picture and move forward knowing that they are without 'explanations' for a lot of their life experiences but feeling OK that they will find new explanations & understandings as they go, others need to work through these as they arise, and in the absence of a workable alternative explanation - they continue to 'see' God in some areas of their lives.

 

Like you, I'd also noticed apparent forays back and forth between belief and non belief in End's posts. I picked up on one in the thread about emotional education, where I felt End was searching for a 'new explanation' for experiences he has to date attributed to the Holy Spirit.

 

(End, I hope you don't mind us talking about you in this way - please join in, I'd be interested to know how much of this resonates with you )

 

For me - one of the hardest parts of my faith to find an 'alternative explanation' for was my 'relationship' with God as Father as this had seemed so very very real and was intensely precious to me - and this 'relationship' continued for quite a while after the framework and other trappings of christianity was lost to me.

 

I continued to pray throughout this period and 'discuss' my deconversion with 'god'. I know this sounds bizarre, but one of the most powerful experiences of my life was my last real prayertime with God. I have shared this story before so forgive me if I am repeating myself - I find it best to describe it as 'being at the deathbed of a great and gracious and loving friend', if I think about it for too long - even now the tears still come. This aspect of my christianity had some real positives for me. The love I felt was pretty intense and in this imaginary (but felt real) relationship - was one of the few places I'd felt really free of condemnation and insecurity in my life to date - so it was hard to give it up. During this 'goodbye' I sobbed buckets and 'god' continued to be loving and gracious and encouraged me to 'let him go' and told me I would be OK, gave me his blessing to leave, told me he was proud of the journey I had started and so forth but I really couldn't leave that room until he had breathed his last. The shock of discovering I was really alone in the universe was immense.

 

My grief was very real. I did all the stages of denial and guilt and anger ... wow, the anger I felt towards him the first time I couldn't 'conjure' up that relationship again!

 

Anyway this is a long way round of saying that when I was in my 'post christian but still deconverting' phase I did a lot of back and forth, going to and fro, revisiting aspects of my belief structure and often coming across something where 'well that must be God' was still my 'explanation'. It was the most 'contradictory' phase of my life to date

[R. S. Martin]

Alice thank you for sharing. After posting that I found something by Darkside in the Testimonies section that proved to me that people really do go back and forth between belief and unbelief during their deconversion. In Aug. 2006 Darkside posted a testimony about deconverting. Then the other day he dug up that old thread and said he had returned to Christianity twice in the past two years and has deconverted again. It seems like a very different kind of Christianity than I was ever exposed to--much more dependant on the emotions or feelings. The only kind of Christianity I was ever exposed to a lot was more intellectual--there was much emphasis on saying/believing and doing the right things--rules. New birth was de-emphasized and even denigrated. Maybe that accounts for the very different deconversion experiences.

[insanezenmistress]

ALice,

 

Your post deeply resonates with me. I am armpit deep wadeing thru it. I prayed and discussed my questions and precieved answered during such prayers concerning my deconversion from " god's" religion. I even imagined that IF god was a holy and just god, who judges according to a person doings then maybe i can make my case to him. IN my delusions i felt that god was on my reasonable side.

 

I have run so many gambits with myself over is this voice of reason the DEVIL? and Is the god i am praying to really a decietfull being? And how i would wish that i would jsut shut up about these compicated questions and jsut accept the simplisity most chrisitans actaully live by.

 

Such as picking their patron verses and spiritaul metaphors........i mean what is really so bad if one identifies with the delusion and tear jerkyness of god comming to humanity to take away our sins by experienceing the ramifications of our ignorance and violence?

 

It makes one wish to strive for closness. But still that line of spiritaul thought has no company with in chrisitan circels.

 

To out grow the christian faith is an exact representation of whats going on. But i can no longer even re translate my insights about the bibe or mystisism in biblical terms and defanatly not within any frame work of bible-faith related theology.

 

On one hand i can see the beauty of the person of faith in their simpliity, who does not test ad nasium, particuarly when in many ways they and myself are argueing to keep our notions of that simplisity is correct dispite my belife and interpretation of the bible, the gita, the sutra, the cosmological journeal or anyhtign else you could try and set up as a guidepost to non-delusionment.

 

I clearly see that humans will not see eye to eye but we do seem to experience the same humanity. And thinking too much and seeing the complications cannot be simply Devils work.

 

((mentioning devils work becasue i am dealing with a chrisitan R/L who thinks i am jsut prideful and devil attacked. and this conversation got me jumping at the bit))

 

There comes a point where one has to accept they are not even in the same ball park as their commradary. Like the other poster here said" becareful hanging out with the heathens, you might end up throwing something at the churcheys that they wont be able to catch. SO even if you are arguing for yourself how to reconcile your understanding with the words and framework of the bible, you are still putting your mind at a loss to explain yourself to them. I am having to face this within myself.

 

And when i try i have to ask myself if i am jsut being difficult. Going thru it so many ways to sunday , in my thiking i ought to be able to simply understand differently and sit in the church anyway. But thats seems like an affawl lot of bullshit to go thru when i can just believe on my own better.

 

well ill stop now i think i drowned my points.

 

Justine.

[insanezenmistress]

ps. ya know what really hurts about all this personal struggle with deconverting and re-un-deconverting is that if you tried to get help from a christian they seem to tend to over simplify your pains as rebellion. And make impossible as well as tempting lovely appeals to surrender the thoughts. If you manage to they will only resurface. Even if you convince yourself, it wares off and you start seeing clearly again and the whole thing happens over again untill you , like Alice said, untill you can no longer conger up the relationship. and i am left wondering.maybe they where right my mind is not given over to being reprobate to all things truthfull. It infureates me that they could belive a thing liek that and not even have to WORK FOR THAT blanket statement. I am both angered and threted by their flipidness to my personal HELL>

[Antlerman]

There comes a point where one has to accept they are not even in the same ball park as their commradary. Like the other poster here said" becareful hanging out with the heathens, you might end up throwing something at the churcheys that they wont be able to catch. SO even if you are arguing for yourself how to reconcile your understanding with the words and framework of the bible, you are still putting your mind at a loss to explain yourself to them. I am having to face this within myself.

 

And when i try i have to ask myself if i am jsut being difficult. Going thru it so many ways to sunday , in my thiking i ought to be able to simply understand differently and sit in the church anyway. But thats seems like an affawl lot of bullshit to go thru when i can just believe on my own better.

I know you addressed this to Alice, but I'm sure she doesn't object to me injecting my thoughts on this. I've said this elsewhere but will restate here, that I don't care what system a person chooses that works for them, so long as the end result is it brings them a greater realization of themselves in this life, and consequently that fulfillment moves beyond them to others. It's not the system, but our realization of our humanity and the resulting expression of love of life that matters.

 

That said what it sounds like maybe your struggle is the baby and the bathwater issue. There are things you may see of value in the system or that system, but somehow feel that you have either accept the whole or reject the whole as sold by the institution, or it may be a matter of being able to use those symbols yourself without the negative association of past connotations. If you are able to find a working system in yourself, whether in incorporates religious, secular, or even scientific symbols, the real test for yourself is that you are able to appreciate other's perspectives while finding peace with your own, even if dealing with people who are approaching their system as complacent followers (sheep) without any real sort of personal introspection as to the meaning beyond the symbols.

 

To me being fulfilled through them means that even though you may not be able to relate to the other systems, you've moved beyond feeling threatened of judgment or rejection by them, or the need to justify yourself in their eyes, and ultimately your own eyes. Why anyone abandons one system in favor of another is really because something wasn't working. It's has vastly far less to do with the accuracy of it as it is to do with what it offers.

 

It's all a process to finding what speaks truth to what's important to us, and the right and wrong of those choices is borne out in the fruit, not being able to argue the "accuracy" of it. To argue for its 'accuracy' places the focus on justification, not the meaning to us. Accuracy is important building airplanes, but is living life a scientific enterprise? The error is the practice of seeing myth as fact, not the myth itself.

[insanezenmistress]

I think it is a matter of bath and baby water. I have difficulty sitting in church knowing that i can personally enjoy some thigns of Jesus but hate to listen to them non-introspectivly hero worshipping him. I can agree with their avaowls of glory and praise when it comes from experince and from insight but it makes my skin crawl to hear blind blanket praise of the never never prromise. To me, to praise the God thing, is to express a personal moment, as i would praise my son for his insight ect.

 

In your vein AM, i think my discomfort out weighs my need/ desire to take a bath with THAT baby. If i chose a holy book i would choose to sponge bath with the Bhagavad Gita. Although it occurs to me that i only like that book becasue i am very unfamilliar with the babies that bath in the ganges. I have no preformed theology to fight or reinterpret when i read thier holy book. And in it i can praise the It-god for Being the object of all faith, and the author of all scripture. (((do not read that literalistly)))

 

But when i try to get into the bath with the chritians, it is like, even for casaul meetings, like having to put a cap on everything i leanrd extrabiblically, or to have to hush becasue something they are boo hooing about i already resolved thru taking a bath in another place. Just knowing that how i handle the bible and use its veres is smattered with what they would call false teaching. (oh sorry i guess i need to go to lakwwood florida for the truff huh)

 

And i feel hypocritiacal worshiping even my understanding of the It-god-thing ((whom i am not naming as to not draw that it-ness into question in this topic)) because i know that they would find the object of my praise to be the devil.

 

It is like being a Jew in the Hitler youth. Great friendships, training, adventure, good food, and room for advancment..... you just have to get past that pesky "we hate jews" dogma.

 

Yet i still try but i belive i am at the end of trying i am on the verge of finding metnal peace thru confesion to a christian the things i DONT belive the bible is.

 

Tugs at the drain plug.

 

Justine.

[Antlerman]

Yet i still try but i belive i am at the end of trying i am on the verge of finding metnal peace thru confesion to a christian the things i DONT belive the bible is.

 

Tugs at the drain plug.

 

Justine.

Trust me when I say I understand everything you said. There's no easy answers, except the most difficult and most easy, "know thyself". The Christian thing is merely familiarity. It's language signs. Nothing is literal. Everything is human.

 

I've been hoping to start a topic devoted to the visionary and the system, but as many things in my life it lays unfulfilled. I've mentioned it elsewhere that the visionary is the one in the culture with the voice that resonates with those unfulfilled by the system. As that vision becomes popularized, it itself becomes the system and the message is lost. That's true of any movement that has ever happened, and the pre-institualized movement of what became Christianity as well. Underneath the layers of religions, lies humanity in its hopes and aspirations expressed in the language of sign. Literalism is an expression of the death of that in the institution. The truth is in yourself.

[Alice]

ps. ya know what really hurts about all this personal struggle with deconverting and re-un-deconverting is that if you tried to get help from a christian they seem to tend to over simplify your pains as rebellion. And make impossible as well as tempting lovely appeals to surrender the thoughts. If you manage to they will only resurface. Even if you convince yourself, it wares off and you start seeing clearly again and the whole thing happens over again untill you , like Alice said, untill you can no longer conger up the relationship. and i am left wondering.maybe they where right my mind is not given over to being reprobate to all things truthfull. It infureates me that they could belive a thing liek that and not even have to WORK FOR THAT blanket statement. I am both angered and threted by their flipidness to my personal HELL>

 

I can really relate to this. During my deconversion phase there seemed to be two kinds of christian responses if I shared the way I was feeling. One was to assume 'pride' and 'rebellion' was the problem, the other was to suggest that 'god will bring you back to him and will use this experience you are going through to help others who have doubt'.

 

'Surrender' seemed to be the solution to both suggested scenario's.

 

 

I think it is a matter of bath and baby water. I have difficulty sitting in church knowing that i can personally enjoy some thigns of Jesus but hate to listen to them non-introspectivly hero worshipping him.

 

Justine.

 

Justine,

 

before responding to the above comment, just wanted to say 'wow' to your elaboration of the baby and the bathwater metaphor. Everything from sponge bathing with the bhagavad gita, your lack of familiarity with babies that bath in the ganges, the climbing into the tub with nervous christians for a 'casual' dip, the cap wearing theology, to the tugs at the drain plug ... just wow justine

 

I recognise myself in your comments about recognising some things of Jesus as well - my understanding of 'jesus' is so far removed from the understanding of a good percentage of christians that I could no longer 'do' church but in the company of some people I am still even able to define myself as a 'follower' of Jesus. Not in the mainstream sense of this. I don't believe there was anything supernatural about him, if indeed he existed at all - and the fact or fiction question around his presence in the world concerns me very little, because it is the 'body' of teaching attributed to him that interests me - and there are aspects of this teaching I find helpful and illuminating.

 

One of my favourite writers is Anthony DeMello and his meditations on the words of Jesus is up there with texts I admire and hold dear.

 

Trust me when I say I understand everything you said. There's no easy answers, except the most difficult and most easy, "know thyself". The Christian thing is merely familiarity. It's language signs. Nothing is literal. Everything is human.

 

I've been hoping to start a topic devoted to the visionary and the system, but as many things in my life it lays unfulfilled. I've mentioned it elsewhere that the visionary is the one in the culture with the voice that resonates with those unfulfilled by the system. As that vision becomes popularized, it itself becomes the system and the message is lost. That's true of any movement that has ever happened, and the pre-institualized movement of what became Christianity as well. Underneath the layers of religions, lies humanity in its hopes and aspirations expressed in the language of sign. Literalism is an expression of the death of that in the institution. The truth is in yourself.

 

ooooh, let me know when you do

 

This process is the mistaking the finger pointing at the moon, for the moon. and then having made the mistake insisting it is the moon!

[insanezenmistress]

Alice, thank you for compliment. Something happens when i read AM he makes me wax poetic while i ramble. I think the Stellar statement is "Do not mistake the finger pointing for the moon."

 

 

I have studied Buddhism too, and took that prinicple to heart. Thinking if i could just see past the fingers then i could see the 'truth" in any religion. I added that to my philosphy. But then i reconverted, thinking because spiritaully i felt i had grow very much with my exploreing, i should be able to accept Jesus and use all this new wisdom to "help those who doubt" (( yeah i tried to belvie that too)) but i found i no longer had a common ground.

 

BTW i reconverted myself useing the "logic" that these seem like the biblical last days and how come people who leave christianinty hate Jesus SOOOO MUCH and how come other faiths use jesus and reinterpret him for their own religion, seemed to proove things the bible says, at the time it "felt right". Too bad i had not matured my thinking about the mythology of mankind and cultural symbols yadda yadda. ((it was emotional surrender))

 

Above that, i had moved form the PA to SC. Big focus on intellelact difference. When i was a chrisitan up north it behooved one to know the chapter and verse and to apply christian reasoning and discussion of ideas/interpretation with one another. But here if i want to pose a biblical quesiton even to my pastor, they cannot and blow it off as if it is useless to talk theology.

 

I hope AM does have his thread. I would take a poke at it. It is like he puts words to thing i have realised but would not know how to express. Apparently even for him they are hard to express.

 

Well i had other stuff to ramble about but lost my train of thoughts. Guess it's not important.

Many of the conversations here (at ex-C) are symbolic of things i would like to say and think about for myself. Just wish i had the means and the persons to do so with in real life.

 

Justine.

[Antlerman]

I've been hoping to start a topic devoted to the visionary and the system, but as many things in my life it lays unfulfilled.

 

ooooh, let me know when you do

 

Done. http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?showtopic=23961