Will Someone Help Me!

[FreeThinkerNZ]

 

You can't see, hear or touch God, and The instructions in The Bible range from loving, right up to bizarre and dangerous, so I think getting a clear message from God, seems very improbable.

 

I agree with other posters, try seeing if secular therapy might be beneficial

Nah I've been there.

 

Sometimes we don't click with a therapist or the approach they are using.  It can take a few attempts to find one we are on the same wavelength with.  There are many different types of therapy available.

[chrisdownunder]

 

 

 

You can't see, hear or touch God, and The instructions in The Bible range from loving, right up to bizarre and dangerous, so I think getting a clear message from God, seems very improbable.

 

I agree with other posters, try seeing if secular therapy might be beneficial

Nah I've been there.

Sometimes we don't click with a therapist or the approach they are using. It can take a few attempts to find one we are on the same wavelength with. There are many different types of therapy available.

I think the only way up is down.

[chrisdownunder]

 

 

Chris, tell us a little more about youself. When you come running back to God, are you in church answering an altar call? Are you sitting alone reading Christian books, listening to Christian music? Do you have Christian friends that persuade you? What exactly triggers these events?

I go back because the world is insidious and I need something to put it all in context.

I agree there are many bad things about the world. There are also many beautiful things about it. The world never will be just one thing and you have to decide for yourself where it makes the most sense for you personally where you want to focus. It may be healthy for you to at least for now to focus on the beautiful. This doesn't make you shallow or ignorant of the bad stuff. It just makes you in control of that which is best for you at this time of your life.

 

Have you watched the series cosmos yet? It's a really nice way to put things into perspective.

Yeah I've seen it, took out to dinner then a movie, then made love to it and feel asleep with it in my arms.

[gall]

I know why this is all happened, because I thought by looking for him I would find myself. But in the end I only imprisoned myself. I know I can't go back to that prison now because it's dead, I just had to have one last look.

 

 

you will never ever ever ever find yourself purposely looking for someone else. On accident maybe doing that but unlikely.

 

Sounds like you are feedin an addiction.

 

your statements and overall attitude in this thread feel just like the stuff my old friends who could not move past their booze and drugs acted like. They always wanted one last look just to make sure.

 

Sorry to be harsh but get over it.

 

There can be no one last look for you you are an addict. You need to cold turkey and no matter how bad it hurts sweat that god poison out of you.

[gall]

 

 

You can't see, hear or touch God, and The instructions in The Bible range from loving, right up to bizarre and dangerous, so I think getting a clear message from God, seems very improbable.

 

I agree with other posters, try seeing if secular therapy might be beneficial

Nah I've been there.

 

Sometimes we don't click with a therapist or the approach they are using.  It can take a few attempts to find one we are on the same wavelength with.  There are many different types of therapy available.

 

 

by the way i have never needed to use a therapist but this seems like good advice. We are all people first and just because someone tried to help and failed does not mean there is not one out there you can connect with and get what you may need.

 

you don't have to do it alone. If you don't have secular friends and family maybe find a group for people in your position in your city like an AA of the religion if they exist there. Strength in numbers is not a lie.

[Vigile]

"Sorry to be harsh but get over it."

 

Seems a bit presumptuous. Did you just wake up one day, shed a lifetime of indoctrination, snap our fingers and De convert? Me personally, it took several years to figure things out and to shed the emotional baggage I never asked for.

[gall]

"Sorry to be harsh but get over it."

 

Seems a bit presumptuous. Did you just wake up one day, shed a lifetime of indoctrination, snap our fingers and De convert? Me personally, it took several years to figure things out and to shed the emotional baggage I never asked for.

 

No I did not. I was taught by my parents to question everything. First. Then they taught me about god second. Not sure if they actually wanted me to believe or were saving me where they could not save themselves from it.

 

if the tone of this thread was that they actually wanted help I would not be that blunt but after reading it they just go over and over the same ground.

 

Addiction is like that. I know I have been there. It takes a harsh lesson to break free sometimes and I would love to see this person break free.

 

I don't say it to presume anything other than this person has it in their power to be free and shed this terrible burden they carry at the moment.

I presume they will fight fight fight to throw off the chains that are binding their mind.

 

hard tasks sometimes need hard ways and from what I see here the hard ways are now needed.

 

Sometimes we have just have to become more comfortable when we have discomfort with that discomfort so that the thing we can't see ourselves having is the only option left to us to try.

 

This person needs to try the very opposite of what they already are as they keep falling back into the same thing over and over. To most people that equals insanity. Rather than round that circle again maybe they need a kick in a different direction.

 

it is up to them to take it or leave it and you are welcome to judge my words as you please. I am not saying them for you.

[Vigile]

Gall, it sounds like your parents raised you with a little less baggage than some of us were forced to carry. Diagnosing this as an addiction is probably more of a reflection on your own experiences than an accurate assessment of what those of us who were not allowed questions with the threat of eternal damnation hanging over our heads from a time we were too young to think for ourselves. That stuff just takes time to shed as it's mostly wrapped up in emotion, not logic.

 

I'm probably one of the most died in the wool atheists on this board and have been so for over 29 years now, but I shudder to think how I might have been assessed had I arrived here during the three years or so it took me to fully De convert.

[gall]

Gall, it sounds like your parents raised you with a little less baggage than some of us were forced to carry. Diagnosing this as an addiction is probably more of a reflection on your own experiences than an accurate assessment of what those of us who were not allowed questions with the threat of eternal damnation hanging over our heads from a time we were too young to think for ourselves. That stuff just takes time to shed as it's mostly wrapped up in emotion, not logic.

 

I'm probably one of the most died in the wool atheists on this board and have been so for over 29 years now, but I shudder to think how I might have been assessed had I arrived here during the three years or so it took me to fully De convert.

 

Guess you missed my post supporting others ideas here to find a therapist.

 

Believe me the things he is saying in response to peoples ideas here are exactly how addicts act. it is not without experience that I make that claim.

 

You can call it anything you want emotion logic it is the same thing they are outside of their own power possibly to stop this cycle they are in which may require outside help.

 

A councilor could help and some people respond better to groups. I can say with relative certainty that this person will most likely be working at this for sometime in their life.

 

I have watched many people struggle with the poison and the drug of religion. At some point the gentle hand approach won't work. I am simply leaving my thoughts like everyone else for this person and it would be far more productive for us to address that person rather than each other here.

 

If my thought work great. if they don't great. What I desire most is a solution to their problem. It can help to have more than one view.

 

In the end a healthy knowledge of ones self makes it easier to resist influence of others and of poisonous ideas.

 

I do understand that others have had it harder than I have in this by far but in the end it is by the strength of our own will that we succeed or fail. The fact that they come here and even question or seek info from others is a great indicator they have the strength inside of them to solve their own problems.

 

I have faith in one thing and one thing only. I have faith in men to be able enough to solve their own problem both as individuals and as race. Even though I may seem like a negative factor I am on their side and anticipating a day that this person will be free even if they cannot yet see it. I am on their side, I am on our side.

[Vigile]

I can only speak from personal experience and from observation of the De conversion process I've seen on this site for over 10 years. I could have written what this person wrote while freshly De converting. I certainly wasn't addicted, just emotionally confused.

 

I'd personally wait before recommending a therapist. If a person has bi poor or something else that makes them constantly waiver, then they probably need help. If a person is just freshly off the boat, it's natural to be confused and to waiver a bit.

 

I'm of the mind you can't make accurate psychoanalysis from reading a few lines from someone on a message board.

[gall]

I can only speak from personal experience and from observation of the De conversion process I've seen on this site for over 10 years. I could have written what this person wrote while freshly De converting. I certainly wasn't addicted, just emotionally confused.

 

I'd personally wait before recommending a therapist. If a person has bi poor or something else that makes them constantly waiver, then they probably need help. If a person is just freshly off the boat, it's natural to be confused and to waiver a bit.

 

I'm of the mind you can't make accurate psychoanalysis from reading a few lines from someone on a message board.

Based on his responses he seems to haev already been to therapy and given up on it.

 

I am simply saying that like others said it might be worth revisiting if other things are not working out to help them.

 

This person is going around and around by their own admission so I am thinking fresh off the boat does not apply.

 

what do you think would help this person?

 

I personally feel that confronting ones issues head on is the best way. Fear will be fear until you confront that fear and master it. One can only do that by actually doing it not going around and around in the same circle. If each time they come back to this they ask the same questions get the same answers and never move on how is any of this helping them?

 

They surely do not have to listen to me or take any advice I give. Mostly the stuff I think is probably insane for most people but if it gives them another perspective or view point maybe they find something of value in it even if they leave most of it behind. Express yourself how you see fit and please address the person with the issue here. I will do the same and maybe in the middle we can all agree talking about it is better than going to war over it in our lives or the lives of others.

[chrisdownunder]

 

I know why this is all happened, because I thought by looking for him I would find myself. But in the end I only imprisoned myself. I know I can't go back to that prison now because it's dead, I just had to have one last look.

 

 

you will never ever ever ever find yourself purposely looking for someone else. On accident maybe doing that but unlikely.

 

Sounds like you are feedin an addiction.

 

your statements and overall attitude in this thread feel just like the stuff my old friends who could not move past their booze and drugs acted like. They always wanted one last look just to make sure.

 

Sorry to be harsh but get over it.

 

There can be no one last look for you you are an addict. You need to cold turkey and no matter how bad it hurts sweat that god poison out of you.

"Sweat that god poison out of you" That's hella cute.

[Vigile]

Gall, personally, I think time, reflection and study will help Chris out. These are time tested factors that helped the vast majority of us round here. Therapy seems extreme and unless and until Chris seems to be struggling more than the rest of us did, it's overkill Imo.

 

either that, or we could just start recommending therapy to every new De convert that comes to us.

 

Imo, that's like sending everyone with a viral infection to the doc. Best he can do for them is tell them drink plenty of liquids, rest and tell them time is the only cure.

[ToHellWithMe]

 

Maybe the god you sense is not a Christian god. Maybe it doesn't operate according to your ideas at all.

All god's are Q's in the end.

 

That does not dismiss the questions for me though, even if it does for you.

[mymistake]

 

 

Maybe the god you sense is not a Christian god. Maybe it doesn't operate according to your ideas at all.

All god's are Q's in the end.

 

That does not dismiss the questions for me though, even if it does for you.

 

 

"What gods are there, what gods have there ever been, that were not from man's imagination?" - Joseph Campbell

[Flutters]

I'll likely regret poking my nose in this, but as someone who was a former religious addict, you sound very much like I once did gall. You also sound like a friend of mine who also suffered from scrupulosity, eerily familiar in fact. In the course of shedding all my cult dogma, it became important in my recovery to adopt new perspective and "filters" in my brain so that I could see things clearly. A freind who had been through AA and NA had taken me under hsi wing, and taught me accountability to self. While all of these are meaningful and useful in the treatment of addiction, I noticed that he remained in a place of needing rigid recovery ideology, and would peg everyone as an addict.
 

What happened was that he has remained steeply entrenched in the recovery dogma, which is a valuable asset for those who rely on it for sobriety ( religious that is ). I seem to have moved into a different space - one where I have released the structure and became more wide lensed in my approach, less in need of proving that the recovery system is valid, and repeatable. I realized after a few years of this that I was switching one dogma for another. For me, in my own experience, this helped me to grow exponentially in compassion, patience and acceptance. It gave me permission to let go of the compulsion to wake people up from their sufferings. The OP probably won't welcome being psychoanalyzed simply because we have an armchair seat of experience. Not everyone is an addict, even if it seems like it. That also dehumanizes people into a disease, absent of individual factors.

 

OP, for me, as I walk this path of aceptance and deconversion, it is sometimes a real struggle to let go. The truth is, I really WANTED there to be a god, and sometimes I'm angry that there isn't. I have to learn that hope doesn't lie in some invisible non custodial parent in the sky who sees you one day a week, but in our ability to become better humans. I have to learn that a lifetime of being taught that god is in the coincidence, (even for a family such as mine that was not devout) that it's really just coincidence. I see that we love patterns and connections, because we want and need things to make sense. I understand that I need to learn a new understanding of what 'making sense' means. One thing that has become quite clear to me in a way that faith never did on the same level, is that as human beings all bound for the same fate, with this as our only life, I have never before viewed every person with the same understanding of frailty, need, and level playing field as I do now. I hope you find new ways to comfort and ease the need we all have for purpose and hope.

[chrisdownunder]

[ExCBooster]

I guess I don't really have enough information here, aside from to suggest that you hit the books, and hard. From what you've said so far, it seems that you're relying on emotional experience to inform and determine belief, which you ultimately define as a factual thing - Does God exist, yes or no?

 

It's just not possible to come to an emotional solution to a problem of logic and fact. Only logic and fact can do that. I might "feel" that the Earth is flat, or that the sun revolves around it, but that's not what is true, actually. The Earth is an approximate sphere, and orbits the Sun. Black swans are a thing, even though, where I live, all swans I've ever seen are white. 99% of matter is empty space, and the rest of it acts like maths equations, rather than tiny billards balls. What you might be needing here, is to examine the facts and logic regarding your belief, not just whether or not God has emotionally come through and supported you. The only question that really counts here is: does God exist? There's plenty of resources for a logical examination of the question, and lots of people on this forum will be more than happy to help you on that account. If you feel the emotional side has played out in examining the questions, maybe what you need is to get into the logic of what and why you believe? I don't know. Maybe I'm grasping at straws, and only you can know for sure.

 

Edit: PM me if you want to, I argue for sport, and I'll readily be the Spock to your Captain Kirk.

[mymistake]

I guess I don't really have enough information here, aside from to suggest that you hit the books, and hard. From what you've said so far, it seems that you're relying on emotional experience to inform and determine belief, which you ultimately define as a factual thing - Does God exist, yes or no?

 

It's just not possible to come to an emotional solution to a problem of logic and fact. Only logic and fact can do that. I might "feel" that the Earth is flat, or that the sun revolves around it, but that's not what is true, actually. The Earth is an approximate sphere, and orbits the Sun. Black swans are a thing, even though, where I live, all swans I've ever seen are white. 99% of matter is empty space, and the rest of it acts like maths equations, rather than tiny billards balls. What you might be needing here, is to examine the facts and logic regarding your belief, not just whether or not God has emotionally come through and supported you. The only question that really counts here is: does God exist? There's plenty of resources for a logical examination of the question, and lots of people on this forum will be more than happy to help you on that account. If you feel the emotional side has played out in examining the questions, maybe what you need is to get into the logic of what and why you believe? I don't know. Maybe I'm grasping at straws, and only you can know for sure.

 

 

 

I guess people are different.  For me the emotions were the anchor holding me back but maybe that was because I had already worked out the logic.  Clearly both sides are needed.

[chrisdownunder]

I guess I don't really have enough information here, aside from to suggest that you hit the books, and hard. From what you've said so far, it seems that you're relying on emotional experience to inform and determine belief, which you ultimately define as a factual thing - Does God exist, yes or no?

 

It's just not possible to come to an emotional solution to a problem of logic and fact. Only logic and fact can do that. I might "feel" that the Earth is flat, or that the sun revolves around it, but that's not what is true, actually. The Earth is an approximate sphere, and orbits the Sun. Black swans are a thing, even though, where I live, all swans I've ever seen are white. 99% of matter is empty space, and the rest of it acts like maths equations, rather than tiny billards balls. What you might be needing here, is to examine the facts and logic regarding your belief, not just whether or not God has emotionally come through and supported you. The only question that really counts here is: does God exist? There's plenty of resources for a logical examination of the question, and lots of people on this forum will be more than happy to help you on that account. If you feel the emotional side has played out in examining the questions, maybe what you need is to get into the logic of what and why you believe? I don't know. Maybe I'm grasping at straws, and only you can know for sure.

 

Edit: PM me if you want to, I argue for sport, and I'll readily be the Spock to your Captain Kirk.

[gall]

I'll likely regret poking my nose in this, but as someone who was a former religious addict, you sound very much like I once did gall. You also sound like a friend of mine who also suffered from scrupulosity, eerily familiar in fact. In the course of shedding all my cult dogma, it became important in my recovery to adopt new perspective and "filters" in my brain so that I could see things clearly. A freind who had been through AA and NA had taken me under hsi wing, and taught me accountability to self. While all of these are meaningful and useful in the treatment of addiction, I noticed that he remained in a place of needing rigid recovery ideology, and would peg everyone as an addict.

 

What happened was that he has remained steeply entrenched in the recovery dogma, which is a valuable asset for those who rely on it for sobriety ( religious that is ). I seem to have moved into a different space - one where I have released the structure and became more wide lensed in my approach, less in need of proving that the recovery system is valid, and repeatable. I realized after a few years of this that I was switching one dogma for another. For me, in my own experience, this helped me to grow exponentially in compassion, patience and acceptance. It gave me permission to let go of the compulsion to wake people up from their sufferings. The OP probably won't welcome being psychoanalyzed simply because we have an armchair seat of experience. Not everyone is an addict, even if it seems like it. That also dehumanizes people into a disease, absent of individual factors.

 

OP, for me, as I walk this path of aceptance and deconversion, it is sometimes a real struggle to let go. The truth is, I really WANTED there to be a god, and sometimes I'm angry that there isn't. I have to learn that hope doesn't lie in some invisible non custodial parent in the sky who sees you one day a week, but in our ability to become better humans. I have to learn that a lifetime of being taught that god is in the coincidence, (even for a family such as mine that was not devout) that it's really just coincidence. I see that we love patterns and connections, because we want and need things to make sense. I understand that I need to learn a new understanding of what 'making sense' means. One thing that has become quite clear to me in a way that faith never did on the same level, is that as human beings all bound for the same fate, with this as our only life, I have never before viewed every person with the same understanding of frailty, need, and level playing field as I do now. I hope you find new ways to comfort and ease the need we all have for purpose and hope.

 

No one has to take my opinions on anything but I don't see how talking to me about it is helping the OP. I gave him my ideas you give him yours. Let them decide for themselves and stop critizing me for simply giving my views. Or don't I really don't care much. I stand behind what I said. God is a drug christianity is the needle and humans are the victims.

[Flutters]

I'm sorry gall, for coming off as criticizing you. I wanted to point out another chain in the recovered addict realm, not to say yours was not equally valid. I do agree that for many people, god is a drug, and certainly was in my case. I suspect my comment about not everyone being an addict was a bit of projection on my part about my friend, and I apologize for that. I do stand by the statement of its own mind you, unrelated to you. I hope you'll understand that I meant no attack on your views nor your advice, but only to address that aspect from another angle and  different experience.