maybe I should quit my faith and deny God to everyone

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Given what's happening, maybe I should quit my faith and deny God in front of everyone I can.

No, I won't tell more about what's happening.

There is this line in the Bible about how God won't give us anymore than we can handle - well, too late, it's happened.

Oh, wait, it's always my fault, God is faultless!

I used to feel the same way. But God always tests us. As humans we think, that God only loves us when everything is perfect. But that's not true. We all get tested, and have to endure hardships. I at one stage also thought that I have been given more than I can endure. It happens, but don't give up.

I was mentioning to someone a day or two ago that in Gnostic Christianity, the creator of the universe was (as in Kabbalah) limitless and ultimately unknowable. The lord (Adonai) of this world, however, is a fickle and petty tyrant who claims to have created the world in order to feed his own ego, whose only true role for man is as a doting lapdog.

My experience supports such a view. I'm with you.

I doubt it, I think that is something the Hallmark channel dreamed up to enslave us to this 'best of all possible worlds'.

This proves my point exactly. If God created us all - each and every individual, then God already knows who and what we are and every single limitation and strength we have, because he made us that way.

WHY THE HELL WOULD THAT GOD NEED TO 'TEST' ANYBODY?

What's he testing? Our patience, to see how far we can be pushed before we do ourselves in to escape the misery? Is that not the cosmic equivalent of pulling the wings off flies and torturing kittens?

Gonna tell me next that we're supposed to be learning something from it? When do we get our diplomas? I've taken more than my share of tests, thank you very much.

I get that you can't appreciate the ups unless you've experienced some downs, but one would think there'd be some sort of balancing-out effect over time, and there's not. A few get the cherries, most get the pits. The rest of us get pelted with the pits.

Yep, that's exactly where I am today.
That's exactly where my wife is today.

And we're both AT the limit and leaning over the edge - anything else at all and it is over the edge.

I know it, I see it, and there isn't a damn thing I can see that I can do in order to not be there - I'm already there and how do you not be where you already are?

And our individual each being at our limit about things not our relationship is having the "collateral damage" of pretty much destroying our relationship

it was explained to me that we are not seeing the whole picture, and that the ending of physical life only curtails development on the physical plane, but the other, more subtle consciousnesses still exist until the physical manifests again.

It's like you got a cup of tea. you can break the cup and the tea still remains tea if on the floor, or into the cloth to absorb it up, or wrung out into another cup again.

anyway, the image works for me, that this existance is not the be all nor end all of 'me'. Just a current manifestation of 'me.'
and hope for a better future, of course.

"WHY THE HELL WOULD THAT GOD NEED TO 'TEST' ANYBODY?"

That's something only He can answer. We have to understand that our existence is based on toil and suffering. Bliss, is not possible in this life. Ultimately I suppose it comes down to faith. One has to accept the good and the bad. When things are good, be appreciative, when things are not so, have patience and perseverance. It's difficult, and I'm not someone who has really excelled in this. I understand your point of view, and I suppose your cynicism. The balancing out does occur. It occurs in the next life. I guess you just have to believe so. Again an area of difficulty, and one for me which needs serious work, but as humans we can always try to get better.

I suppose one might find entertainment in denying god just to be oppositional or satirical, or to start some line of deep thought. The Marquis De Sade knew all about that!

(WARNING, NUDE PICS) http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/porno ... s-de-sade/

But seriously, there's a distinction between what really is true, and what is useful to believe. If we acquire a belief by determining that something is verifiably true, then it doesn't require faith to believe it. However, even patently false beliefs might at least be useful if they somehow produce a desired behavior. Abandoning cannibalism might be one such useful result. Whatever it takes to keep people from eating each other! Then again, I suppose that crackers and wine thing is sort of a symbolic concession to the cannibals!

http://www.rotten.com/library/death/cannibalism/

As my thinking matured, I found it impossible to prove the atheists wrong, and that even some of the elements in my own experience might have other, better explanations. Even if I had a way to determine which if any of the elements of religion are real, and that atheism is false, might an atheistic belief set still be useful? Might the belief, that experience simply ends at death, be useful if it motivates people to make better use of their time and take better care of their own health?

Last edited by sgrannel on 31 Aug 2009, 10:21 am, edited 3 times in total.

I know how the OP feels. I hate god myself. I was raised Roman Catholic. What I can't understand is how people give God credit for all the good things that happen. But when bad things happen, its not Gods fault. It can't be that way. Can't give someone credit for the good things but not the bad. Huge double standard.

I am not leaning over the edge but I am looking.

Even if you abandon worship of the Christian God, you won't lose everything you've earned from it.

I can't stress enough how obnoxious Christianity has seemed to me. I still remember those 'loser' insults in my dreams. Their God apparently just didn't love me.

I've always thought that God would test the people he hated most to dig up excuses to send them to Hell.

The testing is not done for Him, but for us. He is showing us what happens when we live in a sociaety that does everything in its own way and ignore his Teachings (Torah). After we are resurrected into the 1000 year kingdom or into the White Throne Judgement (Government), we will all see the difference in life and society as done His way verses it done our way. Even though there are some people who try to live right and do the right thing, society as a whole lives by rule of man instead of the rule by law. This includes us in the Police States of America as well as the other nations.

Whereas in society, we have to live by a truck load of laws, rules, and regulations, in Biblical society, there are only 613 teachings that we must live by, and even many of these laws only apply to certain people and groups. The Torah contains a system of government, welfare system, a school system, and so on. It also contains a system of putting the breaks on the distribution of wealth from the poor to the rich. The tax rate that is prescribed by the Torah is much less oppressive than what is used in the nations of today.

When the best system of government is brought to the world, people will find life much easier to live. Since we are still living in the Age of Man, we have to live by Man's rule and put up with the miseries that we have to suffer as a result. We will all get to see the difference in living under the rule of Man verses the rule of the Creator. That, I believe is the true reason for all of the test we have been put through. When we get to see the government run under the true teachings rather than the rule of man, we will understand why it is so important to follow the Torah.

The line in the Bible I think you are referring to is 1 Corinthians 10 v13, which essentially affirms that God is faithful even when allowing you to be tempted; He provides a way out for you.

Currently you're being tempted to abandon your faith, perhaps from anger and bitterness as a result of events, and you have a choice: give up your faith or hold on to it in the face of the anger and bitterness. If you choose the latter, then that faith also allows you to look for the promised way out.

This is one of the reasons why I turned atheist when I was 10. The bible speaks of some all powerful all loving god and he doesn't seem to be proving it.

That's a point.


Even though I'm having big issues with God right now; it is written that he said he doesn't want to lose anyone, and has provided the means for them to not go to hell if they wish to avail themselves of the opportunity. Their choice, whichever they prefer.
I think it's like that old phrase about giving the trouble makers enough rope to hang themselves if they wish to keep going down the road they're on.
That being said, there are some stories of people doing bad things apparently with zero intention of ever stopping, whom God further hardened their hearts and eventually those people were made to be dead.

Then there's story of Job, one of the oldest known stories, who loved God and was still put through hell as it were.
For reasons with some of the whys and wherefores shown but not entirely explained why.

I am soooo weary of struggle and heartbreak.
But I'm not ready to leave this life because of it - there's still things here I want to do and want to have.
My choice to keep living guarantees more trouble will have time to happen in my life, making it partly my choice.
But I still have a lot of anger and resentment about it.
I'm frustrated, deeply frustrated.
I want the heartbreaks to end.
I want peace, happiness, and contentment.
Where are they?
"Hello, are you out there? Peace? Happiness? Contentment? Any of you there? Halloo?"

Faith is not all its cracked up to be. EVERYTIME I have put my faith in God he has totally and completely disapointed me. I have lost my faith long ago and I see no way or reason for that matter to want or need to get it back.

This does not mean I am an athiest. From what I understand athiests don't belive in God at all.

I belive in God. But I belive God to be one evil SOB that likes to screw with people for fun. Why would anyone want to put faith in someone like that?