What made you find faith, or what turn against it?

[TheGyattDamnRizzler]

I'm open to idea of faith and God. Idk like what religion is right though and there are so many. I don't feel a connection to Christians, Islamists, or Judaic people they always believe they are right and the others are wrong.
I'm not taking a side on that until there is more proof on something being legitimate.

I'd like religion if it was less like judgemental on things. I really hagakure book of the samurai and stuff about ancient Buddhism.
It truly is the religion of nothing though to an extent.

 

[t_xeplionhell]

My grandmother was a strict agnostic. She kinda raised me because of family situations. She would tell me when you die, that's the end.

I'm RC by my own choice and when she died, I think I cried for a month. I still pray for her and it's been almost 50 years now.

When you die - that's end, is not what a real agnostic thinks, a real agnostic thinks that it's unknown what happens in death.

 

[Cheshire_Kat]

When you die - that's end, is not what a real agnostic thinks, a real agnostic thinks that it's unknown what happens in death.

That's what my grandmother believed while being an agnostic, not what all agnostic people believe. Agnostic literally means " don't know". They have no fixed beliefs.
But thank you for your observation.

 

[t_xeplionhell]

In that case, the only time I had faith was when I was a child and still believed in the metaphysical scientific theories of black holes and the big bang.

See, I find this statement contradictory to the first I quoted, because if you feel something in your heart then that to me is proof, because it is tangible. You may not interpret it correctly on an intellectual level, because the impulses coming to the heart are not qualified and we colour them accordingly - much the same as psychic impressions on a psychedelic trip that get misconstrued i.e. 'I am Jesus!' - but the underlying nature of them is tangible and proof in itself, even if it is subjective.

I find faith to be an intellectual thing. I don't believe anyone really feels they believe in God from a purely intellectual standpoint, and conversely those who identify as atheist or agnostic are in fact the ones with faith.. because it takes a tremendous amount of intellectual willpower to hold up a concept structure like that, to be able to look at yourself looking at the world and honestly believe that is all the result of neuronal activity and a haphazard chance event (big bang) that in itself is inherently contradictory.

You could call me agnostic, but I don't quite understand what it means to be agnostic, "belief that origin of existence or God is unknown" - because this goes against what I see beliefs as and how I form them.

For me, "to trust" anything is nothing more than tracking measurements/evidence through my memories over period of time, and pulling a statistic or a conclusion from it. I can only know things assuming my memory is valid, it's the last line, however, most of things are assumptions (unless what someone is saying is parsed in a way that's "impossible" to be wrong, politics kind of try to do it, the better someone do it the better the politician is) because the memory in the brain gets lost over time.

And, for me "to believe" is not much different than "to trust", except belief includes how are values/identity/"heart" towards what is being trusted.

In claims that require giving a probability as an answer, the human mind is always susceptible to being imprecise, so mistakes are always possible in giving such precise predictions.

 

[kris66]

That's what my grandmother believed while being an agnostic, not what all agnostic people believe. Agnostic literally means " don't know". They have no fixed beliefs.
But thank you for your observation.

I'm glad you were able to find faith. I was raised Christian, and recognized truth in Jesus' words from a young age.

I no longer believe in hell though. I believe we all have to answer for our actions, but I don't believe in hell. It never did really make sense, I think I just went along with it because it's in the bible so I thought I shouldn't question it. I finally was able to realize I didn't need to believe everything that is written in the bible.

The bible is written by people, not God, and people make mistakes. I feel much more comfortable with my Christianity after this realization.

 

[Hannah Capps]

Well, from a young age I loved the Bible. I was fascinated with the stories I read. I dug into the words and ate them up. Asking my teachers if the myths we later learned about were based on truth re: Genesis 6. Great men in those days, men of renown, giants. And the fallen angels came down and saw that the daughters of eve were beautiful and lay with them and they produced corrupted seed. Sounds like Greek and Roman myth to me.

At age nine I asked my grandma if the dove that Noah released the same dove that descended on Jesus when he was baptized. That raised some eyebrows like, uh, honey I don't know.

All of this aside, because I knew something was different about me, I came to faith in Jesus at a young age. My home was a stable environment, but at school and elsewhere it was hell. I ran to God because I had no one else who understood what I was going through.

Later on, when I found out about my autism, I was very bitter towards God. Why did you create me this way? Hated the verses, like, why do you, oh clay, ask The Potter why did you make me this way?" Etc. Verses like that. I think it's normal to question God; many of the people God used questioned Him often. But at the end of the day, they had no one else but Him.

Later on, when my life spun out of control in my 20s and 30s, I was very broken but God still used the years of pain. I'm 3 years healed of self-harm, and so many people have been asking questions about autism, help for those that self-harm, have eating issues, depression, etc. What was meant for evil, God turned into something good. Hard to see this when my life for so long was walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Often wishing for death and trying 3 times but being brought back to life. If that's not a miracle, then I don't know what is.

For the above and countless other reasons, I still have and walk out (sometimes crawling) the walk of faith. It's not called the straight and narrow path for nothing.