WNS

I couldn’t agree with you more about the importance of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Paul said that if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then Christians were to be pitied more than most for clinging to a false hope and “missing out” on what the world has to offer. I also agree hold heartedily with jaybercrow that from my knowledge, people have started to drift from a relationship with God (either for a period or for good) when some of those things the world has to offer start to be just that bit too attractive.

This is all great stuff BTW.

Let me sum up my advice (not that its wanted) re:keeping faith.

Sometimes it’s easier to see whats good about something, from the outside, you have something wonderful and you don’t even seem to know it….The main thing that Christianity has going for it, isn’t that ‘faith’ is great and should be kept at all costs…(faith can be a terribly bad thing if placed in the wrong thing)… what Christianity has…. is that it’s factually true!… Jesus actually did physically rise from the dead, he actually WAS the son of god (you’d say). All the other competing philosophies don’t have that, and that is the key. Don’t sell me on the ‘relational’ stuff, and the ‘faith’ stuff and the ‘prayer’ stuff… sell me on the main thing Jesus gave you, factual events that really happened and shook the world.

I say the more faith something requires, the less likely I am to believe it…
you don’t need stronger faith, you have factual events (a Muslim suicide bomber needs LOADS of faith).. this is the gift that Jesus gave you… along with reason and rationality to eradicate disease, build economies to help feed the poor and logic to construct great ideas of freedom and progress…
don’t increase your faith… reduce it… and in doing so introduce the world to the glorious and beautiful uplands that is redemption from sin… you as the children of god owe it to the world to reduce dependence on faith. Soapbox, this is the seminar you should do.

I would agree… to a point (humbly ) (certinly one side or the other is deluded)… what i would say is that one has to withdraw from the faith structures by deliberate intent or laziness to get to a point where you can re-assess the evidence with out the prism of faith. and then maybe in somecases find that applying the prism of faith to pretty much any religion/cult/myth…. works. I’m still very open to be convinced otherwise by Jayber… but i still contest that the core is not the faith, its what the faith is ‘in’ therefore all those who realize that the Jesus stuff happened must be smarter or deluded.

1. I agree with lots of others that there is an intellectual element. It’s vital that we think deeply and honestly about our faith and how it relates to life in this world.

Staying sheltered from difficult questions might be the safest option (QM) but it’s just not possible in the long run. So someone who has grown up in an environment where they can’t asked questions and aren’t exposed to a diversity of views etc, will eventually come up against hard questions (at college, on the internet…) and that’s when faith can start to crumble. (That’s roughly what happened my dad while in Japan as a missionary.)

So thinking deeply and widely is the only way to go. But I want to add that this thinking also needs to be in a spirit of humility and confidence, with a willingness to listen and learn, and not a spirit of defensiveness and fearfulness. So much Christian apologetics is aggressive and fearful (10 reasons why everyone else is wrong) which reflects a lack of faith. 2 things I remember impacting me deeply – a talk by Stephen Williams at QUBCU where he told us if we were afraid to examine questions and doubts about our faith it wasn’t worth holding on to. And a book by Tony Campolo called “We have met the enemy, and they are partly right” – looking at what’s true in criticisms of the church by Freud, Marx etc. That kind of humble apologetic increases confidence, whereas purely defensive apologetics I think may actually weaken it.

2. Espero is absolutely, spectacularly right. We can totally overstate the intellectual dimension in this. Christianity is not just, or even primarily, a set of cognitive beliefs. At it’s heart, it is about what we love. Love of God and neighbour.

Most of those I know who have walked away, it’s because they loved something else more. Usually a girl. Sometimes a career-path, a lifestyle, a social world. They have shuffled away step by step and justified it intellectually later.

Even those I know who claim their path was purely intellectual, I’m a little skeptical. (Maybe QM and his friends at De-Conversion are unusual exceptions, or maybe they are in spectacular denial).

I don’t mean to sound flippant. I don’t mean to imply that these heart-motivations are less substantial than intellectual ones. Quite the opposite. This is the heart of our humanness. So thinking deeply is not enough. We need to “guard our hearts” – which means paying attention to our deepest desires and longings and fears and hopes. The wisest Christian thinkers all talk about the conversion of our affections, the ordering of our loves and desires. We need friends and mentors who will take us into those deep places. A faith that is just about “right beliefs” and “right behaviour” doesn’t take much shaking.

(I’m still trying to figure out how our evangelical culture manages to be both anti-intellectual and overly-cognitive at the same time…?)

Here’s an interesting post on a related theme: http://adventuresinmercy.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/those-who-leave-christ-and-my-own-story-of-why-i-could-not/#comments

people who leave the ‘faith’ but who are still convinved that the gospels are reliable, is just plain mad, surely.

No dissrespect intended, or in inferred. I was just pointing out that your list was, as you say, more about how to ‘go deeper’ in faith… rather than not lose it (what ever that means). Understandable from a ‘faith’ point of view but im not sure its entirely common. I’ve read ‘testimonys’ from loads of people re: leaving faith and it always boils down to… no mater how much i wanted to, i couldnt belive the magic stuff in the bible.

I think I was trying to articulate that unless you all your faith to really engage with the deep stuff of your heart, the really shitty bits that scare the hell out of you, then your faith will only ever be skin deep and easily lost.

Yes, I have had several very good friends walk away from faith and it was not due to intellectual doubts in any of thier cases. You path is not the only path out and not the most common one out.

I disagree with your inference that I am saying you should surround yourself with like-minded people. Quite the opposite. It’s just commonsense to have one more experienced person who you can trust for advice who’s been down the road a bit further.

What you forget sometimes qmonkey is that when people comment on stuff like this sometimes they are speaking from the heart and not the head. I made my list based on those things that have helped me grow in my faith. Sometimes you toss these things aside with sarcasm which I find disrespectful and actually a bit hurtful.
By all means disagree, just do it with a bit of respect please.

If an event didn’t actually factually happen… I don’t think it matters how much I really believe that it did, or how emotionally engaged in the idea that it did.

My grandmother told me that her father said he could literally fly on every full moon…. I’m not sure how impressive it is to you that I’m emotionally and relationally engaged in my faith in that … you’ll still want to see some decent evidence… if not, I think you’d be seen as quite gullible

I say again, the amount and quality of the faith isn’t the thing… im sure you’d wish that Muslim suicide bombers had a little less faith. The key is being 100% sure about the thing you have faith in.

>…>I realised 7 years ago I believed as truth

I’m not really sure what that means.

Sorry for spamming SBs blog… if you want to continues by email… you can send me your email address via the contact tab on my blog.

I suppose a lot of this comes down to what you actually believe ‘faith’ is (or ‘true faith’ as QMonkey would probably rather I said, but without the speech marks and with all sincerity). Do you believe that it is a gift from God? Or do you believe it is a matter of human choice i.e. I choose to have faith in this, he doesn’t?

If the latter, then I think that there is some validity in what some have said about losing faith (or ‘intellectually growing out of your faith’ as seems to be suggested but never said…) If the former (as the verses above seem to suggest), then I think there is maybe another discussion to be had (but who’ll be brave enough to start the ball rolling on that???)