To wonder if a lot of people who are Christians have had a rather nice life?

I would come away from this thread OP, maybe start a new one in the philosophy section. I started one there a few days ago about losing faith, join that maybe? You need a space where you can talk freely about your experience and be met with some compassion not this well my faith is better than yours crap you are getting here.

stilllivingI don't know if this would be the best place to consider your loss of belief/faith.

You started out by saying that you had now less faith than others, and was this due to them having easier lives. Many people said, no, they had had difficult lives and still had faith.

This doesn't really have that much to do with your own faith though- and I don't think this is something that can be productively argued out. You may not even want to find your faith again, you may be at peace with it not being in your life, although I don't get the impression this is the case.

Is there anyone you could talk to about this? Friend, or even church person if you know someone you like. Or just sitting and contemplating can also sometimes bring us to think about things differently.

I don't have any answers, nor do I have unshakeable faith. I see it as a rather rocky road, and don't know if I'm on it half the time.

I hope you find some inner peace with all this, I really don't think it is going to be found on a thread in AIBU (which I find often quite a stressful place) although some people have made good suggestions about ways forward if you wanted one.

million and Drewswife

Op how are you today?

Yabu. I was brought up with mum dad an two brothers. My mum was brutalised by him. My brothers as I were frequently beaten badly. We attended church and he appeared to be the perfect husband. Sunday consisted of morning service, home for lunch, Sunday school, dinner the evening meeting. Every day was an activity at church after school. We go to Salvation Army and it's normal to be busy through the week.

As we got older he became more aggressive and turned to sexual abuse for me.

The violence increased. We had to ask for food and water. Mum died of asthma when I was 14. She couldn't take life support machines again. Had been on 4 times before.

The arsehole had sanded Down the staircase and refused to let her out. I believe he killed her.

Brothers and I were taken into care when finally someone heard us. And listened to what I was saying. Oh we spoke up about it to family and church and friends. But that's just how it was in the 80s.

I left care and got engaged to an arsehole who was for all purposes a copy of my lovely genetic material. I had a baby at 19. He banned me from getting my daughter dedicated. I was a single mum when she was 18months old. She was then diagnosed with arthritis and I struggled with an aggressive ex, a very sick child and a history of abuse which my ex used as an excuse to claim that because I was abused so I would be an abuser. I was reported to social services umpteen times for amazing reasons. She was bruising badly. She was undernourished. I was running a brothel.

There were so many times that I only got by because of food parcels and church friends putting money in my leccy meter.

In time I got a good job. Then my immune system crashed as I took severe allergies that left me inches from intensive care on several occasions. I lot my job.

My teen turned 16. She went off the rails. Took to drinking and hanging about with assholes.

My friends toddler died after a two year battle with leukaemia. I sat with her in intensive care as she was dying. Prayed for her to find peace and still support her mum as best as I humanly can.

Now I am 37. I am finally married I a man I adore and adores me. I don't worry about money. We don't hae a lot but we get by. I am 7 weeks pregnant.

I feel like Job sometimes. Eastenders wouldn't write the script to my life.

But the one thing I had during all of that. Faith.

So yes op you are being unreasonable. As Christians our lives are no more perfect than anyone else's. All we try to do is live within the boundaries of our faith. To maintain dignity and to help others around us.

Never once did I blame God for this.

Apologies is this has dampened anyone's morning. I see my live as being positive though. Without these experiences I wouldn't be who I am today.

I was raised in a Christian home, still a Christian and a regular church goer.

I've experienced

multiple miscarriages
being rejected for adoption
sexual abuse
seeing dv taking place
being jobless

but I've also been able to work part time and spend time with my children, I'm white, married but certainly not middle class.

I think that was his later clarification, toad.. I've gone back to look and the original remarks are quoted in the media as:

''I am bothered about what I call God and conjuring tricks. I am not clear that God maneuvers physical things. I am clear that he works miracles through personal responses and faith.''

To a questioner on the program who stressed the New Testament teaching that Jesus rose from the tomb, Dr. Jenkins replied, ''All I said, 'Was it literally physical?' After all, a conjuring trick with bones only proves that somebody is clever at a conjuring trick with bones.''

It's very nuanced, isn't it!

Actually Jenkins said the Resurrection was "not a conjuring trick with bones". He was misquoted, probably deliberately, by the Press. I imagine he didn't sue for libel as Bishops Don't Do That Sort Of Thing.

Actually Jenkins said the Resurrection was "not a conjuring trick with bones". He was misquoted, probably deliberately, by the Press. I imagine he didn't sue for libel as Bishops Don't Do That Sort Of Thing.

Awful there. And not great in quite a few if the UK organisations.

not great being a christian if you live somewhere like Syria or Egypt.

I read about an American lady in a Phillip Yancey book whose 2 dc had cystic fibrosis and died young.

I think life is tough for most people

I think it was York, actually, that got the lightening strike, where he had just been enthroned. I recall roaring with laughter.

compo, I think a previous Bishop of Durham described the resurrection as 'a conjuring trick with bones.'

His cathedral was struck by lightning very shortly afterwards, which some saw as a divine rebuke.

Nothing wrong with being baffled or not understanding, IMO.

There's a lot wrong with assuming you deserve to understand and other people should be able to explain to you (which to be fair, I don't think compos is, I'm just making the distinction). I'm baffled by people who enjoy golf. I don't expect them to convince me to like it.

Yes I did study many other religions as part of my course. I found it fascinating, how humanity has reached out to God. I didn't do a comparative study and think 'oh I like this one best' - but I did explore the claims of different faiths, coming to the conclusion that Christianity was unique in its grace and forgiveness, and unique in the person of Jesus showing us what God looks like - and getting down in the mess of earth among us. A faith which is based in a God who has walked in the gritty reality and wept with women and understood suffering.

ComposHat yes, my is based on both reason and experience - one without the other would be rather non robust, I think. Typing on phone so can't really explore this as far as I'd like - frustrating. But basically, having been brought up in am atheist then Christian family (my parents converted when I was little) I decided to explore more deeply for myself by going to a secular uni to study theology. By this time I had had much experience of God in life but needed to underpin this with knowledge and check for myself it worked.

Now I suppose you might call that a form of confirmation bias, but I really did go through a stage of unbelief as I explored it all, then back to firmer than ever belief as I discovered that my faith was intellectually robust.

However there will always be a kind of line - it wouldn't be faith if it was all laid out nicely in black and white or all worked together perfectly logically it doesn't. It's messy and unexplained and mysterious. But there the experience comes into it - the work of the Spirit which is compelling and convincing and utterly astonishing at times.

A aagh can't articulate properly on phone.

ComposHat

But then I don't understand how people get from that stage to buying into a particular religion and a particular sect or branch of that religion.

Don't understand much, do you? With all the religious people about, are you in a constant state of bafflement?

All the supernatural is, is phenomenon that has not been defined by science. Personally I do not think it is much of a stretch of the imagination to believe truth can exist beyond our (scientific) realisation of it.

That people can use other means to inform their beliefs than analysis does not surprise me. Did you use analysis to decide who to fall in love with?

Fair point gennz, my previous post was needlessly provocative

Such as erm... the existence of a single god who can intervene in the universe and that god being the judeo-christian god, (instead of say, any of the 100s of Hindu gods) a belief in the resurrection and the notion of the virgin birth.

Yes I know the majority of Christians don't believe in the literal truth of the bible, but I've never met any who deny the resurrection or the notion of Jesus as the son of

god or at least some supernatural element to their faith.

I can understand being curious about the possibility of an afterlife, at a push I can understand why people try and seek out some sort of meaning for their existence that has some sort of spiritual element to it. The idea that this world is all we have can be petrifying even to an atheist. But then I don't understand how people get from that stage to buying into a particular religion and a particular sect or branch of that religion.

But to say you've arrived at that through reason and experience mad? Really? What evidence? I am genuinely curious. Was your decision to follow the Christian faith based on an analysis of the rival truth claims of all the world's religions and all their many branches?

I'm not a believer but I'm always surprised and disappointed when otherwise rational, intelligent, well educated people are ignorant enough to shit on other's belief systems.

If it's a comfort to them who am to argue. They have every right to believe what they want to believe, as do I.

Now if it comes to trying to use religious beliefs to lobby on issues that affect other non-believers (say gay marriage or abortion rights) now that I do have a problem with. But if it's just having faith, taking comfort from your religion - well, good luck to you. It's no business of mine.

compos hat

Bye then, unless you wish to make the obligatory reference to Father Christmas first. Or the sky-pixie. Your choice.

Is a Jesus creeper like a Minecraft creeper? I'll inform ds, who seems to collect them.

Not sure what vast assumptions these are. Faith isn't simply suspension of disbelief - my faith is based on experience and reason. One without the other would be meaningless and 'blind faith' would be without these factors and so meaningless as well.

Oh well, composhat - you may me disappointed in me, but I like your username because it reminds me of Sunday afternoons by the fire arguing with my brothers eating toast.

Though of course I would agree it is pointless arguing...

ComposHat I am laughing at the irony of your post!

'They' ?! You do not know what any of us are prepared to do...

Such as?

I think some people are inclined to make vast assumptions anyway. That's the type of person they'd be, faith or not.