Have you ever had a calling from God?

[stanzaorganza]

My neighbour is an accountant. He is 33, married to a lovely woman and has no children. They are both very Christian and regularly talk about God in everyday conversation ie. when they got married they could feel God’s presence etc.

He has recently had a calling from God to try a long held dream to become a singer. He says he has felt God leading him down this path and can no longer refuse him.

This is all great but what does a calling from God actually involve? What’s the difference between that and just deciding you fancy a career change? As a non Christian this is not something I have ever experienced but interested to find out.

And I have no desire to defend the indefensible - I struggle with it daily. Injustice, inequality, access (to water for some people ffs). Life, viewed universally is so basic for some people. But ultimately we cause much of the inequality. Is it wrong that something reminds us of this.

I can only speak for myself but my rage with God appears when I am disappointed that he isn’t doing something I expect him to do. When I examine this, it is always because I am not doing what I should be doing and other people treat me accordingly.

So many churches/ Christians work in refugee camps. That’s their faith driving them to volunteer and provide food and shelter, often with their own funds, to support war torn nations.

Many atheists work in refugee camps. That’s their humanity driving them to volunteer and provide food and shelter, often with their own funds, to support war torn nations.

And your point is...?

@Sandman

This is linguistics.

Compassion, expertise, humanity calls people everyday to do things to help others. A very human recognition of the suffering of others. No one owns the copyright on that. It is the human in all of us that responds. To sustain that, some people call on a supernatural force to help them in what can seem like a supernatural or mammoth task. It is as much a cry for hope and help as it is anything else. Others are rational and can see a different way. As individuals we all have different ways to cope.

Do atheists want extra points for not relying on God? What does that say about your views on your fellow man? Are we not allowed to be weak and fearful, scared and lost? These are all human experiences - we try not to act from that place but we still have those feelings.

Trump spouts shit like that.

So how do you feel about a God that can stop a child being raped but chooses not to?

That to me is the funds question.

Because let's say I'm wrong. And God does exist. Why would you want to follow someone who not only has directly done the atrocities that he has committed that come from the bible. But continues to allow further atrocities to continue. Some even in his name.

@TheSandman

It was in response to someone saying where is God when it comes to Syria.

@Fedhimtotigers

Sorry, you’ve triggered me.

Some people who have experienced, just exactly that, may think their faith supported them. At a time when they needed love and support, that it came from God and only God, because no one else was there.

Without my faith I believe i wouldn’t have had the resilience to get through my life. I firmly believe, without prayer I would not have survived my teenage years. That doesn’t need to be the same for you. But you DO NOT speak for all children, teens and adults affected by sexual assault, abuse and rape because you DO NOT speak for me.

@Fedhimtotgers
If that was aimed at me than I can tell you I feel disgust anger and rage. I want to give up as all I see is complacency. When I think about it, I realise it is human complacency and I get very angry when people say it’s not my job to deal with that. I feel despair at what we subject children to and how we can hold our heads up as adults knowing this godson in our society.

My instinct is to run away from it and protect my loved ones and self by staying in a bubble. That’s what I want to do and I want to lock up the perpetrator and throw away the key after subjecting them to real pain. Just thinking about it makes me angry. But I also know that that doesn’t stop these things happening again or undo the harm that has been done. In that situation, my couch has to be on supporting the victim and using all my strength to help them in anyway I can.

Couch? Focus

@Beebie2

X

No I don't.
But by Christians own admission God speaks into the war of people. He is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient.

So he does have the power to stop these things happening. He just doesn't want to.
Why? To teach someone a lesson?
To punish them?

I'm not saying what someone should or shouldn't believe.

I just think if he does exist no one can say he is good. Or he is kind. He is abusive.

@Girlinterruption2020 But again. God is doing it.
So do you think good people murder, rape and kill?

No. Neither do I do things based on intuition or a calling from the universe! My job (teaching) is one which people often call a vocation/calling. I did decide on it very early, but because it fitted in with what I enjoyed and was good at, not because there was some deity or mystical pull making me do it!

Those who do not subscribe to Christianity or any faith are just as prevalent in those sectors as the non religious I didn’t mean to imply they are not.

Thank you for clarifying. The section I quoted seemed at odds with the rest of your paragraph.

For what it's worth, I have no issue with spirituality, seeking meaning, asking questions. What I take issue with is the notion of surrendering to an all powerful being and attributing actions to the word and threats (depending on the individual interpretation) of that being (or rather how some bloke has interpreted 'the word' for their own ends) rather than being driven by humanity and love and being responsible for our own actions.

@Fedhimtotigerd

People are doing it. Real, live people. And they do it largely because they can. They are not stopped.

This is nothing to do with God and all to do with practical things like our policies on criminal behaviour.

God, for me, is what I call on when the practical things are no longer working. I said something similar upthread but I think when you experience difficulty, your own emotions can prohibit you taking the steps you need to take to make changes. Stopping the attempt to control things (which is what I think stress makes you do) just gives you a chance to realign and see things differently. Handing over control to the universe, God, the big Lebowski, whoever just allows you to relinquish control of your self sufficiently to adjust in a new way.

I think there are some big misconceptions here about what God is or isn’t. To me, it is the human and emotional safety valve humans have created out of need over the years. When the pressure gets too much, we turn off the heat metaphorically and transcend our sense of self to a place of peace and return when the temperature has cooled down. We then continue with the very real practicalities of life. Time with God is time out, in another state of being, that boosts our emotional immune system for the real world but we are very much part of it and have agency in it. It is using this agency that is exhausting not the agency itself.

Gd doesn’t physically do stuff like make someone do something bad ( that could be mental illness).

Omnipotence and omnipresence just mean to me that we have the power in any situation to direct use our agency. OUR agency.

@Girlinterruption2020 So you don't believe in a God.
You don't believe that there is a real being that can do as Op has said?

I find things like this fascinating, because philosophically it would appear highly unlikely that free will truly exists. Yet I have had two experiences that I think show predestination and a 'calling'.

As a child, I would find straws, or bits of material, and I would twiddle them in a specific way between my index finger and thumb - and I would do it because there was this feeling I was trying to recreate - no idea what it was, but I knew I wanted to recreate it.

Many years later in physio training I was taught how to use suction tubing. That was the feeling - I instantly recognised it. That was the predestined one

10years later, someone came to do an in-service training about craniosacral therapy. Everyone around me was very sceptical and hardly listening - and I could hardly listen too, because my physical response was overwhelming - I felt shaky and about to faint - but so excited, because I knew, totally KNEW this was for me.

I truly believe I was called at that point. Because I had no reason to want to do it until then.

I may not be a very good Christian btw. I’m most probably not. But I try my best to be a good person and am definitely more in communion with good atheists than some Christians I know.

Oh dear, I ‘ve killed the thread.

I like this cartoon:

Oh dear, I ‘ve killed the thread

It's in a better place now 🙏

Ha ha!

I think a lot of it depends on what you experience as a family and the institutions that support you. If you were always from poor or socially disadvantaged communities and priests were the only one who educated you and church hospitals were the only ones that looked after you then you will see them as good. If however, you were firmly seated in society in a comfortable position you may see the church as something that holds back your progression as a society. But then we ‘ve seen where that leads, haven’t we. And we let Dominic Cummings walk in the front door of No 10.

@Fedhimtotigers do you assume a Christian has never been raped as a child? Experienced extreme suffering? It is often the case that a non believer finds faith because of these terrible things.

I read somewhere once before I became a Christian that everyone who is aware they are about to die, will beg God to save them. Atheist or not. I thought it was rubbish until I had a near death experience and during those horrendous moments of total terror, I absolutely did beg God to let me live. Oddly enough the fact that I did live didn’t actually make me any less of an atheist for a good few more years.