Confused - and this seems like a good day to ask

[AuntieBrenda]

Morning all!
I've been thinking this over for a while and thought that today see,s like a good day to start a thread:)
I have been feeling 'drawn' to Christianity for a few years now but I don't know if its because I really, truly believe or if its the sense of community and commonality of being with other people that attracts me, iykwim.

I lived in the USA for a little bit and really like US culture - I stayed facebook friends with a few people I knew and I'm always really impressed by their family orientated, pleasant, Christian communities and values. I chatted back and forth to a girl I know and I read The Shack which was quite good and answered a lot of questions I had.
My good friend (here, in this country!) is from a Christian family and over the last couple of years they have been welcoming me to be involved in their church and events they have. I was asked to be godmother for my friends children and I really liked their 'dedication' service where the pastor/ speaker said that the service was about supporting the children through their lives and allowing them to choose a Christian lifestyle should they wish when they are older.

For some of the events, the people in the church get a bit 'full on' and I find it a bit intense and uncomfortable - I don't mean to sound rude here. For example, I saw a man speaking intensely into a woman's face and commanding cancer to leave her body and I listened to a speaker once who, for some of the things she was saying, she was clearly lying and making things up.
Generally though, I find my friends family lovely, lovely people with a real message of love and goodness at their core.

I'm an academic person, I spend a lot of my time questioning, analysing and debating fact. I am wondering whether I really believe in Christianity or if I am just attracted to the good feeling that comes with being around good people.

I don't know what I'm asking really, I just wondered if anyone else has felt this way or can discuss this with me?

Have a nice day everyone

It's weird but my personal experience is that faith finds you sometimes. If you are drawn to christianity but not sure why then my advice would be to just explore it. You don't have to not question anymore, in fact you need to question but the answers might come slowly over time and not necessarily in expected ways.

I can completely understand where you are coming from about other people's expressions of faith feeling uncomfortable. I am a Catholic which I know others find completely bizarre but I also struggle with understanding other people's interpretation of their faith. Recently, a twist of fate found me listening to a fellow Christian with very different experience to mine, I found it very challenging to be honest but I believe God reveals himself to us in very different ways.

I hope you get the opportunities to look into what is right for you. Happy Easter by the way.

It sounds like you are in quite a charismatic church which isn't my cup of tea but I have good friends who are members and pastors in this stream. If you are interested in the more academic side of Christianity then have a look at books by Keith Ward, Rowan Williams, Alister McGrath, N T Wright and John Polkingthorne who all write well on heavy duty subjects. I sometimes need to lie down in a darkened room for a bit of a think after reading some of Rowan's work but it is worth the effort!

Happy Easter.

I agree with ginger - if you feel drawn to it, then pursue it - or pursue knowledge about it. I can understand about the things you find uncomfortable - I would say here that we're all human, we all get things wrong and sometimes things don't seem to sit right with some personalities but do with others. green for example is not really comfortable in a more charistmatic tradition but I am (caveat that it's not the conservative wing I'm into ) - ie as God made us all different, we all have different ways of expressing and finding faith, and for you it could be an exciting journey into what may be your expression.

There are lots of churches that do introductory courses - from Alpha to Emmaus with lots in between. As you mention you are quite academic, you might be interested in something like this Glad You Asked - it tends to be a little more cerbral than some of the other courses. It depends very much on the church, though - I've known some places do Alpha in a very academic way, and the experiential side is important as well.

Or you may wish to do some reading around and discussing rather than entering into something like that - and that's great too, green has some great suggestions there.

I wish you all the best in your journey :)

AuntieBrenda go for it. Faith is amazing, exciting, exhilarating but also disappointing at times and frustrating at others. Just like all the best relationships it is very broad! IMHO.

I come from an evangelical background, with a good degree of charismatic mixed in (C of E) and now finding myself more liberal! I've been a Christian for over 30 years and my faith is very important to me and it is always wonderful to hear of people finding faith at any age.

For me the good old C of E has the best and worst of it, there are times it is dull but also times it is wonderful, and it is very broad. If you are experiencing the more charismatic side that can be fantastic. Just remember that (IMHO) no one church has the total handle on God and maybe no one church fully fits so you may enjoy being in a more charismatic church at times and might join it, which would be lovely, and you still may not always agree with everything they say or do.

Good luck.

AuntieB I would recommend you read "Who Moved the Stone?" by Frank Morison as he started researching Christianity as a sceptic and was converted by what he discovered. I find it a challenging, academic read. I also like "The Screwtape Letters" by C S Lewis, which is completely different, but so on the button.

I love the way you are so sure that the woman you heard was "clearly lying and making things up". Coming from a charismatic church as I do, I think you may have the gift of discernment.

Do you believe in a god?

If so, yeah, why not join a branch of Christianity? Especially if you've got a local church that seems right for you.

If not, join a different type of community group. Or the Church of England (half joking).

Nowhere in your post do you mention god or belief. Only social stuff, especially people behaving nicely as a community. As an atheist I find that rather telling.

Living by doubt or living by faith...gosh, the former was a rubbishy existence (for me)

"Never ask for whom the bell tolls- it tolls for thee"
Sounds like he is calling you.

The bell quote was Hemingway btw!

AuntieB - not sure if you're still around (sorry - was away last week) but just to say that, yes, I think I understand how you're feeling. The difference (if I've understood correctly) in my case is that I was raised as a Christian but lost my faith in my late teens and was agnostic for most of my adult life. I never felt that I was an atheist - I always had a sense that there was 'something out there', but I would certainly not have described that something as God. (Does that make sense?)

As for you, I found some time spent in the US to be a turning-point for me. I started going to church there for all the wrong reasons (my kids were in a Catholic school - we weren't there long enough for them to have the right to access public education - and I thought it'd be less uncomfortable to say 'Oh, we're Anglicans', than to say 'We're not Christians at all') and found myself 'hooked'. I can't say that I went from not believing to believing overnight - it took a long time and some false starts and lots of doubting and 'giving myself a stern talking-to' - but slowly I came to realise that it might be OK to describe that vague sense of 'something' that I had been carrying around with me as 'God' after all - and that it would be OK if it stayed vague... I mean, that its vagueness didn't mean that it wasn't real.

At the same time, some friends of mine found themselves in the sort of situation that made me want to pray for them (the kind of situation where there's nothing practical that I could have done anyway, iykwim), and I made a conscious decision to try to pray, even though I was full of doubts at the time and half-convinced that it was all a waste of breath. At first, I just kept to the Lord's Prayer - it didn't feel right somehow to try to strike up a personal conversation with a divinity whom I wasn't even sure existed, whereas repeating phrases learned long ago in my childhood seemed just about OK - but I tried to say it every day, and after a while it stopped feeling 'wrong' and started feeling 'right' and so I kind of built up my ability to pray from that very simple starting-point.

And, to cut a long story short, I just sort of stuck at it. That was nearly 4 years ago now and I don't regret having taken that first step at all. I was lucky enough to find a church that suited me when I moved back to the UK, and there my faith has grown and developed.

I think I had a clear sense of what was important to me before I started looking for a church - somewhere fairly liturgical (at first, at least, I felt I needed the dependability of a service with a predictable 'shape' which recalled what I'd grown up with), somewhere where I could take communion regularly (I don't know why, but I always knew that this was central to my faith and that I'd need it to - excuse the pun - 'feed' me spiritually), and somewhere that was as liberal as possible in relation to all the usual issues around gender and sexuality etc. So what works for me is very different from the kind of church experience you describe, but as MHD says, that's not to say that one is 'right' and the other 'wrong' - it's about identifying what works for you. If you're not sure what it is you're looking for, don't be afraid to try out different types of churches until you find something you like. And bear in mind that what you want or need may change over time (I've now got quite into very simple services with a lot of silence, but at first that would have freaked me out - I needed far more structure).

I'm sorry for going on and on. I don't think there's an easy answer to the questions you ask, but the above is my personal experience. I wish you well in your search and would be happy to talk to you more if you're interested, but I should stop now lest you die of boredom!

Go for it. God is amazing (all you would wish for!). Sort out the knots and the weirdos as you go along but enjoy basking in the loveliness.

re the bloke doing that scary thing with the woman with cancer - I'm sure she didn't mind, cancer is a serious thing. It probably looked alarming from the outside, but not to her?

re The Shack, I love that book and re-read it (if I haven't given my latest copy away!). It represents the God I've come to know, anyway, and I never tire of it.

How exciting for you! I was brought up a christian but rejected it entirely until an experience in my early 20s and the awful thought dawned that God is real - I say 'awful' because it wasn't a comfortable time at all. I'm glad I grasped the nettle.