Does anyone want to talk about loss of faith?

[plotmissinginaction]

Just wondered off the back of the thread about christianity currently in AIBU if there was anyone else around who had once had faith but now doesn't.

I came to Christianity as a teenager when I was rather vulnerable and had first left my dysfunctional home (alcoholism in a parent for starters). I was very drawn to the sense of family there.

I went for it all in, was probably very annoying actually. I went to college and joined a church there. Then I got caught up in an abusive relationship and of course the church were the first people I turned to for help. They were toxic! Turned on me, said all the same things that he was saying and worse. Still I dropped out of college (to escape this guy) and went to bible school (by the skin of my teeth as I was told the wouldn't want some one 'like me' there.

Bible school was a new kind of hell. Very extreme. I was by this stage suffering from PTSD but told I must not see a Dr and that it was demonic activity that was a result of my own lack of faith. Once something was prayed for it was meant to be healed and if it wasn't then you didn't have enough faith. I had Christian counselling (from totally unqualified people) but was suffering nightmares, panic attacks, depression, flashbacks. I also so witnessed some very unpleasant treatment of other people that still disturbs me. A girl who was sexually abused as a child being made fun of in front of thousands of people in a prayer session, a gay friend being given his one prayer and abandoned then ending up in a psychiatric ward after throwing himself out of a car for being so sure he was going to hell. After a year I left the church and immediately felt better, saw a Dr, got anti depressants and a therapist and began the process of picking my life back up.

But it was a very sad, sad thing. I had really believed (although Christians now tell me that I can't have really believed or I wouldn't have lost my faith) and it was a great loss. Now having been back to uni and studied feminism Christianity just doesn't fit with my world view anymore but I still feel a bit of jealousy when I see my old bible school friends with their faith in tact.

It wasn't actually the problem of suffering that took my faith but now I do wonder how I made it fit. The problem with saying god's hands are tied is that most Christians maintain that god is involved in their life and not just passively floating about. So which is it? Either he's hands off or hands on when it suits him. And how come it suits him to be hands on in wealthy countries and practically hands off in the third world. He's either pretend or cruel.

I wouldn't expect you to buy it, deep. I know it falls short of 'logic'. I know that.

But the character you describe I simply don't recognise. I would never worship that either.

Interesting that though, hih. Statistics show that in certain terms God is much more 'active' in the third world. Many, many more everday experiences of God at work and of God transforming situations.

I know what you mean about making it fit. I could tie myself up in knots for ever trying to come up with a good solution that satisfies me in terms of the problem of suffering, but in the end it isn't there. But it's there I find God anyway, in the mystery.

God is active and present in lives, and people also have free will and do what they want to do. There is both, and sometimes it's a paradox.

I'd love to see those statistics mad.

What's your definition of an everyday experience of god at work? See if you're going to say 'oh he fed that family so they didn't die' then why didn't he feed the other families that did. He's either imaginary or horrible.

"You are not "saved" and "unsaved" - Catholic theology believes that God looks at our entire life and we even still have mercy after death as we believe in Purgatory (which is Biblical). It's Protestant theology that says if you didn't say the right words at the right time or screw up that you are "unsaved".

Catholics believe that we are created good by a loving, merciful God but we need to be saved from sin. Protestant theology believes we are need Jesus to "cover" us so God doesn't see how repellent we are.

Calvinism is the logical extreme - no free will and we are all predestined for Heaven or Hell.

Catholics believe all people Catholic or not can go to heaven and that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ - not just believers."

YY to the above.

As a teenager, I attended a methodist church, and found the leaders and my "friends" there to be very controlling, judgmental and competitive in their faith. It was very unhealthy.

I know that the Catholic Church is not without fault and is far from perfect, but I have found the priests and deacons and everyone involved to be the least judgemental people I've ever met.

I converted to Catholicism about 7/8 years ago nobody has ever tried to make me feel guilty, or tried to tell me what I should/should not be doing. I was made to feel so welcome and wasn't judged at all even though I had two children outside of marriage and wasn't in a great hurry to get married. The children were baptised and welcomed into the church even before I had converted. I have since married their dad!

The whole abuse scandal shook my relationship with the church to the core, and as a result of not attending church, my faith waivered. I've recently started attending mass again with my DCs, and again, no one has been anything but welcoming. Throughout the times when we weren't attending, our priest still used to pop in for a cup of tea regularly.

In homilies, our priests often acknowledge that our faith is a journey, and there are times when we are more and less faithful. I am still surprised to this day about the Catholic church...it is nothing like I was expecting it to be, and what I had lead to believe it would be like by my mum, who was brought up Catholic.

Actually I was thinking about my own journey earlier. The hardest part for me was knowing I couldn't really talk to anyone about it. Not that I shouldn't but that anyone I spoke to would either have a vested interest in getting me to believe what they did or wouldn't have an opinion anyway so I had to think it through myself. That was quite frustrating for me.