Believing in God

[TooBusyByHalf]

On an earlier thread I asked where does belief in God come from? I got lots of really helpful replies, recommended reading, and people telling me the stories of how they came to believe.

The more I read (and talk to people - though that part still makes me squirm a bit!) the more I come across the view that you can't reason your way to faith. You can rationalise it when you get there but the faith part seems to be pretty much you either feel it or you don't.

Which is depressing, because I want to feel it but I can't. And I have no idea really how MN can help me with this one or why I've started another thread on this topic except that I have no-one to talk to in RL about this and lots of you have been really nice to me before.

TooBusy I'm not trying to sway you either way, as it's your decision to make but if you want the sense of community, charitable works etc without God or religion then the Humanists are a lovely group. I concluded I didn't believe after a long time and that filled the elements of religion I missed. I first went to one of their socials when still a Catholic, so you don't have to be an atheist to go and chat.
It sounds that at the moment you are happy exploring religion, but just thought I'd mention it in case it's of use. Hope all goes well

Hi TooBusy,

Based on my experience in my own community, I think if you do go a few times, and are on your own, the vicar will approach YOU to come and say hello and find out about you. :)

And another thing I thought, is that you probably don't need to DO more than you already do. Try letting go a little and let things come to you. But the experience of being in a congregation might help you.

Whichever way you go about it, I hope you find happiness and fulfilment. :)

I went to a cathedral in my lunch hour today (working away from home). Was sitting in the Lady Chapel behind the altar trying to pray for about 20 mins when suddenly a mic'd up priest started a service loudly just behind me which I totally wasn't expecting. I joined in (by heart, it was so easy to remember) for a while but unfortunately I had to go back to the office - bit embarrassing to have to leave in those circs!

After being an athiest for 40 years I was drawn to my church after my Dad passed away suddenly. My faith did not come immediately and it took about 5 months of attending before I felt it was for me. My pastor was lovely and spoke to me every week and answered all my questions - even the dumb ones! I can only suggest you visit for a while and see how it goes. Hope all goes well for you.

Thanks for posting OP. You are very brave. I have been in a similar situation to you, so I'm watching with interest. It seems that you are open to God, which is a huge first step. I agree with posters upthread that prayer is essential, and finding a church that suits you.

I have no other explanation than I was called. I had been called all my life and fought it. I eventually stopped fighting the call, I asked God to reveal himself to me, and he did. He was the God of Abraham issac and jacob....and his messiah was the Christ.

The calling was not a feeling, but a knowing.

you are you. if you are going to come to faith, you will do it in a way that is most approriate to you. God will put the right people, circumstances and information in the way. you will have to decide for yourself though whether you go for it or not. sometimes that comes first before the faith or feeling the faith. your experience will not be the same as someone elses as you are different.

how about asking the dog walking vicar to walk the dog with you.... if they are any good at listening to God and you, they will talk to you about what you need to know.

or go back to the same communion that you went to last week.

there is not requirement that you do church on a sunday. you could do the communion in the week in your lunch hour if you want to explore faith this way without it impacting on your partner too much until you are sure of what you want to do.

Hello TooBusy :) I'm so pleased we can accompany you on this journey as you explore stuff.

My dh is a vicar, and I can say that he would be delighted if someone rang him and asked for a chat about God. It would be his absolute favourite thing to do. I think most vicars feel the same - it's an incredible privilege to walk a bit of a journey with someone.

I feel I can't be as helpful from my own experience as I was raised in a Christian home, but friends who have become Christians have often said there wasn't a sudden 'lightbulb' moment or damascus road experience, it was more a gradual realisation or awakening. Some say that they made a decision based on facts rather than feeling, and the feeling came later on, or sometimes didn't - all our personalities are so different, and thus how we experience faith is so different. God definitely speaks to those who need it in a more cerebral way, in my experience, and to others through emotions.

I have a a couple more book recommendations, sorry to add to the list but you might find them interesting. The first is Surprised by joy by CS Lewis which tells of an academic atheist's journey to faith.

The other is Simply Christian by Bishop Tom Wright who explores the fundamentals of Christianity in an accessible but considered and intelligent way.

I wouldn't try to 'convince' or 'convert' with words, I think we all find our own path and everyone is different, but this kind of reading can really help you think about the issues involved.

Thanks dawn and smile - it's reassuring that so many people have been here too.

Reeky I wish it was as simple as that for me!

BES I am torn. On the one hand I feel like I'm already being dishonest to DP so I need to resolve the Sunday issue soon. But I also found out today that the 3 churches within 5 mins of my office all have services on Tues/Weds/Thurs lunchtimes. So I will definitely try out the other 2 over the coming weeks.

MHD thank you for the book recommendations and for the reassurance on the vicar front - there's 100% agreement on that which is good .
I was raised in a Christian home too - that is certainly no barrier to being an atheist! It is comforting that I know the rituals already but I'm coming at this from first principles really this time so it's very different from the first time around iyswim.

abbeyroad thank you for the suggestion. I have looked into humanism a bit in the past. As an atheist I thought I shared most of humanism's values and beliefs although I never became involved directly. I think what put me off in the end was the emphasis on secularity as a kind of truth or universal answer, which seems to deny the experience of so many religious people. But my thinking about all this is very woolly because the humanists and anglicans I know have a lot more in common in terms of values, it seems to me, than say those anglicans have with the Westboro Baptist Church though they are supposed to be followers of the same religion.

God will put the right people, circumstances and information in the way. you will have to decide for yourself though whether you go for it
Today I got an email from the vicar advertising a course in June for confirmation or 'anyone who wants to explore or renew their faith'.

So I guess that's a decision moment.

how long have you got to decide?

it is a big step telling your partner, if you are going on the course I suspect you will have to.

I know she ridiculed the email that came, but she was doing that from the perspective of you also being of the ridiculing it mindset. she does not know you have changed, and moved away from the out and out athiest to more not sure position. one would hope that she could refrain from the ridiculing once she knows you want to explore. debating and discussing, fair enough. incredulity that you are even considering changing your perspective, possible. I am assuming you are together because you like each other and therefore would put up with a bit of difference here or there and want to be mice to each other...

good luck with your decision.

my thoughts with the lunchtime services were you could go to two or three and then decide whether it was something you wanted to do, without the pressure of her ridiculing before you have started. you would then be in a better position to decide whether you want to explore further and tell her so. sound s like you are nearly at the point of needing to tell her anyway.

also you could go to church in lunch breaks, and not impact on your weekend together so she does not feel she is losing you to church. does not mean that you need to hide this from her, more that it is not necessarily having an immediate impact on your life together, which could be one of the worries for her.

Dear TooBusy

Where I have sympathy with you is this but the faith part seems to be pretty much you either feel it or you don't

I think from what you have written is that I, like you , would love to have unshakeable faith. I don't. I have enough to try. I think from the fact you could be bothered to write this post means so have you. (i.e. enough to try) .

The pp whose husband is a priest wrote such a lovely thing about just going to talk to someone who would really like to speak to you , doubts and all.

All the best
HL

Hi HL, thanks. I'm starting to think of it that way too

BES yes, it is a big step. Funnily enough the email from the vicar started with those words - "Time for a big step?"

You make a really good point about DP not wanting to lose our family Sundays to church - that would be hard on all of us. And I expect I'd never become a regular 10am-on-a-sunday-type church-goer for just that reason, so if I do go back it might be partial - and mixed up with lunchtime services, and 8am, and I hope evensong which I love. I'd have to travel further for that though.

Her likely response is another issue. Incredulity I imagine certainly. I don't think she would ridicule me if she could see that I was serious. (She is a nice person!) Worse I think is that she will be disappointed. It will make her sad that (in her view) our social and moral compasses are no longer aligned, and she will think, even if she doesn't say it, that I am going a bit mad.

But the main thing for me now is this skulking about is dishonest. I am lying to her by omission and I need to start talking to her about this however she responds.

And, anyway, it's Whitsun (isn't it?), and I want to sing a hymn or two, so there's no time like the present....

On the off chance anyone is still reading this self-indulgent navel-gazing small personal saga of mine, I did it!!

I told DP this morning, went to church, and emailed the vicar about the course.

It's fair to say DP is horrified.

TooBusy: you are very brave. I'm keeping you in my prayers.

Not at all self indulgent TooBusy. It's lovely reading about the start of your - hopefully very fulfilling - journey. I 'm sure your DP will come round. My DP is an atheist so I have some sympathy.
I hope you will continue to let us know how you get on.

Another one with an atheist other half who has been reading your posts with interest too. Dh doesn't really say much about my faith, I wish he would too be honest, even if we disagree I would like to discuss it with him so at least I can show him that I haven't gone blindly to faith (I have always had it but it was pretty nominal until a year ago). He does now say "enjoy mass" when me and ds go on Sunday's and asks us afterwards how it went which is a step forward from pretending our odd little secret didn't exist .

Definitely not self-indulgent, TooBusy. I have been thinking of you.

It will be OK with your DP. She will need some time to get used to it and to understand that you are still 'you'. My DH feared, I think, that I'd turn into a different person (you know... a 'tutty' sort of disapproving person!), and - while I may feel different on the inside - I think that he has been reassured to see that on the outside I am reassuringly the same (still a lefty, liberal, open-minded, sometimes sweary, definitely not holier-than-thou kind of person). The only way you can reassure you DP re. the alignment of your moral compasses (great way of putting it) is by showing that, even if you beliefs have changed, your values have not...

Be open with her, but bear in mind that she may not want to know too much at this stage... at least, that's how my DH is. He's happy to hear funny stories about who fell asleep during the sermon or whatever, but he doesn't want to discuss theology, and that's OK with me.

I wish you well.

Agree with Tuo, am also sure your DP will come around as she sees you haven't changed outwardly. Reading many of the faith v atheism posts on here over the years has opened my eyes to how Christians are often perceived and as another lefty, liberal type I would like to say that the perception I have read about is about as far in reality from me and what I believe (and that of other believers I know) as you could get. I am sure when your DP sees that you don't show signs of morphing into this caricature she will be OK. All of this if you decide that the faith route is for you of course.

Thank you everyone. I don't intend to talk to DP about it at all unless she asks. She kept popping back to the subject all day yesterday; she really does think people of faith are bonkers and smug. She also thinks it's a phase, which of course it might be, but the irony that that's what many parents say when their children come out as gay is not lost on her either.

I have been googling choral evensong this morning - 3 options near the office - yay

I am just so relieved that it's not a secret anymore. I know I've replaced one source of anxiety with another but it feels much less terrifying now.

Thank you all for your support - I wouldn't have got this far without you.

Just thought I’d post something as I’ve been in your situation too but in the role of your DP as it was my partner who became a Christian. As others have said, there is an element of concern that the other person is no longer who you thought they were, and that’s unsettling.

But I’d also add a couple of other thoughts that were more troubling for me at the time:

• Is all this (Christianity) really going to make him happier?
• Will I now be considered not good enough as a non-Christian, no matter how much love I pour out towards him?

Reassurance on those two points would have helped me.

Sending you best wishes TooBusyByHalf. You sound really committed to making it work for the two of you. With tolerance and love on both sides, I think you will be able to get through to the other side of this tricky transition period.

Thank you out that's really helpful, thanks for posting. Is there anything in particular that your DP did that was really difficult for you to understand or accept?

I think my DP's first fear was that I might be turning to God because as she put it she 'doesn't look after me well enough'. But it's definitely nothing to do with any failing on her part so I've tried already to reassure her on that front.

The truth is that I don't know if it will make me happier and that's not really the point either - I don't know what the point is!!

I know some Christians feel that others who are not are just wrong or even condemned. My DP is an ex-Catholic which, the way she tells it, was certainly an upbringing that didn't encourage tolerance of other faiths/no faith. You are definitely right that I need to make sure that she understands that I am never going to be judging other peoples choices about that.

I know how you feel TooBusy . I would love to be part of a community of like-minded people supporting each other in their aim to live an ethical life but I have no 'faith'.

I took encouragement in my quest to find encouragement to be 'good', strangely enough from Alain de Botton's book, 'Religion for Atheists'; he articulated my gut feeling about religion in general. IMO most religions have the same aim and differ mostly on the details.

At the same time I got to know a Buddhist family and spotted a leaflet about doing meditating in a local venue. Recently I've been doing a course at a Buddhist Centre and meditating several times a week. I don't know if I'll ever describe myself as a Buddhist - I used to describe myself as 'culturally a Christian' but the Buddhist emphasis on our place within the greater scheme of things makes a lot of sense to me. It's possible to be a 'secular' Buddhist, though I suspect that a lot of, perhaps even most Buddhists, have a belief in some form of 'metaphysics,' for want of a better word. In case you didn't know Buddhism does not believe in a deity.

For me the challenging 'faith' part is a feeling that I should trust that I will develop spiritually through studying Buddhist teachings, spending time in the Buddhist community and meditating, instead of giving up because of my usual feeling that I can't commit wholly to it because there are a few aspects that I don't like or would give less priority.

My partner is extremely 'scientistic' and uncommunicative at the best of times so I can't discuss my newly discovered Buddhist tendencies with him - at the time we got together I had just lost my Christian faith and was strongly atheistic.

Anyway, best wishes with your moral and spiritual development TooBad. My advice would be to follow the Christian path if you feel it's right for you at the moment - if it turns out not to be, that's okay - the best path is not always the first one or the easiest one IME.