Has anyone found/rediscovered faith/religion in an unorthodox way? Would you mind sharing how?

[KatieMarieJ]

Hi all,

I've name changed for this as I know just how fruit loopy it might make me sound.

I just wondered if anyone would be willing to share their more unorthodox routes into believing in something?

I'm not talking about stuff like christened as a child or cultural expectations, missionaries at the door or marrying into a new faith. I'm talking about stuff that's blindsided you really into something new, or reminded you of something old.

K :)

Not so much the entire way there but I had a weird “road to Damascus” style turning point a couple of times.

In one instance, I was going through a phase where I saw human emotion, human fleshyness as a weakness and a burden, an unwanted limitation, something I wished to cast off. And I had a dream. In my dream was a woman who my mind read as god - not God as in the trinity that I know now but a different kind of god. Now I read that woman as lucifer. Anyway in my dream this “god” demanded I kill a baby. And I did it. Just a reflexive obedience. And once I had done on it I was filled with horror and I realised that baby represented all life. And in that moment I could feel the woman’s hatred for life. That it was messy and chaotic and grew and mutated. That it ruined the perfection of an angular, sterile world of pure spiritual forms. I felt the hatred so strongly and it horrified me. I woke up and went to turn on the light because I was shaken up but once it was on my vision went black and shattered into hundreds of triangles and I collapsed to the floor.

Nothing of that nature has happened to me before or since and I’m really not one to go in for weird mystical stuff normally but it was a major turning point for me. I decided I loved love. I loved that we are embodied. I loved life and all it entails. And it enabled me to come to terms with the Christian worldview that rejects the gnostic perspective on this world and understand that - the fall notwithstanding - it is good.

I really can’t explain how transformative that one weird dream was. I went from being a sullen misanthropic kind of person to someone who as cynical and whiney as I am on the surface mostly just finds life and the world beautiful and worthy and feels awed and privileged to be part of it.

perfection of an angular, sterile world of pure spiritual forms.

That sounds so ugly.

That sounds so ugly.

In many ways, yes.

I'm not sure how spiritual could be sterile or angular.

Vitalogy- I agree.

DieAntword I don't really understand your post.

Is this dream/experience something that turned you off or on to christianity?

It was the start of a journey toward Christianity.

Still not sure I get it.

You describe christian spirituality in such a negative way.

I didn’t describe Christian spirituality at all did I?

just finds life and the world beautiful and worthy and feels awed and privileged to be part of it. That's fantastic then.

OK, but to me the dream sounds interesting.

I see female spirituality as dark, dirty, messy and sacred.

I see christianity as ordered, structured, perfectionist and yes angular and sterile.

If that is not your take, that's fine- it's your dream after all.

Christianity takes both the transcendent perfectionism of spirit and the messy earthiness of life and flesh and unites them in one being - Christ. He is both human and God and contains the fullness of both humanity and divinity. Immenence and transendence in one. Lucifer hâtes humanity because God chose to make us - beings of dust and mud and dirt - the pinnacle of creation. Which is the standard reversal throughout the bible - the seemingly lowly made high. The stone that the builder rejected becoming the capstone. Lucifer doesn’t think we are worthy of divinity but God gifted us his son that we might become divine. Every time we hate ourselves or humanity or what it means to be alive we align ourself with lucifer and every time we love life and look upon it and “see that it is good” we have God in our hearts.

Each to their own- I don't do the god/lucifer thing.

But I am not a christian.

Christianity takes both the transcendent perfectionism of spirit and the messy earthiness of life and flesh and unites them in one being - Christ. He is both human and God and contains the fullness of both humanity and divinity.

How do you know this?

God chose to make us - beings of dust and mud and dirt - the pinnacle of creation.

I'm pretty sure we're not made of dust, mud and dirt. And if humans are the best that God could manage as a creation, then he seems quite flawed. Human beings are far from being perfectly formed animals.

Lucifer doesn’t think we are worthy of divinity but God gifted us his son that we might become divine.

So we are created, then told that we are sick, but that God has the cure and we must follow him to save ourselves. What monstrous mind-games is he playing here, preying on the vulnerable?

Every time we hate ourselves or humanity or what it means to be alive we align ourself with lucifer and every time we love life and look upon it and “see that it is good” we have God in our hearts.

How do you know we have God in our hearts?

How I know: revelation as passed down by the church.
We were not created sick but became that way when we rejected life.

Who is "rejecting life"?

Everyone multiple times a day. That is what sin is, corruption of the beauty and glory of life. Being less than we can be.

I don't "reject life" several times a day, neither does any of my closest.

I am not a sinner. My family are not sinful.

Tar and feather yourself as much as you want to- fill your boots- but don't tarnish me or others with that brush.

Well ok then you are already a saint. But in my life I have never met such a person and I am ceirtainly not one so for me these things all apply. I have done several sinful things today from being criminally lazy to raising my voice and being impatient with my toddler.

Well ok then you are already a saint

You are being rude here.

I don't accept the idea of sin.

I am a momo sapien- no more- and I am perfect good at being a human being.

I reject the idea of being " flawed" or sinful, I hate the idea that we have to strive to perfection.

Let me put it this way- would you look at a herd of 40 elephants and say that they do " sinful" things, that they are less than perfect?

No because they are perfectly good at being elephants. They may steal some food from another or nudge each other a little hard, but they are still perfectly good at being elephants.

The idea of sin is abhorrent to me. Especially the idea that we are born into sin.
Yes we all goof up sometimes, but to view that as sin or rejecting life is scary.

Homo Sapien

How is the term “goof up” any different to the term “sin”?

I don’t know if elephants strive for perfection but part of being human is that we do (our idea of it) whether we think we should or not. We want to be better than we are and pursue it. That isn’t a bad thing, if I just accepted being impatient with my kid I’d be shouting at him constantly because it gets my anger out and temporarily makes me feel better instead of trying to rein it in.

And really you don’t have to engage at all. You aren’t a Christian and I am. No one is forcing you to be.

No one is forcing you to be.

Not strictly true though is it.

I was indoctrinated at school, my kids have been indoctrinated at school we have unelected church members making laws at Westminster.
Non christians get a poorer choice of state funded schools for their kids.

Christian privilege is thriving.

How is the term “goof up” any different to the term “sin”?

So babies are born without sin?

By that comparison children only become sinful when they start to goof up- at what age then? 2? 3 . 5 years old?

No the church tells us we have the stain of sin from te moment of birth- conception even- quite a different thing to "goofing up".

I was a rabid scornful atheist of the Dawkins variety, until my 30’s.
I had a Damascus road conversion at my husband’s funeral.
I was standing at the graveside, we had just lowered the coffin, and I was utterly bereft. Empty of everything except grief and pain, I wanted to throw myself into the grave with my DH.
At that lowest point in my life, with everything else stripped away, I had a direct encounter with God. I was aware of His presence within me, and He was not only infinitely compassionate towards my loss, He actually took my pain and sorrow and suffered it Himself instead. I felt the whole burden lift off my shoulders, I felt suffused with love and transformed.
I was so shocked by the sheer unexpectedness of it, I was unable to talk about it for a week. A week during which I was being carried by God, my responses to people were His words rather than mine.
I finally managed to discuss my experience with the wonderful minister who had taken the funeral, and following that I became a Christian, regular churchgoer and even taught Sunday school for a few years.
I think God is here all the time, with us and around us, but we are so absorbed in the distractions of life that we don’t tune into Him. To give an analogy, as an atheist, I was denying the existence of the BBC while refusing to turn on my radio. They broadcast all the time, but you need to be willing to receive it!

The church doesn’t teach that babies are born with any fault (neither mine nor others as far as I know) but that we are born with an inborn tendency toward sin. So we are born already having an over reach and misdirection of our natural (and when correctly channeled, sinless) emotions - anger, fear, lust etc.