As requested, what I believe

[toothycat]

I believe there is a God.

I believe the Bible is a tool that has the purpose of pointing us towards God. This includes describing who God is, how to get in touch, and why one might want to; and also the kinds of things he has done for people and wanted from people in the past who did and who did not, and the kinds of things he has promised people in the past, and the kinds of things he promises us.
The people trying to read the Bible as an absolute set of rules for life, the people treating it as cyphertext and trying to decrypt it, the people trying to read every single bit literally... are missing the point.

I believe that in order to call oneself Christian, it is both necessary and sufficient to accept Jesus as God, place one's trust in him and strive to do his will, to the best of one's knowledge and ability. The placing of one's trust in God in particular is faith.

I believe the way one comes to a faith in God - to knowing God - to trusting God - is not a logical position that one can arrive at through intellectual discourse. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast." - Ephesians 2:8-9.
This personal revelation is something that happens to each individual internally, and is not transferrable; it is something that God gives you when you call out for it through repentful prayer. "For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." - Matthew 7:8
This is not to say that any spoken request for faith will automatically be granted as though from some mystical vending machine. The atheist who puts God to some form of double-blind test, then turns around to his Christian friends and says, "Hey, I did everything you said - went through all the motions - but nothing happened! You lied to me. Matthew 7:8 is a lie" - as I once did! - that person is missing the point. The seeking out, turning away from one's denials, calling for God - it must be meant; must come from inside; it is not what you say, but what you mean that will be given to you.

I call myself a Christian; I place my trust in God. This means that when, by some convoluted - or direct - theological intellectual reasoning someone points out to me that something Christians believe about God or something the Bible says about God or something I might opine about God leads to self-contradiction, or to an evil God, or a God that does not agree with the world as we see it just by looking around us, or some other flawed and unacceptable thing, this says to me not that Christianity is wrong and my faith unfounded but that my understanding is flawed. Participating in theological debates, I feel a bit like the popular image of the Zen monk surrounded by students trying to catch him out might; by the very act of opening one's mouth to start on some intricate disproof of God, one demonstrates one has already missed the point. cathedral_life was trying to show this to me years ago, I think. Faith in God is a function of trust, not one of mathematical proof. God cannot be pinned down with words. Mu and three pounds of flax to you all.

I realise this is a somewhat closed-minded and intellectually unsatisfying position. The truth is that for many of the intellectual problems with Christianity that I had as an atheist, before I became Christian, I still have no answers. Instead, I feel able to trust that for those questions that are not based on false assumptions, answers exist, and perhaps one day will be revealed.

Edit: some readers may not realise this, but this journal is actually shared by MoonShadow and SunKitten; beliefs, however, might not be. The above is MoonShadow's braindump, as requested by several people over the last few days; this earlier post was SunKitten's.

Comments

[toothycat]

Why have faith (in this sense) at all?

You say that as though I have some kind of choice.

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

Do you?

[toothycat]

Can you choose to disbelieve you are attracted to the ground?

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

If other people weren't attracted to the ground then "people are attracted to the ground" would obviously be wrong, yes.

[toothycat]

(a) You've changed my statement from one based on your perception of yourself ("you are attracted to the ground") to an objective one about other people. However, the form of the argument still holds in your formulation - given that you observe that people are attracted to the ground, can you choose to disbelieve it?

(b) Note that I am surrounded by people attracted to God.

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

The reason I did that is because you can both personally experience being attracted to the ground, and observe other people being attracted to the ground (or not). If there was a mismatch between what you experienced and what you saw other people experience then "people are attracted to the ground" would have to be wrong, it would need at least some tweaking to be consistent with the reality you observe.

Note that I am surrounded by people attracted to God.
Trying to connect your analogy to what we're talking about, it's like you are attracted to the ground (experience Yahweh) while others are attracted to walls (other Gods), and others float (are atheists). That's the disconnect, that's where things don't add up. Given that experience someone could say "Well, I know this explanation doesn't explain most of what I see around me, but I'm going to believe it anyway", which is I think what you're saying you do.

[toothycat]

If we're striving for a complete analogy, you've missed out the bit where you don't start being attracted to the ground until you genuinely want to be and call out to it. I'm pretty certain I described that part of the faith in the original post. That cuts away at the disconnect, rather. The other missing bit from the analogy is that I can't actually *see* what the pull or lack thereof feels like to anyone else - we're all in separate rooms, shouting to each other.

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

We can't see it happening to other people, but we know there are other people and we assume they don't make everything up, and they're relaying their experiences to us (which contradict without our own personal view).

It's not that our experience isn't happening, or that there's isn't. It's that our interpretation of our experience cannot be correct because if it doesn't account for the experiences others have. So you need a better explanation that encompasses everything that is happening.

In this case I'm thinking of things like "There is more than one God, people find different ones", "God appears in many guises", "God doesn't want to be found by everyone", etc.

[toothycat]

(which contradict without our own personal view)

...do they?

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I'm under the mistaken impression that Christian experience (as an absolute truth) is in some way contradictory with that of all the people who experience other gods or none, and that statements like "God wants you to know him, and he is all powerful so can do that" don't match up with "I looked for God but couldn't find him".

How silly of me! There are no contradictions at all!

[toothycat]

statements like "God wants you to know him, and he is all powerful so can do that" don't match up with "I looked for God but couldn't find him"

Well, they both fit in the overall worldview. Go back to my original post and reread - we've gone full circle now.