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

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

Are you a non-Christian?

I'm an atheist who used to be an Evangelical Christian, so I hope that frames what I'm about to say helpfully.

When I was a Christian I did think there was a 'faith from within' that you couldn't just copy across to someone else (as toothycat said in his post), but as an Evangelical I thought that Christianity was actually objectively true. So the evidence for it being true must be all around us in the world, in history, and the Bible must be more than just a collection of mystical platitudes that would only have meaning to the chosen few.

So as an Evangelical I wouldn't have bashed you with the bible, or pleaded that you'd believe or have the same kind of experiences as me. (Assuming we were friends and you were amenable to a discussion) I'd talk to you about why I believed what I believed, why you believed what you believed, and what we thought the rational arguments for and against one another's positions were.

Ultimately I'd believe that there would need to be a 'inner illumination' that I couldn't make happen myself (that would be up to you / God), but I didn't think the process of coming discovering if Christianity was true, and then coming to have 'faith' in it were disconnected from my brain and the rational world, something based entirely on emotions, circular reasoning, closing my mind off rationally from critically considering whether my faith was true, and blind leaps into the dark either.

Whether the Bible contains any useful truth that points towards Christianity being true is a different matter, and one which I'd probably give a different answer to now I'm not a believer :P

[fatkraken.livejournal.com]

I'm a not christian, yes, but I'm also British, and as such have encountered very little personal evangelism. We tend to keep our religion very much to ourselves. So most of what I perceive as evangelism is based on JW pamphlets we occasionally get through the door and US style televangelism seen on, well, telly. All of which seem to use the Bible as a starting point, assume it's true and go from there. I'm more than happy to hear that there are rational and sensible evangelists who use the bible as a subtle debating tool rather than a blunt instrument.

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

There are certainly a lot of Christians out there who have the approach of bashing people or annoying them as much as possible (think of some of the well known Christian preachers with megaphones in London for instance). The US televangelist style is pretty rare in the UK I think. Even Evangelicalism (a branch of protestant Christianity which most of those evangelists will belong to) is quite quite different in the UK compared to the states. Much more low key and reasonable. None of this shouting at people nonsense.

Most of my experience of Christian evangelism has been pretty low key compared to that, and at the moment I would say woodpijn and alextfish (sorry, I don't know if you know them as I don't know how, if, or where you fit in to the toothycat real world social circle) are 'evangelising' me by inviting me (not pressuring me) to their nice friendly church (which has nice carol services), and having low key but interesting discussions about belief. I've never once felt bashed by them (although I doubt they would say the same about me ^^;;)