| | My faith level is at a very low point right now, and it's affecting every facet of my life, putting me in a mild depression. My mind is full of questions and I have different answers for them, but I dont know which one is the right one. When the Apologetics class I'm taking at school started, I was really excited, but as time went on it just didn't seem to do that good of a job in defending my faith. Most of it was about attacking other faiths and worldviews and pointing out flaws in those rather than explaining some of the attacks on Christianity. I've heard the side from the Christian point of view, but what about the secular point of view? What's their take on Christianity? Someone was telling me that Apologetics has boosted their faith so much, and that's great. But they've heard an incredibly biased view, and I've had the pleasure/displeasure of hearing both sides. I've used arguments I learned in Apologetics against atheists/nonchristians in debates and they've refuted a lot of my arguments. When you hear only one side of a view, you're left with the idea that the "other side" doesn't have a counterpoint, when in fact, you're just not giving them a chance. Example: Creation vs. Evolution. We learned some supposedly irrefutable list of points that disprove evolution. I brought them up in a debate and they pointed out/proved that they were outdated or flat out incorrect. This doesn't mean I'm an evolutionist by any means (I'm still creationist for other reasons).
Another thing, and this pertains more to my personal faith. I've been struggling for the past couple weeks with the way my faith is conducted. Going to Grace Church + Youth group, Mars Hill, etc. I've been inundated with charismatic teachings such as prophecy, tongues, and worship in very weird ways. I've been taught stuff, but I never tried to affirm it myself. I simply took it as truth without any sort of doubt. There's the issue of prophecy which I'm going to research before I say anything that'll make an ass out of myself. Then there's the issue of tongues where they once tried to teach us how to speak in tongues by having some random words/combination of letters flash up on the screen that we would say. Again, I'm gonna study that topic some more before I make a decision about it, but that was incredibly questionable and still sticks out in my mind. Keep in mind I've never spoken in tongues or prophesied.
*You can skip this part if you want and go straight to the summary below it*
Then there's worship. There are people screaming, crying, laughing, twitching, laying on the ground, jumping up and down, and being absolutely crazy. I never really had a problem (I even used to do some of that) with it until recently. There was this feeling that would come over me when doing these kinds of things, they call it a "spiritual high" or other times it was the presence of God. It was something seemingly tangible, something that proved in my mind that Christianity was true. Then when i recounted this to an atheist in a debate, he said it was just mass hysteria. Basically, its a crowd of people together and their minds play tricks on them by giving them what they want. In other words, it's all in your head. I didn't think anything of it at the time and I was like "Whatever, pathetic cop-out". But recently in Apologetics class we saw a video about the New Age worldview and it showed a New Age convention. In it, there were about 1000 or so people, and they were all worshipping in totally absurd ways. But then it hit me that they don't look all that different in their manner of worship than we do. They rock back and forth, they dance, they scream, they jump up and down, and other very weird forms of worship, except it was for the purpose of freeing their minds and they were definitely getting into it. Then it showed interviews with some of the worshippers afterwards and some were crying, some were giggling, and some simply couldn't speak at all. It was ridiculous to watch, but then again, what do we look like?
[Summary: People worship in other religions worship and they look a lot like we charismatics do. Is what we feel when we worship actually the presence of God or is it simply the result of mass hysteria?]
So my question is this: Why do we believe in God? Is it based on your own experience? I'm a logic/reason type of guy, and experience just doesn't seem a logical reason to be a Christian. I don't have one of those amazing testimonies where God brought me out of my life of drugs, alcohol, and misery and set my life back on course and now I'm a good happy Christian. I was born into a Christian household. I grew up in the church. I almost didn't have a choice to be a Christian, and that worries me. If you were not a Christian, what reason would you have for becoming a Christian?
Please don't take this as my renouncing my faith, I still wholeheartedly believe in God, I'm just sort of restarting it, beginning with the basic tenets of Christianity and trying to get a foundation from which to build up on. This actually might be a good thing for me. I'm actually studying the Bible, using commentaries, and outlining passages. Maybe I'll re-read Mere Christianity. I missed half of what CS Lewis was saying the first time...
This took me 45 minutes to write. I don't have a life... |
