Thoughts and Prayers: The Religion Thread

And your contribution to that, far as I can tell, is to say it’s mental illness, dodge my question about your religion, call me cute and say again we have a mental illness.

which, OK. I’m asking you: What are you getting out of that? You obviously like posting ITT. Is there something you’d like to share other than how stupid and mentally ill we all are?

I’m pretty open minded. Maybe it is mental illness, and you’re the sane one. So...share sanity with us.

 

I’m very sorry about your wife. I mean that. I also mean it when I say I respect your grief and position. I think you’re offering a valuable perspective.

 

Totally agree with this post

 

Let me add something about the thread here: I’m just not sure what we’re talking about half the time because it’s very hard to gauge on a message board people’s intent.

yab’s posts, for example, generally have a clear intent. However I feel about them, I know where they’re coming from.

some of the other posts, it’s hard to gauge. Are they supposed to be patronizing? Questioning? Rhetorically critical? I try to image a message board like a discussion circle, in a sense, and I’ve been in enough religious talks to know when there’s a person who has no particular point in mind beyond saying cryptic stuff that’s designed to shame the idea of even having the discussion.

 

It's a fantastic discussion.

 

I’m sorry and I hope for better days for your wife.

 

I'm sorry for what your wife and you have had to endure, 'yab. I'm quite aware that there is next to nothing any of us can say to lessen your pain or her suffering.

I stay out of this thread 99% of the time, because none of us can say anything about religion with any certainty other than what our personal beliefs are.

I hope that over time you are able to find a place of peace, even if that seems impossible now.

 

I have every right to say that he should get off the thread for a while. No one -- no one -- to my knowledge, has ever posted toward him the way he posts, repeatedly, toward people of the Christian faith. No one -- no one -- to my knowledge, has ever called him a fucktard -- again, repeatedly -- over his religion or faith, or lack thereof. No one -- no one -- to my knowledge, has ever been anything but sympathetic about his wife and her condition. Indeed, the grief and pain of it was acknowledged in the very first line of my post, as clearly and strongly as I could write it. Everyone, including me, is sorry about it. Again, no one could help but be so, and again, there's no way anyone couldn't get his viewpoint.

He can be angry. But he can take it out on the God he is really railing against, the one he says he doesn't believe in but has 1,000 people praying to, anyway -- not on me or anybody else he has called a fucktard just make a point that he's made, in the same poor way, a thousand times before.

He hasn't been rejected, by me or anybody else. That's why he's still here, spouting, again, repeatedly, his offensive language that, frankly, is beginning to sound rather manufactured, all the better to just be a shock-jock about why he holds the viewpoint that he does. But it's not like he's the only person who has not had a prayer answered in the way they hoped it would be. It's not like he's the only one who has had difficult, even painful questions about God, or who has, maybe, questioned Him directly, doubted His existence, and disowned either their own or anybody else's beliefs. The problem with his entrenched stance is that, just as he and others have experienced unanswered prayer, there are also many who have been beneficiaries of answered prayer.

And I didn't tell him what his wife would want. I asked if she knew that he posts what he has on here, again, repeatedly, seemingly with the sole goal of purposely poisoning a wonderful thread, and offending anyone who, to use your word, dares to question his shitty unloads. I doubt it, and if she does know, again, I said that, based (only and entirely) on the way he speaks of her, I don't believe she would care for it. That's my opinion, and it stands, again, based on what he has said about her.

I couldn't care less if he questions my religion, and that of millions of others worldwide, on Easter Sunday, or ever, really. Because in Christianity, if you are genuinely seeking, you will find what you're looking for.

 

What if the “God of the Bible” is not an accurate reflection of God?

 

Then it’s some other God I don’t know very much about.

I’m consciously choosing that God, to Whom I am drawn, because I believe that’s God. I’ve cast my lot there.

 

@WriteThinking, I should have read your earlier post with more care.

@2muchcoffeeman, There's a whole spectrum of belief when it comes to theists, whether the Bible comes into the discussion or not.