12:00 AM
I see overall that you were quite clear in stating that your struggle was past tense, this was just the one slight counterpoint that led me to believe that there is still something else going on inside you as well - maybe it also has something to do with the fact that you're still hanging around here...
12:10 AM
And because I'm recently a convert, I guess, I'm very interested in conversion stories and I hope to examine enough of them to get a generalized look at conversions (specifically the motivation and triggers).
Mar 9 at 17:16, by fredsbend
@Islam Thanks. I might read about it. I'm not really on an Islam learning trek. I'm far more interested in conversions (of any kind e.g. Christian to Muslim, Christian to Atheist, Atheist to Christian, etc.). I want to boil down the typical conversion to specific stages or parts. I wan to determine the unifying aspect of all conversions (assuming such an aspect exists).
It seems every time I actively look for God in the context of daily life, I find him in some way - many, many times, the way that I find him is ridiculously improbable and sometimes in ways that I thought were impossible. I no longer have the luxury of unbelief (in the common sense that people use it, of course disobedience is unbelief of a different kind & I fall in to that all too often)
12:24 AM
@fredsbend There is always external forces that assault your belief system - whether they have the capacity to touch your heart or not is another matter
@fredsbend You probably won't find the specifics that interesting - eg yesterday I felt completely exhausted and didn't really didn't want to go out for ministry (even though it would only be a couple of hours). I seriously considered bunking off (as no-one was relying on me to turn up) and just heading back to bed. After a pretty pathetic internal dialogue and the briefest of glances heavenward, I drag myself into the shower and head off with a pretty poor attitude, not helped by the fact...
...that I know I'll be arriving late. I say to myself on the way - "yeah right, as if anything good is going to come from this...". Then I'm prompted by the still small voice - "hang on, remember all the times you turned up to minister in complete weakness and I brought something out of that - it's not by might nor by power, but by my spirit says the Lord...". I agree, rejoice (somewhat -not wholly enthusiastically you understand and head in...) This ministry is just to facilitate a casual...
...lunch met up session, where Christians on campus can just meet up, get to know each other better, encourage each other and build relationships and a sense of community. Just eating, playing a game or two together etc. Everyone is welcome to bring friends along whatever the do or don't believe. Things start out slow - conversations are occuring, but not everyone is involved - the introverts (me included) are struggling a bit. Eventually a game is suggested - one that I have skill in...
...facilitating, so I'm asked to run it. Based on doing it recently with some of the people there, I make the mistake of setting the bar a little high (it's a puzzle for people to solve, or more accurately a pattern - too obscure as it turns out - for people to recognize). Round after round people aren't getting it & (after way too long) I recognize that frustration and disengagement is starting to set in. I eventually start thinking - hmm maybe I've blown this, perhaps my earlier impression
...that I had on the way and my interpretation of it - that God would be with me like (the many) other times I had turned up acutely aware of incapacity and do something special - was off-base this time & I hadn't heard from the Lord at all. One after the other, people start heading off to classes until there is just two of us left. An extremely introverted person and me (a recovering introvert) - a lot of awkward silences. I start asking this person a few questions to get to know them better
...one thing leads to another & I find out that not only are they not from any sort of Christian background, but they've never heard the Gospel - they've heard the term, but don't understand what it means. So I'm able to share the Gospel with them at that time (their first time to hear it) & later as I go back, I realize that is what it is all about God's assurances and empowerment were focused for that moment. Even though they don't respond and convert on the spot (which in no way was...
...I expecting), I leave rejoicing, because once again I have a very strong impression of being where God wants me to be, doing what he wants me to do. As I said - maybe the specifics don't mean much to you, but it is the ongoing accumulation of thousands of these types of experiences - some fairly ordinary, some far more miraculous that have helped to bring me to where I am today. I'm certainly not downplaying the importance of doctrinal beliefs, or how much I love and rely on scripture...
12:56 AM
@fredsbend This person presented as someone being quite comfortable around christians despite being introverted - I just had an assumption that they would have heard this stuff before
@fredsbend that's the ideal, but it usually doesn't happen. The point is, it was very very close to not happening - I didn't want to go personally, didn't feel I had the energy to go, was in no way invested in 'making something happen' - I pretty much just turned up, with extremely limited expectations and a half-baked idea of "well, let's just see what God will do"
As someone who has experienced a lot of illness, chronic pain, periods of unemployment, depression at various times of life, I'm quite familiar with the terrain of low expectations and the conseqence of low expectations. Generally speaking, without God, if you want something to happen, you need to make it happen but sometimes you either can't or won't do what is needed. The interesting times are when God seems to take your little offering and do way more with it than you think possible.
1:13 AM
@bruisedreed I understand all that, but it is still the intention of the event that this kind of thing occurs and it is a matter of probabilities that it will occur eventually. Because you almost didn't go doesn't really mean anything. It's kind of a probabilistic fallacy. Someone else may have talked to them if you had not gone. I guess I don't understand why this is not just a coincidence. I suppose because of the "still small voice".
Training (yes, you've been trained to minister whether you think so or not) does exactly what you describe there. It makes decision making external. You react to the training, which is triggered by events.
@fredsbend Well in a way, it's not of course it certainly comes through my thoughts. The question is whether there is preceding source. The patterns I've identified in the prescient nature of these promptings, their somewhat counterintuitive semantics compared to my previous flow of thought and their alignment with the truth as I see it in scripture are what lead me to the conviction that it is actually the voice of the Holy Spirit
I apologize if I somehow gave you the impression that I thought the circumstances of this particular where 'miraculous' in any way, I don't deny that the specific happenings weren't overtly remarkable. My intention was to relate something of my journey of faith - it is the consonance of the external circumstances with the internal struggle for obedience and walking with God that I was trying to relate to provide you with some insight as to what it might be like if you have this sort of
1 hour later…
2:27 AM
2:42 AM
@fredsbend I haven't explained it very well, but there is a real sense of another person being involved in the process. The more it happens, then as I said at the outset, I can't help but think that the alternatives are either God is real and present, or I am insane at some level - I really don't think the latter is the case.
@bruisedreed I don't believe you are insane either. I also don't believe God is communicating with you. Allow me to suggest a third option: The human psyche is complex enough that it is possible and sometimes even necessary to converse with itself as if they were two individual persons. This is especially common when making decisions, where one voice will play in opposition to the other.
@fredsbend The significance of course, is the sense that the living God - the creator of the universe - is present, involved and interested in my life and the lives of the people around me. If God is real and with us, everything is imbued with significance.
@fredsbend do you think that it's possible that the human psyche is powerful enough to be prescient in certain circumstances? I'm not saying that the previous examples is a particularly compelling example of this, but I've had a dream of a future event before, and then when the event occurred, the still small voice explained it's significance.
@bruisedreed A dream that comes true followed by an epiphany might be convincing to me, under the right circumstances. Of most importance would be the clarity of the dream and assurance that I didn't impress the reality of some event on a dream I had, rather than having had a truly prescient dream/thought. I say this with reference to the fact that eye-witness testimony is not very reliable (people tend to remember in odd ways and it changes over time).
I'd rather hear about that dream, because, yes, the above example is certainly not a good example of precognition.
3:03 AM
In my case I had a recurring dream that seemed a bit odd to me. I initially thought it was just part of my mental processing regarding an important decision to make. In the dream I saw myself walking up a particularly steep hill in the place where I would have to move back to (after many years away) if I went ahead with the decision. In dreaming of this place and me walking up it, it felt like I was considering this form of exercise as some sort of 'pro' to be considered in my decision making
...process. If I'd been awake, I would have dismissed such a lame reason as being totally irrelevant to my considerations. but that wasn't really what was going on at all.
...Many months later after eventually making the decision (on other bases), I was actually in that exact place walking up that hill. I was vividly reminded of those dreams about halfway up the hill - I'd forgotten about them in the interim. And the voice came with a very strong sense of assurance - "see I have called you here, and knew you would come" - that level of assurance proved extremely important to me when battling through some of the issues I've alluded to.
3:30 AM
@Shog9 I live near the Canada/US border and there's this one house that's half there and half here. I wouldn't mind living there.
@bruisedreed I'm trying not to offend, but this assurance seems tenuous at best. I'm glad you find comfort in it, but, again, it seems random. Whenever I see this kind of thing (it this usually is the case) I have to conclude that there is subjective meaning that you ascribe to it that I cannot understand, simply because I am not you.
I'd be fine with a faith that was purely subjective, but I also think the God described in the Bible would aim for a more universal faith.
I think there is a tendency for people to gravitate toward one or the other of either experience or reason as justifications for faith. I think there is something critical missing if we ignore one or the other. To some extent, I'm assuming you're quite familiar with many of the 'reasons' given for faith. I was trying to convince you with my experiences - I fully accept they can only be convincing to me as I'm the only one that has lived all of them, just trying to help you understand...
I was raised in a Christian family who attended a Pentecostal church, had a born-again experience about the age of 10 and baptism in the Spirit experience around the age of 12 (on a Baptist youth camp of all places). As I encountered other ideas and belief systems, I found challenges to faith that seemed interesting and worth investigating (evolution vs creationism etc.) but nothing that served to critically undermine my faith
- the reasons and experiences seemed pretty solid from the start and to gradually acrete over time. I guess the one major reverse in that process was when I effectively stopped attending church for a couple of years (or only very sporadic) due to chronic illness and demotivation - I felt that God had left me to my own devices to some extent. Towards the end of that period, I encountered a tempting thought: "your life doesn't show any outward signs of faith, why don't you abandon any...
...inner pretense of 'following' God & just deliberatley seek your own pleasure as an unbeliever". That was an interesting moment for me, as I didn't really have anything logical to refute that with at the time. I just realized that I did believe that God was good no matter what I'd experienced and I was going to trust Him and his way even if I found I wasn't having much success at following it. It seemed to me at that moment that the remnant of faith I had left was a gift from God.
I guess realistically, it was based on what I had experienced and meditated on previously, but at the moment it felt all the buttressing that such things provide and been undermined by several years of crap experience and all I was left with was a small kernel of unaccountable faith. That was similtaneously one of the lowest moments in my life and also one of the most precious.
3:57 AM
@fredsbend There was nothing vague about the incarnation. It may have been mysterious in the sense that people didn't understand everything that was going on with it, but it was an extremely tangible and direct way of God communicating with us, culminating in the atoning work of Christ on the cross - as visceral and direct a message as you could possibly get in my opinion:
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3:16 PM
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I appreciate the concerns behind the closing of my questions. I understand some of the frustration that my questions might be conceived as primarily opinion-based and too broad. Let go through my questions and I hope I can receive advice on how to undelete these questions so that I can edit it to...
@fredsbend the question isn't about why Christians didn't worship the word of the prophets. Because not all of their words are the Word of God. Even the conversation between Eve and the Snake is recorded as the Word of God not that Satan's exhortation to dispbey God is truthful but it's recorded by God as His Word for us to learn to obey Him instead of being deceived by Satan. I need to ask this question because later on I'll refer to this question. It will become clear later why I asked this. If Christ and Scripture is the same Logos why Scripture His written Logos not worshipped? — Adithia Kusno 33 mins ago
"I need to ask this question because later on I'll refer to this question. It will become clear later why I asked this."
Just ask a real question or self answer, @AdithiaKusno . This grand plan you have is fine, but your delivery is clearly not working out. Our current suggestions in numerous places is that you self-answer. Give that a try.
3:53 PM
@fredsbend Let me ask you a simple question. Scripture is the Word of God? Yes or no. Second, what differentiate Scripture as the Word of God and Christ as the Word of God? Let me know if the question is still unclear.
I don't know how familiar you're with early Trinitarian controversy. St. Theophilus of Antioch, Paul of Samosata, St. Lucian of Antioch, St. Dionysius of Alexandria, and Arius distinguish the Logos into innate and spoken. The innate co-exist with God eternally. The spoken one is when God became the Father in divine condescension for the economy of creating the world through His Son, the spoken Logos.
You might notice why some are referred to as saints while the rest condemned as heretics. The reason is because theology develops. This is my primary reason becoming a Catholic and not an Eastern Orthodox.
EO assumed there is no theological development. What they believed today, eg. Palamism, is taught by Christ and the Apostles.
Catholic agrees with EO that all doctrines we believe today sprang and found its roots in Christ and the Apostles but back then those weren't well articulated. It's sort of OT as NT concealed and NT is OT revealed sort of duality. EO don't have this conception.
I'm going to use is as one of my hub that the Bible is anhypostasis Logos. It's identical with the Logos but impersonal
You can connect the dots yourself. I hope my question is clear now. I'm going to answer it when I have time. Currently my aim is simply asking questions. Because I'm referring to EO to my questions. I'll answer my own questions later if no one answering it.
As you might noticed my questions are unique from the rest of other questions you've encountered before. You can check how the difference between Apollinarianism and Eutychianism isn't trivial at all. Check my comments on each question. People have been misread Apollinarianism and Eutychianism completely. See what the late Affable Geek said about my question. This is only possible because I took 8 years of pain dissecting and tracing the history of theological developments.
Not many people aware of this. Most people would say oh it's obvious the Bible teach three divine persons. Well no, St. Jerome explicitly in his letter number 15 to Pope St. Damasus condemned three hypostases language that Christians nowadays took for granted. Theology developed. That's why I become an Eastern Catholic.
That's why my questions mostly thought provoking. Especially when I ask about the difference between original sin and original guilt most people think this is EO denial of St. Augustine while in fact he never taught original guilt as that question aimed to show. I hope you can bear for a while. I'll answer all of my questions later.
As you might notice I have merely scrap the surface. I haven't ask about Immaculate Conception and EO view on the sinlessness of Theotokos. About Purgatory and Toll Houses. More coming up. Instead of asking people to read Church History, I'll simply ask questions and let people google and read books to answer my questions. Sort of giving people curiosity to read Church History.
5:05 PM
5:42 PM
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I have
discovered that this site is not what I had thought it to be, and am therefore asking you to remove as a poster. I had envisioned this as a site to comply with the great commission, and now that I have learned that it is not; I have no more reason to associate with the site. My preference...
6:35 PM
7:01 PM
The current edit does improve the post's clarity, but the glaring premise that any such belief exists (i.e. that there is no differentiation between the Word of God, the Bible, and the Word of God, Christ) still needs to be proved. I have a hunch that if any Christian believe this they would have to be like a quasi-modalist. — fredsbend 1 min ago
7:52 PM
@fredsbend You're correct I'm now against the wall. The problem is simple I'm using different presupposition which is completely foreign for Christians and/or Agnostics who mainly influenced by Protestant's presupposition and not Catholicism or Orthodoxy.
This is an example why we both Catholic and Orthodox accused Protestants for Bibliolatry. As a Protestant back then I denied this vehemently and considered it a blatant caricature. But as I becoming a Catholic I confess I do see Protestants worshiping the Bible indirectly. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliolatry
I want to ask a proper question which is direct but as I've now no longer under Protestant's presupposition it's hard for me to translate my Catholic thought into intelligible language understood by Protestants. Trust me I'm all ears
The train of logic is like this. Protestants read Scripture as the final authority. Not that Protestants worship the Bible but indirectly the Bible is more authoritative than God because all of His revelation is contained in the Bible. As God already stop revealing Himself then the Bible is not only the highest authority but it becomes the only authority.
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9:22 PM
@AdithiaKusno Get a blog or write a dissertation. This isn't the place for your socratic method of questioning
@AdithiaKusno It is becoming increasingly clear to me how different EO is. It may be better for you to start with some questions on the philosophical differences then, because you haven't been doing much to erode those
9:50 PM
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The Upper Room
General discussion for Christianity.SE, pseudo-meta support, a...
