May 4, 2005

  • Ok, here are two questions, for two sorts of people:


    The first two questions are for folks who have tried Christianity, and found it lacking.


    #1  When you tried Christianity, what were you hoping/expecting to get/feel/experience/etc?


    #2 When you decided that Christianity didn't "work for you,"  in what way(s) did it fail your hopes/expectations?


    The next two questions are similar, but phrased more for folks who consider themselves Christian, but are struggling with staying that way, or with "keeping the faith:"


    #1  As a Christian, what do you hope/expect to  get/feel/experience/etc?


    #2 Right now, in what ways is Christianity failing to deliver on your hopes/expectations?


    For clarity, if you don't mind, start your comment with which "sort" of the two people you most are like.  Thanks so much for your input.


    Edit:  Let's keep the comments as responses to the questions, and not have anyone criticizing anothers perspectives, K?  Thanks

Comments (21)

  • first off let me thank you for your comment on my site and let you know that you are welcome to do so anytime...

    next, i guess i can't really answer your question because i am a Christian, but Christianity hasn't failed me in any way. I know this probably won't help towards your questions, but i find that by simply surrounding myself with Christian people God has found new ways to make Christianity 'deliver on my hopes/expectations'. going to a Christian college has really helped that. I suppose i may see my life sometimes as disappointing, but in the end i realize that God has reasons for the things He does and most of the time when i am miserable it is my own fault. so, sorry i can't answer your question, but atleast i gave you my opinion on the matter.

  • hmm, maybe a third catagory would be Christians that are satisfied:  What are the hopes/expectations, and how are they being met in Christ?

  • I suppose I would fall under the third category despite my pessimism jokes.  I"m not always satisfied, but I believe that to be mostly my weakness rather than any lack in Christianity.  So many times, my own selfish desires get in the way of what God has planned for me.  Recently, I've been relying on other people for my happiness rather than God, and I've paid for it, although I don't know how much yet. I guess my hopes/expectations would be for help from God in surrendering to his will over my own prideful and often flawed wants and desires.  Christ is meeting these by convicting me of my sin and then showing me the way through his word and the interpretations of that word by others who are wiser than I am. Recap:  I"m not always content, but that's my fault rather than God's. However, Christ is showing me his will on how I can be content if I only center God rather than others in my life.

  • ***Christian, but are struggling with staying that way, or with "keeping the faith:"***

    #1  As a Christian, what do you hope/expect to  get/feel/experience/etc? To have some reason to live day to day.To have a purpose.

    #2 Right now, in what ways is Christianity failing to deliver on your hopes/expectations? The only problem I have is the relationships. The good ones are hard to come by... :)

    *ryc: xanga premium gets rid of the banner on top of the page, it lets you do all this stuff to your postings. You also get to upload like 90 some pictures and then you can upload pics (big ones) like photobucket... but for free. that's all I really know. But... I didn't buy it, they give it to you free when you first join, so since I have a new site, I get it free. I get 18 more days free I think... :)

    <3 niki

  • I'm not either type of person. I never "tried" Christianity because I don't think organized religion works. People who associate themselves with a particular religion have killed in the name of God. Organized religion, at best, is hypocrisy.

    Don't get me wrong, I do believe in a God. I just don't feel like I need to go to a building to prove it. I don't feel like I have anything to prove in the first place, let alone to psedo-christians who are good people because they roll out of the bed they cheated on their spouse in to go to church. Understand I'm using that as an example, I don't think every Christian is adulterous, I'm merely referring to the hypocritical ones. Church I'm sure started out as a nice idea. A few people getting together to share in their love of God, but it has been so perversed over the years that I don't even bother with the whole mess.

    Let me ask you something. You wake up tomorrow, or since I'm guessing when you're reading this it is tomorrow, all religion has been disproved. God doesn't exist nor has he ever. There is no heaven, there is no hell. You now know your actions have no higher consequence, are your morals affected?

  • I agree that organized religion has strayed from what God probably initially intended it to be.  Speaking as someone who as worked in a church, it's easy to become disillusioned with the processes of organized religion.  I'm more interested in spiritually than red tape and drama.

  • I would never "bail" on Christianity...merely the organizations that make me forget why I believe in the first place.  I don't think that's uncommon.

  • Yeah, sadly I think, there are many out there who see themselves as "good" christians but have lost their vision about participation in the practice of community, usually due to hurtful crap they experienced in some bad iteration of such a community. I wonder what would happen, in any town/city, if all those who held to Christianity as individuals, but shied away from organizations, actually began to meet together to pray, read the scriptures, and try to love one another, and tried to encourage one another to become more Christlike. I wonder, what would that group look like, and what impact they could/would have in their community?

  • I have been puzzling over these questions for awhile and can't come up with an answer to them. But then my situation is a bit different from some.

    As a Christian (I have only called myself that the past two years), what do I expect from Christianity. Well I tried many, many, many, many religions and found they were empty, so I hope to find that Christianity gives me that filling of the void. But given my past, and my track record with God (I gave up on him when I was 8) I kind of don't expect anything. All my life I stopped expecting and hoping for things because when things did not come to pass it hurt less if you weren't building hopes and expectations on them. I have to say that Christianity keeps surprising me, but I do not dare expect anything, just keep seeking and studying.

    As far as question two, hard to be disappointed when you don't have many hopes and expectations. I am blessed with an awesome pastor, and he shepherds his people very well. I guess what really disappoints me is the pretend that some people put on, you know religion for show, but it disappears behind closed doors, or some of the blatent lies that I find spoken by some of the Christian evangalists on TV. And so many personalities (but you have to deal with personalities even outside of Christianity). And I know people probably get tired of dealing with my personality.

    Hope that answers your questions.

    Heather

  • we....im a type 2...so here are my answers...1. as a Christian, i expect to get some sense of purpose and guidance...i just want some help in life...2. i always feel alone and forgotten...i feel liek im not cared about, not even by God...i try my hardest, but i still dont feel it..i feel like God doesnt care about me...im not handling to so well...things havent been going too well lately...so yeah...i've doing alot of thinking...so yeah...

  • Almost didn't find your reply.

    So I understand that your faith would crumble because God is such a huge part of your life, but that's not what I was talking about. I also didn't mean the moral work you've done for God, and to be honest I'm not totally clear what you mean by that. I mean the moral standards you live your life by. I.E. not stealing, not killing people, etc etc.

    I guess what I'm getting at is this: Are your morals a corelation to how you think God wants you to act? For instance, do you know it is wrong to kill someone because God says so, or because you yourself know it is wrong?

    Oh, and my name is Nick.

  • The moral standards that I try to live by today are much larger/higher than those I tried to live by prior to Christ.  For instance, prior to Christ (and we're talking 29 yrs ago) I believed I was a moral person:  I "knew" it was wrong to steal (except from big corporations like record companies), "knew" that it was wrong to kill (unless the person really ticked me off or was a stupid idiot and needed killing), I knew that it was wrong to cut pot with parsley or sell bad acid, speed, or reds.  

    a friend was a friend forever, and you never, ever ratted on anyone.  I worked hard at my jobs, but could steal from my employers.  "Family" was important, but I cold lie to them, scream at them, put at them risk, and help them do stupid stuff, even dangerous stuff with no problem.  Those are samples of the moral code I lived by and that I believed was quite sufficient for me to be a "good" person. 

    The "work" that I've done since Christ is to ramp up my code to match what I understand God's code to be.  I'd guess you're somewhat familiar with the sermon on the mount, but the key is the phrase "You've heard it said" then "but I say."  Jesus digs to the core of who I am and gets to the dreamer, the planner, the thinker in me, and says that deep inside is where my sin is to be measured.  Not adultery, but lust.  Not murder, but anger.  So in the past years, I have, out of reverence for the God who is there, tried to understand and follow Christs teachings about myself and about sin/righteousness/love, etc

    If I somehow become convinced that God was a myth, and that Christ didn't exist, I'd probably revert slowly back to the pragmatic set of morals held previously.  Or, if there is no God, then why have morals at all?  Why not take what I can get away with, cheat howver I can get away with, etc?  To quote supertramp "grab all that you can scramble for"

  • Weird, I found your answer posted as a comment on the last post on my page. Anyway, so is it justifiable for atheists to take, cheat, and grab all they can? For them there is no God.

    Too many christians have consequential morals. That is, they do good things because they think they will be rewarded for it in the end. That's one of the big problems I have with Christianity, the ones who are moral only because they feel obligated to be, not because they want to be.

  • One of the "loosey goosey" things I'm not sure of in blogging is where to post responses.  So sometimes I'll post them in my comments, and other times in the commenters comments.  I'll figure that out someday.

    If my morals are based on reward/punishment (do good, avoid bad) then you're right, they are consequential, and I believe immature.  If, on the other hand, the Christian's morals flow out of a love for God, and/or a gratefulness for His grace, and/or a desire to portray Him accurately to the world around, then I think they are still consequential (a consequence of one's faith) but they are mature.  I understand that Christ's obedience to the Father was based on His love for Him.  Christ to told His followers "if you love me, keep my commands."

    As far as the athiest's code, I cannot speak of "justified" if there is no basis for moral judgement.  The atheist may believe that anything goes, or he may believe that he should be an altruist, but in a moral vacuum who could judge either atheist position?

  • Sure, I know what's right and what's wrong. But personally, I don't feel I need Christianity (or any religion, for that matter) to make that difference apparent. My parents never really enforced a Christain belief on me in my younger days, just to think about what I'm doing and if I'll be comfortable with the consequences. I'm a little annoyed at the whole stereotype that if you're not religious, you're immoral. In my opinion, it doesn't take a faith to realize what's morally right or wrong.

  • i've been rather disappointed with organized religion in some aspects, and very happy with it in other aspects.  and there are a lot of other organized religions that work a whole lot better than christianity--sikhism, for instance.  you want to see beautiful community, look at sikhs.  i think it's mostly just that christianity is supposed to be certain things that it's not being, and that other people/religions are being very well.  that bothers me, and it makes me question the validity of what we say we believe.  if we're no different, and in some cases we're worse, then what good is christianity?

  • Hey Avant_g, welcome. I think having morals and having religion are two separate choices we can make.  I've known moral atheists, and immoral christians, and moral christians and immoral atheists.  Having any religion is no guarantee of morality any more than having no religion is a guarantee of immorality.  It seems that morality is about judging your behaviours (+maybe attitudes) and choices (tho many use morality to judge others much more themselves).  It seems that religion is about building a "construct" of ideas, theories, and beliefs about things we can see (present stuff), and can't see (past, future, spiritual realms, parallel universes, astral planes, etc.), and about philosophy (i.e. how we know truth, what is truth, etc.).

  • RYC, thank you for your insight on my site. I know what you mean about expectations about God. I don't know if you ever read my testimony, but perhaps if you looked at my March 15th part of the testimony you would see why I do not have many expectations about God. You are very astute, I was hurt deeply.

    In fact hurt so bad that when I was 8 I gave up on God, and didn't come back to Him for 40 years. And when I first started approaching Him, I raged at Him. I don't rage much now but am still at times hurting from what I perceive as God's abandonment at a crucial time. But because I went through so many alternative religions and found them lacking I am kind of with my back up against the wall with Christianity. If this fails, then there is nothing, and so I am still sort of walking on eggshells, not wanting to ask anything for fear that God will let me down again big time.

    I know that is not fair in that it is not such a Biblical position. I also know that God will at times say no like a loving parent will say no, but sometimes his no's are puzzling. The no answer to my three prayers when I was 8 is one of those that don't make sense at all. And it does leave a haunting question in my mind. I am stronger in faith than I was, when I imagine God now I can see us in the same room and it is a much smaller room than before. I don't always feel like I have to have an escape route, but there are still real issues that have to be resolved. But then again, if you continued to read my testimony which, if you want I can give you the dates of the rest of it, you would see that I have also come a long way in faith, and it is a miracle I am where I am right now.

    I don't know if that makes sense, but it is a struggle for me, and my faith seems to grow infintestimal grain of sand upon infantestimal grain of sand.

    Heather

  • appreciate the friendly words, thanks.

  • Just responding to: "Or, if there is no God, then why have morals at all? Why not take what I can get away with, cheat howver I can get away with, etc? "

    I thought that was an interesting statement. But it would seem to be for the wrong reason. It implies you're only moral because there is a God and it's the right thing to do, the eternal reward or punishment, etc. Seems like it looks poorly upon people who think that way, as it seems you're only being good to get the reward, cause if there's no God, no reward, there's no point to it??

    What about being good for the sake of being good?
    Saying that without God there's no need for morals demeans it all.
    What about being good simply for society? Because without morals, which are just social rules ingrained into us, we'd fall apart?
    There's hundreds of millions of aethiests out there who don't believe in a god, yet I don't see all of them lying, stealing, cheating, killing, whathaveyou. They have morals.
    It's morals that hold a civilization together. Different people abide by different ones, not everyone agrees, but the most basic structure defines societal rights and wrongs, and works as the glue keeping the individual to socieyt. That doesn't mean it doesn't/can't exist or work without God existing, because to hundreds of millions people out there - it does.

  • I kept saying i'd quit when the price kept going up but to no prevail.  I live in upper central New Jersey so the lowest price is $5.17.  Blah.  Oh, i read your post (interesting) and i tried Chrisitanity since Judism (that's my religion) wasn't doing much for me but chrisitianity wasn't either so i decided maybe religion isn't really for me.  I don't think i really care enough to put the time to become any sort of faith.

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