The story of the woman taken in adultery is basically about a sinner being forgiven and encouraged not to repeat the sin. It's also about sinners being told not to be hypocrites and to reflect on their own sins.
Martin54's difficulty with it is that it appears to have been interpolated at a later date and so is not authentic. There's more, but that's the gist of it.
Yes. It is very complicated but years ago I came to the conclusion that a simple faith is preferable to getting one self confused. This story may have originally been in and then taken out and then put back in. Who can say for certain. Is it a deal breaker? I don't think so.
Deconstruction is quite a journey. One of the byproducts for me has been an heightened feeling of humanity, almost to an overwhelming degree. It's a surprising renewal process that's fraught with melancholy that definitely includes a 5-stages experience (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance). Denial has largely passed. I'm not sure when acceptance will arrive, or if it will completely, and I'm not as aware of depression among the other two. Right now it's a lot of bargaining with occasional anger that's closer to frustration than it is to rage. But it's quite a ride.
Yes. It is very complicated but years ago I came to the conclusion that a simple faith is preferable to getting one self confused. This story may have originally been in and then taken out and then put back in. Who can say for certain. Is it a deal breaker? I don't think so.
Just because it’s not a deal breaker for you, or for me, doesn’t mean it may not be for someone else. Deal breakers can be different for everyone.
The story of the woman taken in adultery is basically about a sinner being forgiven and encouraged not to repeat the sin. It's also about sinners being told not to be hypocrites and to reflect on their own sins.
Martin54's difficulty with it is that it appears to have been interpolated at a later date and so is not authentic. There's more, but that's the gist of it.
Yes. It is very complicated but years ago I came to the conclusion that a simple faith is preferable to getting one self confused. This story may have originally been in and then taken out and then put back in. Who can say for certain. Is it a deal breaker? I don't think so.
I'm not confused @Telford. And I don't see the Holy Spirit doing the Hokey Cokey : )
And thank you @Nenya (and everyone, I mean everyone, wish I'd ended up here way back), I retreat to nature when I can. My best day last year was alone up a mountain in Wales with the weather getting scary, after having been down a coal mine. Loved it. Gave myself and the God I can't believe in a good talking to! I have other stuff going on, other pains; physical, psychological, relational. I can't believe how much. But luckily I'm a very superficial person and easily distracted by a good book, TV, Netflix. And plants and birds on my walks to and from work.
Yes. It is very complicated but years ago I came to the conclusion that a simple faith is preferable to getting one self confused. This story may have originally been in and then taken out and then put back in. Who can say for certain. Is it a deal breaker? I don't think so.
Just because it’s not a deal breaker for you, or for me, doesn’t mean it may not be for someone else. Deal breakers can be different for everyone.
Sometimes there isn't even an obvious deal breaker. I worked with someone a few years ago who lost her faith walking along the road one day. She could put an exact finger on when she went from believing to not believing, all in the space of a moment.
Glad you're able to find a measure of comfort somewhere, @Martin54 .
Watched a pair of swans engaging in alternate and synchronized courtship. Lovely. Pigeons so transfixed with each other they utterly ignored me. A solitary goldfinch. A little egret.
My belief went when I was persuaded to look at it all from the outside. I saw what a closed, self-referential system religious belief is.
But I'm OK with the 100% uncertainty. I don't mourn the loss of belief at all. I hope to be pleasantly surprised when the body gives up. Great if I am pleasantly surprised, and I wont know about it if there is nothing.
I still go to church, still make music there and still love the friends I have there. And I love the liturgy ... spending time with something that has reached over 2000 years a near perfect balance of music, spoken word, acting out and silence. It still feeds something deep inside me even when my rational brain is saying "Probably not." Because we are so much more than our rational brains.
I don't mourn the loss of belief at all. I hope to be pleasantly surprised when the body gives up. Great if I am pleasantly surprised, and I won't know about it if there is nothing.
Very much what I said to my sister when we were discussing these matters last year (after devout RC Auntie S's funeral Mass!). My sister reckoned such a philosophical attitude was a Good Place To Be In.
Yes. It is very complicated but years ago I came to the conclusion that a simple faith is preferable to getting one self confused. This story may have originally been in and then taken out and then put back in. Who can say for certain. Is it a deal breaker? I don't think so.
Just because it’s not a deal breaker for you, or for me, doesn’t mean it may not be for someone else. Deal breakers can be different for everyone.
Yes.
I don't find it a deal-breaker either but who is to say that any of us believers wouldn't find something else a deal-breaker instead?
I've heard of a Baptist minister who woke up one morning and found he'd lost his faith. My brother-in-law counselled a Pentecostal pastor who went from fervent, full-on faith to outright unbelief within a matter of a few whirlwind weeks.
These things happen.
A friend of my brother's who apparently underwent an evangelical conversion at college later abandoned his faith, toyed with Buddhism and is now inveterately anti-faith of any kind. Scarily so. He rants and swears if anyone so much as mentions Christ or the Incarnation or faith in general. The poor chap doesn't even take delight in the sort of things @Martin54 recounts here so movingly - the natural world, things of variety and interest.
'The drunkenness of things being various,' as Louis MacNeice put it.
The poor guy is lost in a 'hell' of bitterness and solipsism to a degree I've not seen with anyone else. It's very distressing.
He may never recover his faith, this guy, but it would be something if he could recover some sense of joy in even being alive.
Despair is a terrible thing. That's why Gérard Manley Hopkins repeated it. 'Despair, Despair, Despair...'
Whatever happens, @Martin54 don't lose your sense of humour, your 'joie de vivre', your capacity to question and to wonder.
From what I can see here, all that remains intact. Strengthen the things that remain.
@Gamma Gamaliel - tears of gratitude. My domestic situation is dead in perichoretic parallel too : ) A negative synergy that I don't know how I'll survive. But I will. I'm that superficial : )
@Gamma Gamaliel - tears of gratitude. My domestic situation is dead in perichoretic parallel too : ) A negative synergy that I don't know how I'll survive. But I will. I'm that superficial : )
Gosh, this sounds so hard.
I hope that as well your Shipmates here you have someone else nearby who will walk this path with you.
Thank you @Arethosemyfeet. My response here as per to @Gamma Gamaliel above : ) There is in deconstruction of that, "those who love are borne of love and know love", thank you. Even when love is not allowed any more.
Thank you @Caissa. When I sell up and move to the seaside, hopefully next year, to be near my daughter and grandson, I want to make paintings of tree bark and leaves in particular. Botanical art. It's a goal. Too old to write anything decent. But I might anyway!
@Gamma Gamaliel - tears of gratitude. My domestic situation is dead in perichoretic parallel too : ) A negative synergy that I don't know how I'll survive. But I will. I'm that superficial : )
Gosh, this sounds so hard.
I hope that as well your Shipmates here you have someone else nearby who will walk this path with you.
You, my friends here, as it turns out, are it. You feel close by. Thank you. As I said to me lad recently, into each life a little rain must fall, and a ton of burning, boiling, radioactive sh*t : )
Martin, I am terribly sorry to hear that you've got a double grief, and you're in my prayers (hoping that does not offend you).
Of course it doesn't my dear. Thank you. It's a good one isn't it? A long two train wreck.
You have my prayers too, for everything.
You, my friend, are a delight. Hugs back. And I should have acknowledged you on this thread (which isn't mine in any way of course), as one who has addressed my pain from their own directly. We are worlds apart in may ways and that is utterly irrelevant.
It's good to know that the landscape of where people are is incredibly varied in every way, as for @Alan29 and @The_Riv above.
And I always pray for those who ask. S'pose I should for those who don't explicitly! And in gratitude. For all here. By name.
@Gamma Gamaliel - tears of gratitude. My domestic situation is dead in perichoretic parallel too : ) A negative synergy that I don't know how I'll survive. But I will. I'm that superficial : )
There’s nothing superficial about surviving. We all need to do that for the sake of those around us. And, hopefully, one day, come out the other side, find some joy and become an inspiration to others.
@Gamma Gamaliel - tears of gratitude. My domestic situation is dead in perichoretic parallel too : ) A negative synergy that I don't know how I'll survive. But I will. I'm that superficial : )
Gosh, this sounds so hard.
I too am very sorry indeed to read of this double grief.
I'm reminded of a conversation I had with the aforementioned work colleague about a family member of mine with no overt faith. She simply said, "But does he love?" I think I managed to reply, "Yes, he does." Typing that brings tears to me, even now.
@Gamma Gamaliel - tears of gratitude. My domestic situation is dead in perichoretic parallel too : ) A negative synergy that I don't know how I'll survive. But I will. I'm that superficial : )
Gosh, this sounds so hard.
I too am very sorry indeed to read of this double grief.
I'm reminded of a conversation I had with the aforementioned work colleague about a family member of mine with no overt faith. She simply said, "But does he love?" I think I managed to reply, "Yes, he does." Typing that brings tears to me, even now.
I love. In as much as I can. Which in some quarters, ain't enough obviously, no matter how I feel about it. My kids still love me. All love ends in grief. Thought I'd get mine in early, like retaliation : ) We love on the basis of how we were loved from before we can remember. And late in life one can see what must have been missing.
On Thursdays I usually go to visit people in a care home and attend Mass in a local church before going to the care home.
Last Thursday was the patronal feast day of the church and the local state RC school children were all present. I was impressed by their good behaviour in church. though I noticed that most of them had only a nodding acquaintance with the Church.
It made me think of my own childhood 80 years ago and realised that it was then a different world, a different church and a different way of explaining things, but ultimately the same faith.
Like many others I have had to revise and edit my views and understandings over the decades. As I watched the 200 + children I wondered how many of them will still be coming to church when the time clock reaches 2100 C.E. and even how many of them will still be coming in 2025. ?
This thread has been about the trauma of losing faith but it is clear that those who may have trauma are those to whom religious faith at one time meant a lot.
For most people, at least those attached to the historic Christian communities, they may have only a passing interest in Christianity and are easily able to drift away from it and drift back in when they feel that it is necessary to them.
It is like a shell round their life style and it is good that some of those affected by loss of faith are still able to value that shell which can give structure to their life, even although they are not sure of what may be contained within the shell.
I do find many former Christians report a history of abuse coming from within the Church, especially from the more fundamentalist types of denominations.
'Spiritual' abuse wasn't a factor in my becoming an infidel. Although the lessening of the overt was the beginning of the journey to that. Is the fact that one could never, can never have 'the conversation' a sign of intrinsic power abuse? I say it is.
My cult de-reconstructed itself to neo-trinitarian inclusive evangelical orthodoxy in the mid-late 90s. That was fine for a time. But life intruded. Via the charismatic briefly. Seven years later I was confirmed in a charismatic evangelical Anglican church. Where I was horrified at a black vein, if not stratum of damnationism below the surface. No conversation there! And it's everywhere (except in the emergent; Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, Steve Chalke et al, which I briefly experienced) - including here, no matter how genuinely nice people are. The un-had conversation has evolved from trying to swim as an emergent in conservative waters, to trying to actually have the conversation here, with good will to the posit of Love as the ground of infinite being. Up against a shield wall of trinitarian fundamentalism.
I believe, along with Brian McClaren and the 'emergents' that it is possible to achieve a 'generous orthodoxy'.
But I can certainly see where you are coming from.
FWIW, I would say that 'other options are available.'
If the damnationism of the charismatic evangelical Anglicans was too much, then there are plenty of Anglicans around who wouldn't subscribe to those views.
Equally, there are plenty of 'established' non-conformist liberal Protestants (ha! see what I did there) who were around long before the 'emergent' crowd and who could 'out-emerge' them when it came to having a more universalist or broader take on things.
I'm not saying that you should or shouldn't retain your faith but it does strike me that there are other options out there beyond your particular reconstructed 'cultic' group (I remember them going through that process), charismatic Anglicans and the various Big T and small t traditions represented on these boards.
I believe, along with Brian McClaren and the 'emergents' that it is possible to achieve a 'generous orthodoxy'.
But I can certainly see where you are coming from.
FWIW, I would say that 'other options are available.'
If the damnationism of the charismatic evangelical Anglicans was too much, then there are plenty of Anglicans around who wouldn't subscribe to those views.
Equally, there are plenty of 'established' non-conformist liberal Protestants (ha! see what I did there) who were around long before the 'emergent' crowd and who could 'out-emerge' them when it came to having a more universalist or broader take on things.
I'm not saying that you should or shouldn't retain your faith but it does strike me that there are other options out there beyond your particular reconstructed 'cultic' group (I remember them going through that process), charismatic Anglicans and the various Big T and small t traditions represented on these boards.
There are Quakers, Unitarians, all sorts ...
Yeahhhh. Tried the Quakers. Got Christadelphians 15 yards away. I've worked with them. Lovely people. They support Iranian Christian refugees big time. If I believed I'd stick with where I work. Love the vicar. And people are people. There's a great theology group covering my last two churches and others. But theology is after the event. They were doing Thomas Nagel recently. Groan. It's all too late. We used to go down to Oasis several times a year. Till Covid come. Rob Bell even came to Leicester! But he'd deconstructed too far too. So, liberal Anglican infidel is what I have to be. Hmmm. Might try Leicester ramblers and/or botanists.
@Martin54 have you considered just making up your own boutique version of Christianity? You absolutely can. It can be anything you want it to be. There are no hard and fast rules. Cobble together whatever you like and declare heresy on anything you don't. Call it Christian. You're all set.
Sounds like Wise Blood@The_Riv. I don't accept anyone who wants to be a member of my club, to paraphrase Groucho, and Freud. All who don't want to be are welcome.
Uhmm... You do know the Ramblers at least are a result of a 19th Century Congregational Minister who preached one too many sermons damning the vices of Blackpool and the virtues of walking in the Lake District .... T.A. Leonard
Most kind @Huia. I miss working with the homeless at my previous char-evo-lite Anglican church! They'd have me back in a blink, and I'd go, but my current little church retirement job consumes me! Talking of which, must go and set up the church for mums and tots.
Just encountered my second ever Georgian. Lovely guy. Looking for work, not a handout. Bloody heart breaking. I had a rant at the God who isn't there as I worked in the sublimely beautiful church. Took his number.
I often rant at the God I'm not always sure is there. Sometimes it helps me become more aware of what I might do in response, sometimes I'm just shouting into the wind.
I'm now sure, I know, God isn't there, by reason and emotion and behaviour. 99%of the time. At least. In the thousand minutes of a conscious day. But I can't claim to be 100% atheist, de facto I'm 'only' 99% pure agnostic. Because you truly cannot prove that God does not exist, like any negative (tho' I hate that absurd truism). And in fact He is a theoretically rational proposition, unlike many negatives (including the stupid bloody statement itself; 'you can't prove a negative', or is that two negatives therefore positive?). Something in my wiring and its neurochemistry knows that God could exist despite nothing but evidence to the contrary, that there's no need whatsoever to go there, despite the fact that everything is naturally explicable, including all mysteries. Despite the fact that the Jesus story and all fundamentalist theology from it (including trinitarian and any atonement theory that blames us for anything) doesn't make any sense, is actually meaningless. Love could still be the ground of infinite being... at this point the boss came in and prayed for me. And yes, I stand, bow my head, take me cap off. I love it. 0.1% of my day. So emotionally and behaviourally I'm only 99% atheist, i.e. agnostic. And while it's happening, I believe, my reason is quiesced. I love 'the peace' in services I rarely attend. The hymns and sermons do my head in. My reason is 100% on. But 1% of me is a blind man looking for a shadow of doubt, to paraphrase The Police. But God won't oblige. Not just to me personally, which can't be done, there is no Gideon's fleece, but to all of us. In the story.
Comments
Yes. It is very complicated but years ago I came to the conclusion that a simple faith is preferable to getting one self confused. This story may have originally been in and then taken out and then put back in. Who can say for certain. Is it a deal breaker? I don't think so.
I'm not confused @Telford. And I don't see the Holy Spirit doing the Hokey Cokey : )
And thank you @Nenya (and everyone, I mean everyone, wish I'd ended up here way back), I retreat to nature when I can. My best day last year was alone up a mountain in Wales with the weather getting scary, after having been down a coal mine. Loved it. Gave myself and the God I can't believe in a good talking to! I have other stuff going on, other pains; physical, psychological, relational. I can't believe how much. But luckily I'm a very superficial person and easily distracted by a good book, TV, Netflix. And plants and birds on my walks to and from work.
Glad you're able to find a measure of comfort somewhere, @Martin54 .
And here @Nenya.
That moment is, er, sobering.
But I'm OK with the 100% uncertainty. I don't mourn the loss of belief at all. I hope to be pleasantly surprised when the body gives up. Great if I am pleasantly surprised, and I wont know about it if there is nothing.
I still go to church, still make music there and still love the friends I have there. And I love the liturgy ... spending time with something that has reached over 2000 years a near perfect balance of music, spoken word, acting out and silence. It still feeds something deep inside me even when my rational brain is saying "Probably not." Because we are so much more than our rational brains.
I don't mourn the loss of belief at all. I hope to be pleasantly surprised when the body gives up. Great if I am pleasantly surprised, and I won't know about it if there is nothing.
Very much what I said to my sister when we were discussing these matters last year (after devout RC Auntie S's funeral Mass!). My sister reckoned such a philosophical attitude was a Good Place To Be In.
Yes.
I don't find it a deal-breaker either but who is to say that any of us believers wouldn't find something else a deal-breaker instead?
I've heard of a Baptist minister who woke up one morning and found he'd lost his faith. My brother-in-law counselled a Pentecostal pastor who went from fervent, full-on faith to outright unbelief within a matter of a few whirlwind weeks.
These things happen.
A friend of my brother's who apparently underwent an evangelical conversion at college later abandoned his faith, toyed with Buddhism and is now inveterately anti-faith of any kind. Scarily so. He rants and swears if anyone so much as mentions Christ or the Incarnation or faith in general. The poor chap doesn't even take delight in the sort of things @Martin54 recounts here so movingly - the natural world, things of variety and interest.
'The drunkenness of things being various,' as Louis MacNeice put it.
The poor guy is lost in a 'hell' of bitterness and solipsism to a degree I've not seen with anyone else. It's very distressing.
He may never recover his faith, this guy, but it would be something if he could recover some sense of joy in even being alive.
Despair is a terrible thing. That's why Gérard Manley Hopkins repeated it. 'Despair, Despair, Despair...'
Whatever happens, @Martin54 don't lose your sense of humour, your 'joie de vivre', your capacity to question and to wonder.
From what I can see here, all that remains intact. Strengthen the things that remain.
Gosh, this sounds so hard.
I hope that as well your Shipmates here you have someone else nearby who will walk this path with you.
And what Mrs Beaky said.
I hope there are people who can walk and sit with you.
Yes
https://nakedpastor.com/pages/about
You, my friends here, as it turns out, are it. You feel close by. Thank you. As I said to me lad recently, into each life a little rain must fall, and a ton of burning, boiling, radioactive sh*t : )
Of course it doesn't my dear. Thank you. It's a good one isn't it? A long two train wreck.
You have my prayers too, for everything.
You, my friend, are a delight. Hugs back. And I should have acknowledged you on this thread (which isn't mine in any way of course), as one who has addressed my pain from their own directly. We are worlds apart in may ways and that is utterly irrelevant.
It's good to know that the landscape of where people are is incredibly varied in every way, as for @Alan29 and @The_Riv above.
And I always pray for those who ask. S'pose I should for those who don't explicitly! And in gratitude. For all here. By name.
There! Done.
There’s nothing superficial about surviving. We all need to do that for the sake of those around us. And, hopefully, one day, come out the other side, find some joy and become an inspiration to others.
You already are an inspiration - for tenacity!
I too am very sorry indeed to read of this double grief.
I'm reminded of a conversation I had with the aforementioned work colleague about a family member of mine with no overt faith. She simply said, "But does he love?" I think I managed to reply, "Yes, he does." Typing that brings tears to me, even now.
Steady @Nenya. I'm the blubber here.
I love. In as much as I can. Which in some quarters, ain't enough obviously, no matter how I feel about it. My kids still love me. All love ends in grief. Thought I'd get mine in early, like retaliation : ) We love on the basis of how we were loved from before we can remember. And late in life one can see what must have been missing.
And thanks @Boogie.
Last Thursday was the patronal feast day of the church and the local state RC school children were all present. I was impressed by their good behaviour in church. though I noticed that most of them had only a nodding acquaintance with the Church.
It made me think of my own childhood 80 years ago and realised that it was then a different world, a different church and a different way of explaining things, but ultimately the same faith.
Like many others I have had to revise and edit my views and understandings over the decades. As I watched the 200 + children I wondered how many of them will still be coming to church when the time clock reaches 2100 C.E. and even how many of them will still be coming in 2025. ?
This thread has been about the trauma of losing faith but it is clear that those who may have trauma are those to whom religious faith at one time meant a lot.
For most people, at least those attached to the historic Christian communities, they may have only a passing interest in Christianity and are easily able to drift away from it and drift back in when they feel that it is necessary to them.
It is like a shell round their life style and it is good that some of those affected by loss of faith are still able to value that shell which can give structure to their life, even although they are not sure of what may be contained within the shell.
I believe, along with Brian McClaren and the 'emergents' that it is possible to achieve a 'generous orthodoxy'.
But I can certainly see where you are coming from.
FWIW, I would say that 'other options are available.'
If the damnationism of the charismatic evangelical Anglicans was too much, then there are plenty of Anglicans around who wouldn't subscribe to those views.
Equally, there are plenty of 'established' non-conformist liberal Protestants (ha! see what I did there) who were around long before the 'emergent' crowd and who could 'out-emerge' them when it came to having a more universalist or broader take on things.
I'm not saying that you should or shouldn't retain your faith but it does strike me that there are other options out there beyond your particular reconstructed 'cultic' group (I remember them going through that process), charismatic Anglicans and the various Big T and small t traditions represented on these boards.
There are Quakers, Unitarians, all sorts ...
Yeahhhh. Tried the Quakers. Got Christadelphians 15 yards away. I've worked with them. Lovely people. They support Iranian Christian refugees big time. If I believed I'd stick with where I work. Love the vicar. And people are people. There's a great theology group covering my last two churches and others. But theology is after the event. They were doing Thomas Nagel recently. Groan. It's all too late. We used to go down to Oasis several times a year. Till Covid come. Rob Bell even came to Leicester! But he'd deconstructed too far too. So, liberal Anglican infidel is what I have to be. Hmmm. Might try Leicester ramblers and/or botanists.
Uhmm... You do know the Ramblers at least are a result of a 19th Century Congregational Minister who preached one too many sermons damning the vices of Blackpool and the virtues of walking in the Lake District .... T.A. Leonard
Best wishes on your search @Martin54.