Lily flower
New member
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2010
- Messages
- 930
- MBTI Type
- INFJ
- Enneagram
- 2
Tell us about a time that you experienced God's amazing love for you.
This is a strange one.
At the time I experienced the greatest doubt about the existence of God, at least a God as understood by the world religions, ie an involved and loving God which is at once not reductive to a mere projection of humanity's best traits onto the cosmos, I experienced a number of coincidences.
At the time my doubt was compounded because I felt these where just coincidences. For a lot of hardened atheists this happens all the time and they dismiss it as cognitive confirmation bias, comforting illusions, stuff like that. I have to be honest too that I have thought like that on occasion. Or accepted something similar, that God would be unlikely to be involved with the minutea of detail about me personally.
Anyway, songs would come on the TV or radio which spoke to my dilemma, themes or ideas or concepts appeared across the media board, ie I'd read something in a book with resonated with me or spoke to my dilemma and then it was being discussed on the radio that evening, then it was a conversation at work, then on an online forum. Now this would be an understandable coincidence if it where something which was a hot topic in the news or if the links where particularly tenuous but they wherent and often the books where old books and while thematically linked it wasnt a direct or authorial link. It wasnt just the circulation of memes (I hate the meme theory BTW).
It is interesting, isn't it? All this can be explained with coincidence and confirmation bias. Yet the meaning of these things to a person can't be explained at all. Supposedly everything is chance, including the fact that we exist. Or is it chance when the path of the universe was fixed in the beginning with its own properties of behaviour. Either way, somehow, the universe exists in such a way that there are things in it who care about how the universe exists. It makes my mind spin.
What is God's love within the universe and how I understand it? I think it's just life and hope. Those things are always present.
While that is true at what point do frequent coincidences become a pattern? Are the findings of science just the confirmation bias of scientists?
I know from considering carefully the framing of research in the past about how the proving and disproving of hypothesis can create difficulties or raise criticism or accusation of correlations being confused for causations.
Ultimately there arises the old chestnut that for those who need evidence there will never be sufficient but for those that dont there is no need. I tend to be middle of the road.
Also, when it comes to God and God's love I think that people expect more from God than they would from distant relatives, parents, family, friends, lovers or others which it is right to expect love from. I dont suspect that those people are indifferent or hostile towards me if they arent in contact all the time or intervening in my life daily, less do I suspect that they dont exist as a consequence.
We contain our own meaning, and view everything that happens to us and around us with the lens of our own perception. This can color what we see in such as way as to make the relevant, useful, and insightful jump out, when we would have overlooked them before. We find what we need when we are open to it.It is interesting, isn't it? All this can be explained with coincidence and confirmation bias. Yet the meaning of these things to a person can't be explained at all. Supposedly everything is chance, including the fact that we exist. Or is it chance when the path of the universe was fixed in the beginning with its own properties of behaviour. Either way, somehow, the universe exists in such a way that there are things in it who care about how the universe exists. It makes my mind spin.
Consider, for instance, miracles. Can't the very idea of them be described essentially as anomaly, and well timed coincidence? When their notability can only be defined by the people that they happen to, Science and Probability have no use for them, but we still do.
These questions go too deep for me, or at least deep enough that I'm not sure I believe there is a textbook answer somewhere at the bottom of the well.
I'm not a huge fan as seeing God primarily as a parental figure, but love also comes in the form of being confined to your room, having your car taken away, or just letting you for once reap your own consequences. You don't recognize that kind of love until you realize, or at least trust in its goal. Anyway, I'm not Christian, as you know, but I believe there is a goal, i.e. hope.
This is why it is ultimately a leap of faith. I really don't understand the desire to nitpick what other people believe or how they believe things.
Is it not more appropriate to keep one's experiences with God to self?
I believe I read it somewhere.
Awakened became and born unto thee
Kiss'd divine in Heaven a priori
Soul joins body in earthly home
His respite always there, though I might be gone.
Glorious Days! oh deity fine
Whimsical mine eyes rest on thine
Spirit in Heaven and Body Christ
He protects me now, though I sin forever and thriced.
In the black of night existential knowing
Only illuminated by golden lunar glowing
Who will grant me respite in this lengthy life
Oh Great One lends strength, through my times of strife.
As I go about my worldly ways
Self-centered and wicked in perpetual stays
I seek what lacks, never fulfilled
While God gives me Love, real contentment instilled.
AphroditeGoneAwry said:I think non-believers, while they can be very logical and loving people, seem to lack something that believers have; an open-minded soulfulness. Or something...
Which is similar to other relationships. Can it ever be evidenced sufficiently that significant others love or relate to you if you fundamentally doubt that they do?
I actually think that the decline of faith, devotion and religion in our age has its parallels in the decline of trust, independence and healthy relating to others, both are consequent of changes in attachment styles among children and adults and the impact of seperation anxieties earlier and earlier in life, sometimes with traumatic effect.
We contain our own meaning, and view everything that happens to us and around us with the lens of our own perception. This can color what we see in such as way as to make the relevant, useful, and insightful jump out, when we would have overlooked them before. We find what we need when we are open to it.
This is mainly what I think, what I've highlighted, although I like to make conversation on it and find out peoples practical opinions, even if they dont provide the last word on the topic by any means.
I dont really think of God as a parent either, although I'm not sure I believe that God is any of the other things either, I've heard and read mystics describe God as a lover or friend but those are human relationships, although in discussing anything like for instance love its only natural to use some comparative or reference point.
Whether its God or parents most of the time they will not be able to mitigate or prevent harm caused by the natural consequences of personal choices, words or deeds.
I've heard this sediment among believers toward me time and again over the past decade or so since I deconverted and I really don't know how to respond to this as it seems like it's both a benign observation and at the same time an incredibly dismissive attitude. It's as if in response to all the soul searching that I've done over the years is being ignored or overlooked and that the reason that I'm not "seeing" what believers are seeing is because I'm just not putting my shoulder into it.
Anywho, to respond to the OP, much like Lark I've had points of time in my life in which it felt like I was being steered or guided to some decision or event. Even today I'll have moments where I'm struggling with something and a song or tv shoe will come on and someone will saying something very prudent to whatever it is I'm struggling with and I'll think, "Wow, I really needed to hear/see/experience that, that really helped me"
Is it chance that these things happened? Hell if I know, I'm glad they happened all the same