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Faith & Reason
I was raised Catholic and attended a private Catholic school from Pre-K through my senior year of high school. I just graduated in May.
Despite my Catholic upbringing, I am largely agnostic. I find Christians to be largely (though not completely) a hypocritical bunch crippled by Earthly desires. It pains me to watch churches around my hometown make multi-million dollar renovations, when that extreme sum of money could be used to benefit the poor of the world.
My biggest struggle: Christians will tell you that faith alone will save you. You need to have faith. Blahblahblah.
What if I CANNOT bring myself to believe? I have explored Christianity till I'm blue in the face. I am an intelligent, college-bound free-thinker and at this point in my life, I can't believe in God. If I were born with a less rebellious, more accepting nature, there is a good possibility that I would not have rebelled or questioned my religious upbringing and would still be Christian today.
What am I supposed to do? Pretend? I can go to church, read the Bible, pray yet I am unable to bring myself to believe in something I truly know does not exist.
If God gave me this personality, would he really damn a person to hell for being unable to believe because it went against their nature and conscience?
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im goin tell you plainly. if you CANNOT bring yourself to God. then God CANNOT bring you into heaven. and you'll go to hell. now, yeah thats kinda messed up. but thats how it works. and also you said if you were not born with less rebellious, more accepting nature you would probally belive in God? so your blaming everything, but yourself for your thoughts, how you act, and how you live. and also keep this in thought, what if you did go to church, read the bible, and mainly pray. more than likely you would get right with God again. also, if you wanna really test your bounds, go find another church to go to. like a baptist church. so basicly to answer your question. yes, God will damn you to hell for eternty if you deny him.
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You're very lucky.
Maybe you don't need religion to lead you. You're a leader yourself. You can't force yourself into believing something that will cause you to feel discontented.
live your life. don't label your values...just say they come from experience rather than the bible.
I hope I was helpful!
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Would he damn you for that? Yes. According to the Catholic Church and many Christian denominations, God would damn you if you didn’t repent for that choice.
Many Christian denominations believe doubt comes from the devil, and the only cure to it is turning back to God. The Catholic Church, despite anything softer things they might say, do ascribe to the belief that doubt in a Catholic is the devil’s work. Therefore the Catholic solution to doubt is faith… if you can’t have that faith you are either obstinate or being influenced in some way by Satan.
Feeling as you do, I’m sure you can see why that solution is not a very useful one. We can be utterly naïve and think that the moon is made of blue cheese in order not to be obstinate (which is a sin) or to prove to ourselves and others that we are not affected by the devil, but I, like you, don’t think a faith that is that ‘child-like’ in nature is actually beneficial, but the bible certainly can be interpreted as saying it is the only kind of true faith.
Some people take a slightly more liberal view of doubt and believe Christian faith survives questioning and the serious intellectual inquiry, but that wasn’t my experience either. I took theology and philosophy courses for years. I gobbled up every book that was offered by a mathematician or physicist claiming an empirical theory of ‘God’. I read existentialism, even when it made me want to scream. Nothing.
I think the only true prayer I ever prayed was asking God to give me faith.
Ten years later, still not much to show on that one.
It wasn't until I accepted my lack of faith that I could actually appreciate the church and Christianity for what is was, a valuable community and source of guidance for many. Despite all the evils of organized religion, I deeply respect them and the role they play in this world. The faithful are capable of a great deal of good.
Of course, the faithful are also capable of just as much evil and materialism as those without faith.
So eventually I came to a similar position as you. A God who values my ability to subject myself to his will and deny my own sense of reason, is one I am not comfortable worshipping. I cannot accept that I am under the influence of the devil or a force of evil or purely materialist concerns. I have continued to live in accordance with many of my Christian values and I can confidently say that I am a moral person. I still enjoy mass, the music and the stories but I consider myself a reverent agonist: I believe faith has a value, just like marriage has a value, or a graduate degree has a value, but that that value doesn’t mean I am required to choose it, and refuse everything else.
When I was a young child a priest once told me that doubt it the mark of the truth believer… I’ve never known quite what to make of that, but I do know that I have a more personal, valuable and comfortable relationship with ‘God’ as an doubting agnostic, then I ever had as a Catholic or a Christian, and that is certainly say something.
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Of course you should not pretend. Nor should you in any way whatsoever feel guilty about your doubts.
I went through a similar experience to yours when I was younger. I came to a few conclusions.
First of all, I dont see why religion is given such leeway. Every other theory, every other philosophy must prove its point of view. Religion for some reason is exempt from this requirement (at least to most people). There is no good reason for this (you will also notice I speak of religion in general- there is also no good reason to award Christianity a higher status over all the other beliefs out there).
Secondly, take a careful look around the world. There are a lot of religions out there, each one of them claiming to be the absolute truth, and each one not offering one ounce of evidence. Now, look carefully and notice how most people raised in those cultures "truly believe". Each one is convinced that, due to a deep feeling they cant really explain, their path is the true one. Odd how these feelings seem to correspond to the same religion that they were raised with- the same religion that the children were bombarded with, and maybe even made to fear, from a very young age.
Third, you will notice in every religion a certain man-made quality. Huge flaws or gaps in science, major inconsistencies, etc. They might explain rain in terms of God's mood, or they might place the Earth in the centre of the universe. As time goes by religious followers must continuously strain the interpretation of their religion to fit the new discoveries.
From the dawn of time humans have had religions. It is probably a result of our need to have all the answers combined with our need to believe that our lives are not finite. The former is a classic one... just try and argue with a religious believer and you will, sooner or later get something that sounds like "Well, how else can you explain xxxxxxx?" As though not knowing something justifies believing in magic.
Irrespective of what you eventually decide to do, you should not feel bad about thinking outside the box that society wants to confine us to. I hardly think its fair to use a word like "rebel" for deciding to think for yourself.
Also, dont fall for the fear tactics. In Christianity when all else fails people still hang on to it for fear of going to hell (your last sentence has probably been thought by millions of others throughout time). I see no reason to fear hell anymore than fearing any of the hundreds of other places of damnation that we have invented over the millennia.
Good luck.
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