Eric B said:
And to xdisciple, I hope you're learning from all your time here that this is basically what you are going to get from many Christians. Judgment. the Church is shamefully at a place where we do not have the real answers, but only our own interpretations of scripture we argue on an on about, and they hide the confusion by coming up with quick, easy formulaic answers (Easy for them to say, but hard for others to receive), such as "Just trust God, and all your pain will not matter", and "just read the Bible and pray, and all these questions will be answered", when we still have not agreed upon any answer, or found any real lasting peace. If you don't, that makes their nice formula look bad, and would cause them to have to think and question it, so they question your salvation instead. I have been there.
So while some here have been patient and tried to help you, others just get impatient and wish you would just go away. I sometimes feel as distressed as you about all this stuff. I used to go around asking when I first became Christian (and there was no internet, so it was by mail, and in person as much as I could find), but I learned a long time ago, you can only press these people for answers but so much. Most will just give you a rock when you ask for bread. If this is people's answer to someone distressed enough to be suicidal, then right there, you should see where many of them are coming from, and I wouldn't want to ask them anything else! May God help us all!
Hi Eric,
you speak from my heart. This is so frustrating and sobering. Everybody does as if it was sooo easy. Oh, just pray and ask God to guide you and he will. Yay!
Does not everybody pray? And everybody thinks that he is right but not everybody can be right because not all agree. Maybe some can just take it easy and be like a child and simply pray and then assume that whatever they think the bible says is directly from God and this means they are always right on and everybody who disagrees is simply wrong. I cannot do this. I think this is simply absurd. In the end everybody simply has his own opinion and depending on how self-assured a person is he/she will either defend her own opinion as if it was the absolute truth or he/she will simply be insecure, like me. I don't have the answers to most questions. Some christians seem to always have an answer. It's amazing. You can ask them whatever you want they always have an answer and think they are right on and everybody who disagrees is simply wrong. I couldn't do this.
I don't know, some christians do not seem to think that this even is a problem they simply say: All christians agree on the basic things which are necessary to be saved.
Great. But this doesn't help me. These thing are all important! Healing is important, tongues are important, salvation is important. These are all important questions and not unimportant minor concerns.
It's simply so frustrating to see all these different opinions. In the end you can never really be sure that you are right and understand something correctly. Sometimes when I think about it I feel like becoming paranoid. In the end you can really never be really sure that you have it right. In the end these questions are also way too important to simply take them easy. Imagine you think you got it all right and think you're saved and then you find out you're not saved? This thought alone is already so scary that there is hardly anything which could make you feel really safe with your opinion. Let's say I think that once saved always saved is true then I still could never feel safe with it and rely on it because there is always the fear that I might be wrong and then I find myself in hell. Even if I heard a voice from heaven telling me that I am right I could still not feel safe! Because it could be Satan trying to deceive me. When you think about this you can really become paranoid. I think that these things have the potential to make a person become insane when you simply cannot take it anymore and are consumed by fear of going to hell or fear of not being saved or fear of being a false convert or fear of being left behind. Fear, fear, fear. It simply never ends. Christians preach fear on every corner. No matter what you listen to many sermons simply create fear. And when I then hear some christians say that being a christian makes you free I ask myself what I'm doing wrong. I don't really feel free. This doesn't mean that I don't want to be a christian anymore but being a christian isn't easy, at least for me. For others it might be easy, for some sunshine boys which are always optimistic and positive everything is easy. They smile all day and praise the Lord all day but all these things also depend on your personality. If you're not a sunshine boy then you also will never become one and also becoming a christian will not turn you into somebody who sings hallelujah all day. It's not easy to praise God and to get into a worship-mood when you're depressed all the time and the fact that I have a hard time worshipping makes me feel bad, too. It's really a vicious circle. In the beginning when I became a christian I had no contact to christians and no sermons and I just thought that God is on my side and I had this naive belief that God understands everything, which was most likely too liberal and also not correct, but at least I didn't feel guilty all the time and I also wasn't scared of God, which I'm also at times. Often I feel bad and ask myself what God thinks about me, wether he's angry or disappointed or wether he thinks I'm lazy or foolish or carnal or whatever. But I never know what he thinks.
And then these "great" advice which claim that you can really know God's heart from reading the bible. I guess all people here read the bible but who can really say he knows God's heart and knows his thoughts? All this arguing here only shows that in the end nobody really knows what God really thinks and how he is like.
I don't know, I'm afraid that maybe I will never find a solution for these problems and that I will always be frustrated and not understand what the bible means and also not know how God really is. But this would be worth so much. But hearing from God is also something which is not ranked very high in conservative circles. They say "you have the bible, what more do you need?" oh yeah. I guess this means that you could also communicate with your parents using letters and you would still know them as much as you do. I think that this is not correct. Imagine God says something to you which is just for you or imagine you could ask God a question and he would reply then you could really get to know Him and maybe comprehend how He really is, how His character is. And then you would also automatically love God more. The more you know Him the more you love Him, this is logical. But the bible alone isn't sufficient to really understand how he is. There are verses in the bible which can be used to paint a picture of a nice God and there are verses in the bible which can be used to terrify christians and in the end you don't know how He really is.
For example when a disaster happens some christians say that this was God. You will find "prophecies" all over the internet which claim that Jesus is speaking and where he says that he did this and some chistians believe this and think that Jesus caused te hurricane to punish the wicked people in new orleans. Other christians will say that this was not God. But in the end you're simply left with this uncertainty not knowing how God really is and when there's uncertainty then there is also room for all these negative thoughts and anxieties and then you get the worst pictures of God and imagine Him as a harsh dictator and feel totally alienated from Him. I've been through all of this. In times where everything is working and where I feel like life is good to me I think that God must be satisfied and happy and in times where everything is not good I fear that God might be punishing me for something.
And when I then get advice like "simply come to Jesus, he is waiting for you" it upsets me. As if I wasn't keen on this. I have had times where I was motivated and wanted to get a breakthrough and where I wanted to talk to God and pray for hours but it didn't take long and I became very frustrated because I couldn't even pray for hours and then I gave up. And other christians seem to have all these things which are desirable. They say they hear God and that they experience miracles in their lives and they have all these things and I'm like a spectator who's just watching from the outside. Very frustrating. If I at least knew what the reason is but there could be so many reasons. Once I thought that it might be music and I threw all secular cds out but nothing changed. In the end there are so many possible reasons which might be holding you back but maybe it's also something totally different.
Or maybe it's because of sin and then I think I gotta get rid of this sin and I gotte improve here and improve there but it's never really liberating because even if I got victory over all these things then I would most likely feel good about myself but this would also be wrong because then I would think that getting rid of certain sins means that God must be satisfied with me and this would also be wrong. Somehow no matter what you do seems wrong.
