A contradiction

[water]

Someone please explain this to me -- for it is a contradiction:


By some Christian religionists, I get told both:

P1: Have faith in God, it is up to you whether you believe or not.

P2: Only God can give faith.


I1: Me having faith is my doing.

I2: Me having faith is God's doing.


So which is it?

And if both God and I need to do our shares so that I would have faith -- still, how do I do my share, whom does my share depend on?

 

[Jenyar]

Having faith is a choice made possible by God.

If He did not promise to do something, and then did it, whatever faith we might have had was simply an empty hope. But if we see and ackowledge what God does, it enables us to have faith in Him.

 

[water]

Having faith is a choice made possible by God.

If He did not promise to do something, and then did it, whatever faith we might have had was simply an empty hope. But if we see and ackowledge what God does, it enables us to have faith in Him.

How does one see and acknowledge what God does?
By faith?

 

[Jenyar]

I don't think it could be called faith at that stage. Maybe requires a conscious application of the general kind of faith one practices every day, but it is certainly not yet faith in God per se.

For instance, if someone persistantly shows a certain quality, one might start having faith in that quality. As more qualities become believable, one might develop faith in the person in general. Our trust in people is reasonably tempered by a healthy knowledge of human weaknesses, but our faith might accomodate such 'unknowns'. But it's not a general, naive "giving them the benefit of the doubt", it is based on their revealed character.

If we do not believe they ever revealed their character, we won't believe anything they do or say, and we'll automatically distrust anything that claims otherwise.

 

[water]

For believing that that person has "revealed his character", we first must have some experience, some interaction with that person. But how is one to do that when it comes to God -- when one doesn't even know what God is like, or what God does?

How is one ever to come to have faith in God?

 

[ellion]

How is one ever to come to have faith in God?

seek and ye shall find.

seek to know god, you are more likely to come to know god.
seek to prove god doesnt exist and you will likely find god doesnt exist.

when you expereince it for yourself then it is your truth.

faith becomes trust.

 

[Jenyar]

By believing Him. I know this sounds circular, and one should not believe just anything. But what God has done, and what He has revealed, has not been "just anything". Nobody has ever met God as He is, in His totality, but many have met Him nonetheless. And it really isn't so hard in practice as it seems intellectually. We'd like to have a recipe in words or on paper, everything in box that we just have to open, but reality doesn't lend itself naturally to such reduction.

Our interaction with God isn't direct in the way we are used to "directness". It is at once more direct than physical contact and less direct, because experience is not limited to physical proximity (we can vouch for that). The "only" interface we have with God is life itself, everything that happens and has happened - but where history would otherwise be distant, meaningless, impersonal, with God it is meaningful and personal.

One cannot wait until you are convinced that someone has revealed his character before you accept what is being revealed as his character. We never know even a person completely, how can we expect to ever know the mystery of God completely? But we can know sufficiently, and we know God sufficiently by examining all the evidence beyond history, beyond words, actions and mere anthropomorphisms of Him -- and coming to a conclusion that this revelation is trustworthy and true (or not).

We can only do that if we do not unrealistically expect our own abilities to surprise us, to suddenly accept what we would not otherwise have accepted, or to suddenly see what we have not been physically or mentally able to see before. That would lead us to think we must somehow will ourselves to believe; we end up just wishing we could believe. No, it's a very real process to get to know someone, and the same with God. It will probably not be some crazy supernatural experience, but a natural, infinitely more meaningful (and therefore perhaps a more incredible) one. It is not "first experience, then acknowledgement" - it is experience acknowledged.

Revelation 3:20
Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.​

And in this way, like you have to decide whether to believe it's really me writing this, you will have to believe whether it's really God knocking. You have a collection of experiences with me - a "bible" of my history - and you can put everything you hear in that context, from which you decide to believe me or not; to acknowledge me or not. It is this kind of coherence that makes someone knowable.

And that all the Bible really testifies to: Israel's God acting persistently, patiently and coherently: being coherently understood, and making people's lives, their every move and very existence, coherent. That's what revelation is: our incoherent, wildly searching minds are put at rest, things become clearer (but are still reflections), mysteries are demystified (but not any less mysterious), faith is confirmed (without requiring any less 'faith') - and something out of place falls in place. It resolves our doubts and fears without making them irrational or even taking them away - not because of wishful thinking, but because it applies.

1 Cor. 13:12
Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.​

 

[Lord_Phoenix]

Lets just say god exists. This world is based on choices, it would be entirely your choice whether to believe or not. Unless you believe that everything is controlled by god. Entirely your opinion

 

[WANDERER]

water

By some Christian religionists, I get told both:

P1: Have faith in God, it is up to you whether you believe or not.

P2: Only God can give faith.


I1: Me having faith is my doing.

I2: Me having faith is God's doing.


So which is it?

And if both God and I need to do our shares so that I would have faith -- still, how do I do my share, whom does my share depend on?

Ah, dear water you have fallen upon the wonderment of God.
He is this and that, He is and is not, He gives and gives not, He frees and enslaves.

See how easily words can create the illusion of meaning?

Witch
(begins to recite from the book with great emphasis)
This you must know!
From one make ten,
And two let go,
Take three again,
Then you’ll be rich.
From five and six,
Thus says the witch,

Make seven and eight,
That does not trick;
And nine is one,
And ten is none.
That is witch’s arithmetic.

Faust
It seems to me the old hag runs a fever.

Mephisto
You’ll hear much more before we leave her.
I know, it sounds like that for many pages.
I lost much time on this accursed affliction,
Because a perfect contradiction
Intrigues not only fools but also sages.
This art is old and new, forsooth:
It was the custom in all ages
To spread illusion and not truth
With Three in One and One in Three.
They teach it twittering like birds;
With fools there is no intervening.
Men usually believe, if only they hear words,
That there must also be some sort of meaning.​

Faust – Goethe (The first Part of the Tragedy 2540-2560)​

The Christian triad explained and not explained, believed in without understanding it and a Book of allegorical contradiction pretending it hides transcending wisdom.
The secret of every religion and every sophistry hides here.

You see the mind, when it becomes aware, grasps for reasons to explain what caused the awareness and when no cause can be found it uses magic and doubletalk and mysticism to explain what it cannot.

Now let us say that what a mind is told, is what it already wants to believe but in so doing many contradictions and problems of logic must be overcome.
Let us say what a mind is told suits it just fine, even if it goes against common sense and experience or it lacks logical arguments and evidence altogether.

Solution: The wanton mind is willing to believe what it wishes for there to be and any explanation, no matter how absurd and nonsensical, will do, if it is presented with flowery language and unchallengeable ‘facts’.
Place the problem outside human understanding tell him that it is beyond reality itself and you have a perfect ideal for the ages.

Now let us take the Bible or the Koran or any book pretending to know truth.

Recipe:

Step 1- Take a bowl historical events.
This will lend the text some credence, for the best lies are hidden amongst truths.

Step 2- Sprinkle abundant wisdoms.
This will weigh down the text with guidance and common sense, within which an assortment of logical leaps and meaningless concepts can be swept through into the subconscious, by avoiding the filtering mechanisms of the conscious and of reason.
Also, advice accepted and successful, indebts the student to the teacher and makes the first a pliable instrument of the second.

Step 3- Add allegory and metaphor, where knowledge is lacking.
There is nothing more pleasurable to the needy soul, seeking solutions and relief, than beautiful words pretending they mean something.
Love, compassion, romance, all welcomed tools of guile and deceit.

‘God is Love’ we hear and our hearts leap with ecstasy.
But what does this mean?
Nobody dares deconstruct or question.
It sounds too pretty to not mean something.

Mix well until, whatever contradictions and nonsense threatens to spoil the batter, are well masked with poetic language and nonsensical prose.

Heat well in high temperature, making sure many martyrs and sacrifices are made and the brew is hardened with blood and commandments.

Let stand.
Serve warm, to morons and desperate idiots looking for a window out of suffering and a back door to survival.

Voila.
Religion.

But what are we eating and what satiates our hunger and inflates our bellies?
Is it nutritious, is it good for us, is it pure or does it only taste good?

 

[water]

seek and ye shall find.

That is the worst thing one can ever say. If I am, for example, looking for a particular pair of socks that I know I put in some drawer, then I know what exactly I am looking for, and when I come across it, I will know that I have found it.
But not so with God.

Or is it that in the seeking of God, one shall discover what he is actually seeking for, and if what is sought for is God, then one shall find God?

seek to know god, you are more likely to come to know god.
seek to prove god doesnt exist and you will likely find god doesnt exist.

Bah. If we go by the nature of human knowledge (and the way we develop it), then one can prove or disprove anything. Many premises can be accepted as valid, and all can be discarded on some grounds or another.

when you expereince it for yourself then it is your truth.

A truth isn't worth much if you are the only one to know it.
I understand what you are saying, but the downfall of this stance is that it isolates one from other people. Eventually, clinging only to what you know as true, but have no confirmation of it from other people, can lead to mental illness.


* * *

By believing Him. I know this sounds circular, and one should not believe just anything. But what God has done, and what He has revealed, has not been "just anything". Nobody has ever met God as He is, in His totality, but many have met Him nonetheless. And it really isn't so hard in practice as it seems intellectually. We'd like to have a recipe in words or on paper, everything in box that we just have to open, but reality doesn't lend itself naturally to such reduction.

Our interaction with God isn't direct in the way we are used to "directness". It is at once more direct than physical contact and less direct, because experience is not limited to physical proximity (we can vouch for that). The "only" interface we have with God is life itself, everything that happens and has happened - but where history would otherwise be distant, meaningless, impersonal, with God it is meaningful and personal.

One of my biggest problems when it comes to God is people who tell me about God.
To put it in terms of discourse: The concept of God is a part of the social discourse. We pick up the discourse while communicating with other people. We rely on them, on books -- but ultimately on other people, as we can't ask books all the questions we have, and get answers.

The first hindrance is religious elitism. A religious person may stand there with his knowledge of God, and when approached, this person will take the superior position of being the one explaining things to the one asking. Alright. But such a situation may eventually escalate in a feeling of inferiority: while the religious one is "over the hill", the asker seems to remain forever behind, never being able to catch up. An abyss between the religionist and the asker opens up. And it makes the discourse foul.


* * *

Lets just say god exists. This world is based on choices, it would be entirely your choice whether to believe or not. Unless you believe that everything is controlled by god. Entirely your opinion

Nothing personal against you, but what you have propsed above is just about the most useless and self-defeating stance one can take.

A "Yes, it is all up to me." But when I look at the world and myself, there are many things about me that are not up to me. I have not chosen to be born, I have not chosen the colour of my eyes and my hair, I have not chosen to be born in the family I was born into. There is a lot of things about me that are pre-choice or non-choice to me. How do I reconcile this with the position "It is all up to me"?

 

[ellion]

That is the worst thing one can ever say. If I am, for example, looking for a particular pair of socks that I know I put in some drawer, then I know what exactly I am looking for, and when I come across it, I will know that I have found it.
But not so with God.

of course it's not so with god, god is more than a pair of socks in your draw.

Or is it that in the seeking of God, one shall discover what he is actually seeking for, and if what is sought for is God, then one shall find God?

yes this is what i meant

A truth isn't worth much if you are the only one to know it.

although it is my truth and very few people can share it i am not the only one to know it. the spirit of truth does bring freedom and it needs no confirmation other than itself.

 

[water]

WANDERER,


If one approaches religion as an instant solution to one's problems and the heaviness of one's conscience, then such an approach robs that person of the sense of personal responsibility, both in good and in bad. This leads to religious nihilism, sometimes religious atheism.

This can happen with *any* religion.

The religion itself is just a discourse; it functions as a tool: you can use a needle to sow a dress, or to poke someone in the eye. The needle has no power over how it will be used.


If anything, established, historical religions have this great advantage of preparing the situation where one has to face oneself, thoroughly. *This* is the uncomfortable thing about any religion.

In that, it shows what a man is made of:
If he goes for the "I am a poor sinner, a miserable imperfect creature", and remains in this, then he is merely abusing religion to justify his weaknesses before himself, but with the benefit of the belief that "they will be forgiven".
If he goes "I am a child of God, and God helps me, and I prosper" then he has a way of conceptualizing both his abilities and inabilities in a manner that don't harm him.
He can also go for "God I hate you, I don't believe in you, but I am angry with you for making the world and me the way we are", then he is using religion to indulge in his (self-)victimization.

Personally, I do not think that God -- as presented in the Bible -- is encouraging people to victimize themselves in one way or another. What is sure is that some religious people find a sick pleasure in promulgating the idea that unless you strip yourself of all self-respect, you are not respecting God -- "In acknowledgement of your own worthlessness, evilness and ugliness you should now spend the rest of your life repenting in sackcloth and ashes. You should love God as a punishment for your own failures." That's totally twisted -- yet often served.

To judge a religion simply by its followers and the way that religion is practiced is to say people have no identities, no will of their own, no motives of their own.

Not to mention the empirical statistical problem of trying to measure how religion is practiced -- whatever empirical observations we make, they are inductive statistical abstracts, for one, and for two, I do not know how to devise a proper measuring tool. People change, the way they practice their beliefs changes over time -- to measure them only at one point in their lives and claming this to be a veritable picture of that person's beliefs is a gross reductionsim, scientifically invalid.



As for

Men usually believe, if only they hear words,
That there must also be some sort of meaning.

-- this line of thinking can be used to discard anything.
"Words, words, words, it is all just words and nothing more." I wonder what justification a nihilist has for staying alive.

 

[Lord_Phoenix]

Water, well if you need a better understanding of what I said you should have asked, instead of interpreting it with inaccuracy and prejudice. Everyone elses choices affects us yes, but it is entirely upto us to chose how we react back at them.

 

[Jenyar]

So, we must look for a solution somewhere between this:

One of my biggest problems when it comes to God is people who tell me about God.

and this:

Eventually, clinging only to what you know as true, but have no confirmation of it from other people, can lead to mental illness.

But is the problem in the person - the believer himself - in their integrity and coherence, hypocritical actions or confusing words, or is it in the subject - their God?

The first hindrance is religious elitism. A religious person may stand there with his knowledge of God, and when approached, this person will take the superior position of being the one explaining things to the one asking. Alright. But such a situation may eventually escalate in a feeling of inferiority: while the religious one is "over the hill", the asker seems to remain forever behind, never being able to catch up. An abyss between the religionist and the asker opens up. And it makes the discourse foul.

This seems to describe the personality of a certain type of person: a high regard for their own (spiritual) position and a fundamentally arrogant attitude towards all people who "don't get it yet". And of course, they would think themselves the only authority of who "gets it" and who doesn't. Such an attitude would indeed sour any conversation about the topic.

I think we can make an analogy that might be useful: the believer as someone who simply points to something (like John the Baptist pointed to Jesus).

For a while, someone passing by might regard this pointing person only with suspicion, even mocking him, since he is standing in the middle of the road pointing at seemingly nothing. But if they start a conversation and the pointing person becomes more familiar, the passer-by might trust him better and take further interest. At that stage, the criterium for truth leaves the pointing person and focuses along his finger to what he's pointing at. You are not looking for the apparently keen eyes of the person without even looking where he points to, hoping to someday see as well as he does (or thinks he does). You are looking for yourself, and at that stage you are equals, being just as human as he is. He cannot tell you what you should see to "be like him" - only what he is seeing. You might keep asking him to describe what he sees, but now as a fellow observer.

I am pointing to the God of the Bible, the heavenly Father whom Jesus pointed to, but you are not me and will never be me. You will not seek just like me or find in the same way I did. And that can be your comfort, because it means you are not competing with me or anyone for "gnosis", "exaltation" or "enlightenment"; you don't have to steal my eyes to see what I'm pointing to. After all, I'm confident that everyone who looks will be able to see it, or it wouldn't help to point. But don't let someone's confidence intimidate you; confidence alone doesn't make something real. And I'm still very much peering into the mists, myself. I just found men pointing, and am following the trail of questions to God - questions that men don't have the answers to:

"I am the most ignorant of men;
I do not have a man's understanding.
I have not learned wisdom,
nor have I knowledge of the Holy One.
Who has gone up to heaven and come down?
Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands?
Who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak?
Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is his name, and the name of his son?
Tell me if you know!"
Proverbs 30​

 

[water]

Water, well if you need a better understanding of what I said you should have asked, instead of interpreting it with inaccuracy and prejudice.

I think you are too quick to take offence or to feel under attack.

Everyone elses choices affects us yes, but it is entirely upto us to chose how we react back at them.

Why do you think that it is *entirely* up to us?

 

[Jenyar]

As in any relationship, sometimes our personal wishes and fears interfere with our ability to have a relationship - they make it hard to get to know someone as they are, because our own interests cloud the process, making it more difficult - making faith more of an uphill struggle than it would otherwise be. That is where perseverance comes in, and where people fall out.

 

[Jenyar]

In the same vein...

"Yes, it is all up to me." But when I look at the world and myself, there are many things about me that are not up to me. I have not chosen to be born, I have not chosen the colour of my eyes and my hair, I have not chosen to be born in the family I was born into. There is a lot of things about me that are pre-choice or non-choice to me. How do I reconcile this with the position "It is all up to me"?

The mistake would be to think something that is out of your control must influence the control you do have. In other words, to believe that you already know what effects the causes should have on you (as someone living in a purely deterministic world might). While such hopeless causality might be easily evident in the natural, visible world, it does not apply in the spiritual world (or to rephrase Phoenix: unless you believe God doesn't exist).

The existence of God gives us that choice of what do with what we've been dealt: body, mind, circumstances... everything. Knowledge of his existence sets us free that way, giving us the wings of a dove - a shock on the system after we've gotten used to being fatalistically stuck in our deterministic cage, victims of a cruel and self-causing world. Before you could know God it wasn't up to you, but after God revealed His saving grace it gives you the chance people don't normally expect (or often even want) to have, to make a choice to trust Him further or not. It is up to you whether you accept that choice - and Him - or fall back into the cage in a flurry of blood and feathers. The willingness to seek God outside our self-limited world is flying, and flying is faith.

 

[water]

But is the problem in the person - the believer himself - in their integrity and coherence, hypocritical actions or confusing words, or is it in the subject - their God?

Hard to tell.
If we take Wanderer's position, then it is God who is faulty. Although Wanderer also keeps going at humans and how fallible they are. "Weak people with a weak god", I suppose.

On the other hand, one can always, in terms of infinite regress, doubt one's integrity and coherence, eventually thinking that one should be the Golden Retriever Syndrome in person.
The voice comes in one's head, saying, "But have you really thought about it? Are you sure you understood it? Are you sure you haven't left out something? What reason do you have to accept/reject this? Is it a plausible reason?" and endlessly so. Endlessly! Until one stops, exhausted and burnt out, and refuses to think about the thing not even for a moment longer, and gives in to the despair of recognizing one's own hypocrisy.

Then what?

The mistake would be to think something that is out of your control must influence the control you do have.

Why is this a mistake?

If I only have *some* control, and not *all* of it, then it is due to this that the control I do have is influenced by something else.
It is like being alive, being able to move, and yet have puppet strings attached to your limbs. If the puppeteer doesn't pull, I can move as I will. But I never know when or how the puppeteer will pull!

In other words, to believe that you already know what effects the causes should have on you (as someone living in a purely deterministic world might). While such hopeless causality might be easily evident in the natural, visible world, it does not apply in the spiritual world (or to rephrase Phoenix: unless you believe God doesn't exist).

Yes, I believe to know what effects the causes should have on me -- but I also believe that "the Universe keeps doing these insanely bewildering things to me".
And this applies in the spiritual world as well.

The existence of God gives us that choice of what do with what we've been dealt: body, mind, circumstances... everything. Knowledge of his existence sets us free that way, giving us the wings of a dove - a shock on the system after we've gotten used to being fatalistically stuck in our deterministic cage, victims of a cruel and self-causing world. Before you could know God it wasn't up to you, but after God revealed His saving grace it gives you the chance people don't normally expect (or often even want) to have, to make a choice to trust Him further or not. It is up to you whether you accept that choice - and Him - or fall back into the cage in a flurry of blood and feathers. The willingness to seek God outside our self-limited world is flying, and flying is faith.

When did God reveal His saving grace to me?
Do you think that knowing that Jesus died for our sins really makes a difference? I tell you: it doesn't. I can theorize about it as much as I like, I doesn't make it any more real or important *to me*. You might as well be telling me about a profound principle of quantum physics.

Am I being stubborn? A heartless bitch? Am I wilfully rebelling?
The only other option seems to become like a Golden Retriever -- but then, I am gone.

 

[§outh§tar]

Am I being stubborn? A heartless bitch? Am I wilfully rebelling?

You HAVE to believe.

Regardless of whether or not it seems real to you. You are a depraved sinner having turned away from God's free grace and you spit in His face. Repent! It is not His fault, but yours. All yours heathen.

 

[stretched]

Water,

The only being you can rebel against is yourself. The only judge that can ever judge you is yourself. The answers do not lie in religion, relationships, careers, science chocolate, the New York Times, or any other "thing". Focus your wonderfull intellect more within, and peace will surely find you.

Allcare.