What happens next?

Well the thing is, you dont have to go back to that faith at all. Find a new one, or have faith in yourself as opposed to a deity. IT is probably the strongly religious household that has made you have a lack of faith because your faith was already decided for you, you didnt develop it.

Sweet:

Welcome to A2K - and it is good to see a fellow houstonite.

I think where your at is a very normal place for a person your age to be. Breaking away from your childhood and going into the world on your own is partially defined by questioning what you know.

All my life I have questioned everything - but after 18 I fled from the Catholic church because I didn't see any help with forming my own beliefs. Catholicism is not good for questioning - papal authority takes care of that.

But after about 10 years I started to return to Christianity. I could not return to the catholic faith and I am not sure I ever can - but I am happy and I am still very much working on my faith.

You see, I think there is a very big difference between believing child-like and believing like a child. I think when you were younger - you believed like a child and simply took what your parents said as gospel truth. Now that you are older you need to figure this out on your own. When you do - and I think you will - believe it wholeheatedly and pour yourself into the truth. If it is true - it can hold up to the scrutiny.

You are not alone - you are not doing something that no one has ever done before - and I think you are doing the right thing by questioning. It is healthy.

TTF

I'm not gonna preach to you.

But I'm just gonna tell you what happened for me.

I was Christian and Baptist up until my teens.
In tenth grade I had a short conversation with an atheist girl in my class, and I found myself lashing out, trying to rectify the situation somehow. I had never met an atheist (to my knowledge). How could she not believe in God? She was a smart girl. That had a bearing I think. How could a smart girl not believe in God? I thought it was for fools. I slowly rejected Christianity. It wasn't a quick thing. I just didn't give it a lot of thought, but rather gave a lot of thought to the things of this world. I eventually realized that not thinking about it made it go away. You can do what you want, but now that I see the holes in the arguments for god without the faith that makes me just forget about reason and go like a sheep through the valley of death to my slaughter, there's no reason to believe anymore. Believing requires faith, because reason doesn't work for me. And I've lost my faith because there's no reason to have it. I've replaced faith with reason, and some say therein lies my problem, but I say therein lies THEIR problem. I doubt you think this helps though. So, sorry to spout my opinions without helping.

Sounds almost exactly like my situation in inverse. I wasn't a religious person when I was younger; no one around me was. I may have had some belief in a supreme being, but not much more. Religious people are indeed very rare where I live, and they are often even considered stupid by many people. Scarcely anyone goes to church here these days, and those who do consist to 95% of 60++ years old people and confirmands (confirmation is so strongly rooted in tradition that most parents, even irreligious ones, have their children go through with it for the sake of tradition alone).

Anyhow, as I grew older (from age 17 or so) I started thinking a lot about life, the meaning and everything. I conjectured that there had to be a supreme being who was also the cause of all causes. My beliefs were still wholly intellectual, though. It was not until I one day became inspired with the idea of reading about the life and teachings of Jesus, with the intention of truly trying to penetrate into its inner meanings and mysteries, that my beliefs turned into something much more real, something vastly much higher than mere intellectual belief. I could literally feel the love of God and his supreme presence inside me. More or less instantly, all reason and rationality came to feel petty and useless to me. These do indeed serve a purpose in our common lives, but God so utterly transcends human reason that it's sheer folly to try to explore God through it.

There are undoubtedly highly intelligent people both among theists and atheists, and similarly, there's certainly a lot of not so bright people of both types, so one should never let one's inability to comprehend things which pertain to the spiritual and divine to be a stumbling block in front of one's heart. God works first through the heart, and once there sheds his light also on the intellect. Hence, my advice to all people who struggle with their faith due to rationality is:

Open your heart rather than trying to understand why everything is as it is. Rest assured that no mind in the world can understand the grand scheme of God. Through prayer, self-denial and through recognizing that one truly needs God in one's life, and that one is totally lost without him, one allows God inside and then he can truly begin the spiritual process of transforming one into the likeness of his divine image.

Know that once you have opened your heart and thus let God enter into it, the light of the Holy Spirit shall illuminate your path, and that which previously seemed inaccessible and obscure, now shall become clear to you.

I wish you all well and pray that you will return to your Faith again soon. God will always be there waiting for you with open arms in his fathomless love. Embrace the divine!

Yes, reason and understanding does get in the way of things being good.







(unbridled sarcasm)