Do you remember when you first started thinking for your self and wondering whether or not there actually is a god or higher power? If so what could you share that experience.

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RevKathyV

http://www.myspace.com/divinelightinterfaith



www.divinelightinterfaithministry.com

I can remember things from as far back as three...nothing that was being taught even at an early age seemed to go with what people of the church acutally did...what the adults said never resinated with me...but i have also never felt alone...alone...though i was often alone....i have over the years known things that i had no reason to know that i am aware of...and it is only since i am much older and see and hear some people say and talk of things that resonate with me....dont know if this is what your looking for in your question..but this is my thoughts after reading the question....

Great response! Thankyou! I don't remember thinking about it that young. I don't think I really started questioning things until I was a teenager. I was raised Lutheran and went to a Lutheran scholl for a while. I don;t think I really sarted questioning things til I was 17 and teaching Sunday school. It got me thinking more and couldn't find answers to my questions that made any sense...or that felt right in my gut.

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RevKathyV

http://www.myspace.com/divinelightinterfaith



www.divinelightinterfaithministry.com

Hi Rev...

to respond to your question....i can't remember a time when divinity was not present, tho at the time i had no word for it. That came later when adults started talking to me about 'god'. That talk only gave it a mental shape.

When i was very small, and way over half a century ago, i ran over and thru one of the last large remnents of prairie left near Chicago Ill. Open, empty, flat and by myself. There was a living glory in the sunshine, and in the cottonwoods rattling leaves and in the smells and in my running and breathing. i was so aware of it, and even today,the memory so strong i have to say it was (w)holy.
It was later the word 'god' came into the picture. Somehow it shrank that presence, maybe because i was taught i could not respond to it naturaly, and maybe not responding to it naturaly is not responding WITH it.

Took nearly a whole dang lifetime to get over that.

That sounds like a wonderful experience. Thanks for sharing that....

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RevKathyV

http://www.myspace.com/divinelightinterfaith



www.divinelightinterfaithministry.com

I too was raised Lutheran. Catacysm, alter boy, Sunday school, etc. This was all before I was 14. I would try to decide what I was supposed to believe in and label it as: Spiritualism, agnostic, athiest, and by the age of 22 I was introduced to the Rocicrucian Western Wisdom School of Exoteric Christian and Mystic Phylosophy. It filled my Being with every answer I had long for.

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Only Love Prevails,
Don

My experience of God has been consciously immediate since I was at least six and I have never doubted the existence of the divine.

I have questioned the religion I was raised in many times. One stimulus was the fact that close relatives (grandmother, aunt) were members of Jehovah's Witnesses, and that gave me a decidedly different view of traditional doctrines such as the Trinity and an introduction to millennianism. I remember I was only about 14 when I decisively rejected that viewpoint, even though I had no firm answers to their challenges, because I was too convinced a)that God is love and b) the JW god was a god of anger.

Later, reading in newer theologies (Bishop John Robinson, C.S. Lewis) in philosophy, esp. Gabriel Marcel, and exposing myself to interfaith dialogue led to explorations in many ways of understanding God.

My belief is no longer that of my childhood, but is still within the Christian tradition. However, even if I decided to change, it would be a change to another faith, not a movement away from God.

I have "thought for myself" (or so I would like to believe) since my earliest memories, which unfortunately don't start until I was about 7 (as a battered kid, I repressed a great deal, and have only 3 distinct situational memories prior to that).

But at 7, I was aware of the idea of God, in a Christian context. The thing is, from even that age, I "knew" in my heart-of-hearts that it was all made-up fantasy, and that what happened here was caused here.

I have never felt the divine. Which leads me to a story which may help to clarify.

As Ludwig von Beethoven aged, he grew increasingly deaf -- surely a tragedy in so great a composer. There is the story of his having to be turned around to see (rather than hear) the applause after he conducted his own 9th symphony. This is probably apocryphal, or at least not completely true as most people know the story, but never mind.

As I was thinking about this story the other day, it occurred to me that Beethoven had at least had very good hearing for most of his life, and therefore was very well acquainted with music -- the melodies and cadences, the harmonics, the colour and tone of each instrument. And thus, he would still be able to "play" the music in his memory. He knew it well, and understood it in such a way that it was still very real to him.

What, though, of the individual born deaf, who has never heard any sound? How would one explain music, in all its richness, to such a person? And the answer is, I don't think it can really be done. In the same way, it is impossible to convey in a meaningful way what the difference between red and green means to a red-green colour-blind individual.

We do not hold such people accountable for their inabilities. We do not judge them inferior, or deem them to be worthy of our condemnation.

What, then, of the individual who cannot "hear" the divine, who cannot understand what it means to suppose that there is "something else" that is unseen, possibly unknowable?

But it seems that many people dislike atheists, or at least imagine that they do. In survey after survey, atheists appear as the least admired, least liked, least electable group, often below homosexuals. On what basis?

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evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.

evangelicalhumanist....

i enjoy reading what you write and the last post especialy touched me.
So well put.

Atheism, for me, has not been a problem since my early 20s. My grandfather was one, and with good humor answered my rather callow questions and made me think. i like to think it produced a mind that is more then tolerant because the word implies that atheism exists by my leave, and that has nothing to do with it. In my mind it exists because it has a right to.
My beliefs are so far removed from regulair religion that i have often been on the recieving end of well meaning religouse folk's campaigns to convert me so have some empathy for others not 'in the fold'

i don't understand general assumptions that atheists cannot be ethical, moral or generouse when there is much evidence to the contrary.

This is a large world and with room enough for everyone as long as they don't insist that one must be in or out of a specific circle of exclusivity.
i regard the Rev's question as one of looking for understanding this thing we call belief, so responded. Interestingly, you come from the opposite direction which i think is valuable by it's contrast, i know it fed my head. Thank you.

I used to dream of the future as a Kid and then expereince it a few months later - so i knew all was not as it seemed

I had zero Religious expereince other than a few classes at sunday school - and i didnt take much notice

Aged approx 30 i invited the JWs in for about 3 months weekly and listened to what hey had to say
Found the Stories of Jesus sang to me
Found the messges of wrath and hate foolish

Decided to call it a day

Said "IF there is a God it will show me" as a Loving father wouldnt leave his child to find home blind - much as EH has said it didnt make any sense
Also said if God is anything like the pyscho protrayed in the Bible I want nothing to do with him her it - then i left it and carried on with life

2003 - Revelation

GOD is LOVE