Christian discussion: Everyone welcome, but please respect the intent of the thread

[Elder Sister]

I have found that this board is full of some very wise, very tolerant people, as long as I don't act like a jack ass. I'll do my best not to do that in this thread. :)

I'm a Christian - Methodist. I've attended Baptist churches, and my current church is a remarkably progressive Baptist church, that I'm sometimes at odds with. I'm not 100% happy with their politics, and they're not 100% happy with me. They know I'm a fierce feminist, but they put up with me anyway. I'm extremely liberal, and it's hard at times for me to reconcile my faith versus what the Bible says. And there is no way I can reconcile it to what some more conservative, extremely vocal Christians say and do.

As a kid of six or seven, I can remember sitting in the Methodist church and staring at the stained glass windows, feeling the presence of God. I knew God loved me; I knew he was looking out for me. I used to dream about Christ and wanted so badly to join him in Heaven; he would tell me I had to stay with my family; that one day we would all be together. I realize all of this is extremely touchy-feely, and means absolutely zero to anyone else, but it's simply my experience. The most vivid dream I had was while I was fighting a fever of 104 or something - my mom said I nearly died, but I think she's adding gravy...I was just really sick.

There was a woman who would come into my room and watch over me around this time. I would see her, and feel comforted by her presence. I thought it was my mother, and I asked her why she came into my room every night. She said it wasn't her - and then I was afraid. I woke up in the night and saw the woman, and asked her not to come back, that I was afraid of her. I never saw her again. I believe she was an angel or something. I saw her again four years ago during a particularly tough time. I know how nuts that sounds - I'm not really sure why I'm telling you guys this. Maybe I'm just a lunatic, but I think that woman is my guardian angel.

I was a hellion as a teenager. I still loved God, but I wasn't as interested in church as I was partying. And I was good at partying. Fast forward to age 20 when I got my act together through a series of unfortunate events (that I created. ahem). I stayed out of the church for 10 years before I found my way back. I've been there ever since.

I've had moments in my life when I felt so strongly the presence of God....and then other times when I wonder if there's anything there. All I know is that my faith is one of the defining things in my life. I depend on it; there have been times when I have clung to it with all I had. The day I found out I had cancer, I was pulled over on the side of the road, gripping my cell phone, listening to the radiologist say the words, "malignant." It was God who gave me the strength to do what I needed to do; tell my family, prepare for all the crappity crap that goes with cancer, and then begin rebuilding my life.

I would never force my belief on another human being. I am embarrassed and offended by the antics of some 'Christians' and feel shame for the way they behave. But all I can do is continue to change the small piece of the world that I'm in. And call them on their crap. Newsflash: Being a Christian is not about being hard on other people. It's about being hard on myself. What you do is none of my business. I'm simply supposed to help you, encourage you, show you Christ's love. If I can't or won't do that, I need to keep my trap shut. There are more and more progressive Christians like me who are getting more vocal; and that's a good thing.

[Arch-MaesterPhilip]

It's about being hard on myself. What you do is none of my business. I'm simply supposed to help you, encourage you, show you Christ's love.

My father says he goes to Mass every morning not because he is so pious but because he's a sinner.

[deleted01]

Just to state my stance: I'm not religious, was raised in a non-religious family, and I guess I'd put myself in the agnostic camp. I have no issues with religion, as long as it doesn't impact on other people's lives in a negative way.

But I just wanted to pop in and say how much I've enjoyed reading your stories. I like to ask questions about religion, and can sometimes be baffled by certain things, but I'd also like to think that you all feel comfortable enough to discuss it without getting any shit for it.

[chris999]

I believe Christ as the greatest philosopher ever.I also think that he was influenced by the Eastern philosophies as well, such as Hindu and Buddhism.

But I am not naive enough to believe that a 4000 year old book has not been altered before, therefore I view my own philosophy only around Jesus' own teachings about how to treat other people, and none of the more negative, older parts of the book. Honestly I view the other books/chapters as mainly history and the one at the end of the book as phony and manipulative.

If you believe that good is possible on this world, then you have to judge people by their fruit. Jesus never taught that violence was the answer to anything.

[Zar Lannister]

My father says he goes to Mass every morning not because he is so pious but because he's a sinner.

As a Roman Catholic, my favorite Psalm is 25. I can relate to your father.

Since my mother and father lived apart, the decision to upbring me in the faith wasn't ever discussed. One day, out of the blue, I decided I wanted to take the sacrament of communion. I was 10 then. Determined as I was, I told the lady I was interested in signing up for Afternoon Catechism school. She said she obviously would need permission from my parents, and of course, the issue of no baptism arised. So basically, I started my own campaigning to get baptized, since I needed to get that covered first. And that's how I started making a conscious effort to go with my neighbors to mass without anyone asking me to. Eventually I went on to get baptized, and get the communion.

Eventually as I grew up, and my neighbors moved. My mother was never the person to go to church, and as a teen and young adult I took a path apart from the practices. While I still held on to my beliefs and kept coming back and forth to them, I was so particularly private about them that at one point, I enrolled and went to confirmation class without telling either of my parents. I've never been a non-believer. I've also never considered myself not a Catholic either; I was just lukewarm in my convictions, and opinionated and too rational for my own good. I sometimes still feel I am, though I increasingly, just like Lily comments, I feel drawn closer to the Church, and a lot of it has comes from self introspections and experiences with people around me, who have preached not with words, but with the ways they've gone through their lives after returning to the Church, not only when life has given them lemons, but even when life in general has been relatively generous to them. I don't think I can explain it, other than they seem to project an aura of peace around them, a leavel of peace that lightens everything around them.

[TerraPrime]

Lily:

Thanks for sharing your take on NOLA and the RCC. That explains so much about my experience visiting the city. I never put 2 and 2 together and now it makes a lot of sense.

[Fragile Bird]

Isn't the rule that you're supposed to be confirmed before taking Communion? My wife and I attended a Catholic Church -- at least until the priest we liked left -- and though she is Catholic, I'm not. She always wanted me to take Communion but I figured their house, their rules.

Of course, thinking back on it, maybe it wasn't really their house at all.

I'm not sure where you got this idea, FLoW. The first sacrament you receive is baptism, normally as a baby. Then you receive the next two, Penance and Communion, after taking basic religious teaching about the fundamentals of faith, after which you can make your first confession and first communion. I was in grade 2 when I made my first communion. The next sacrament is Confirmation, once upon a time administered either at baptism or within a few years of baptism, and also part of parental responsibility. But that changed hundreds of years ago, and now confirmation happens when children are old enough to understand moral responsibility. At the school I went to you got confirmed in grade 5, but the age can be anywhere from age 8 or 9 to 14 or 15. Think of it in the same way courts determine when a child can testify in court.

I have said this in other threads, but to repeat, my parents were raised Catholics in devout households, and when they met and married, they married in church and made sure we had a religious education. But both of them had gone through incredible struggles during WW II, something that strengthens the faith in some people and weakens it in others. As long as we were children, they took us to church, but as we got older it was only Christmas and Easter. And while they didn't totally lose their faith, I think they had a feeling of having been abandoned by God, combined with wondering if there was a God at all, considering the horrific things that went on in the war.

My brothers pretty well became non-practicing by the time they were teens, although my oldest brother had been an altar boy and at one point wondered about the priesthood. Discovering girls made him realize he was not priestly material. My brothers only went as far as grade 9 in the Catholic system, whereas I went all the way to grade 13. The nuns expected me to go to a Catholic college, and I just couldn't bear the thought of doing what everybody wanted me to do, so I shocked them and went to a polytechnic university instead, then on to law school. Until my mid 30s or so I went off and on to church, until finally lapsing to a Christmas and Easter Catholic as well. The fact that the parish priests in my neighbourhood spoke to parishioners as if they were children didn't help. My dad died in 97, my mom in 2010, and from the day she died it felt like I could go back to church without feeling guilty about it, and I have been a regular church goer ever since. Of course, I'm not a good Catholic, in view of the fact that I'm not certain I actually believe in God, but I have always believed in the teachings of Jesus and have tried to follow his instruction to love thy neighbour as thyself.

And that's about it. :)

[Free Northman]

I'm a Christian. Thanks for starting this thread. Usually I prefer not to reveal too much on this forum as it feels like a den of iniquity 90% of the time and I come here to relax, not to engage in endless battles of ideas. If I get started it won't stop.

I enjoy reading some of the diverse opinions on here, although I'm mostly left shaking my head at the weird stuff people reveal online.

I dont belong to a specific denomination at the moment.

I am however someone who tends to either do something to the fullest or not bother at all. So in terms of faith I struggle to see the point of being a moderate. If you dont go for it all the way, believing what it says, that right is right and wrong is wrong, well then you are just wasting your time in my view.

Anyway. Thats a bit about me.

[MisterOJ]

To answer what you did ask, to terry for the Holy Ghost is indeed powerful. What you're doing is repetitively and persistently shouting praises up to God with the highest praise you can give Him, "hallelujah". You do this until you know God has taken over your mind, body and soul and He puts an unknown tongue inside of you that you begin to speak uncontrollably. This is a sign that the Holy Ghost is indeed present.

That sounds positively terrifying to me. :lol:

The reason I was never baptized as a child at my Baptist church was because I hated the idea that I had to go forward during the alter call at the end of service and make a profession of faith. That terrified me. I never had a problem believing the Gospel. I just didn't see why I had to walk up that aisle with all the people looking at me and make some kind of emotional declaration.

I am not an emotional person.

One reason I love my little Presbyterian church is because the service is so peaceful. There's no shouting and clapping and dancing. That kind of outpouring of emotion unsettles me. When I go to church, I want to peacefully and solemnly contemplate God and my faith, confess my sins and profess my faith. The way we have service is perfect for me. But, I imagine you would likely be bored to tears.

And I think that is part of the beauty of the Christian faith. The world is made up of some many different people. I don't think my way of worship is any better than yours. When we attend service, we look at it in completely different ways. But we worship the save God. We have been saved by the same Jesus. We are moved (albeit in very different ways) by the same Holy Spirit. The same Holy Spirit that fills you with the desire to jump up and start speaking in tongues, fills my heart with a sense of quiet peace.

I'm a Christian - Methodist. I've attended Baptist churches, and my current church is a remarkably progressive Baptist church, that I'm sometimes at odds with. I'm not 100% happy with their politics, and they're not 100% happy with me. They know I'm a fierce feminist, but they put up with me anyway.

ES, you really are one of my favorite posters on the board. I think I've told you that before.

This part of your post made me remember a conversation I had with my oldest daughter a few months back when I was taking her to a soccer game.

She will occasionally go to church with my parents. They go to a fairly conservative Southern Baptist church. She asked me something like, "What makes our churches different." I told her that we all worship the same God and that we all believe in Jesus, but that their church just has some beliefs that we don't.

She asked what they were and I struggled for a minute with just what I should tell her. I eventually settled on just telling her about how they differ with the roles of women in the church. It seemed pretty simple. I just said to her, "Well, you know how the old pastor of our church used to be a woman? Well, they don't believe that a woman should be allowed to be a pastor."

Oh, man! At that point, my daughter looked at me like I had just told her that the sky was green. "What do you mean they don't think women should be pastors?" she asked.

I told her that they just feel like women shouldn't have any leadership roles in the church. I told her about how our session at church has both men and women on it and how they make decisions together, but the Baptist church only allows men to do that sort of thing too - and at that point, she was quite literally beside herself.

She then yelled, "We HAVE to do something about this!" I had to laugh at her at that point. I told her it had been like that for a long time and it might change one day, but for now, just be glad that we're Presbyterians. She said she was really glad we didn't go to a church like that. Which made me feel good.

I'm pretty sure I have a young feminist on my hands. And I really couldn't be happier about that. :)

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

One reason I love my little Presbyterian church is because the service is so peaceful. There's no shouting and clapping and dancing. That kind of outpouring of emotion unsettles me. When I go to church, I want to peacefully and solemnly contemplate God and my faith, confess my sins and profess my faith. The way we have service is perfect for me. But, I imagine you would likely be bored to tears.

The Frozen Chosen reputation of the Presbyterians is notoriously widespread, though I've met my share of Episcopalians who believe this title applies to their denomination. I will grant them some measure of being 'frozen,' though nowhere close to Presbyterian austerity, but 'chosen' was a stretch. I happen to enjoy this quality about Presbyterian worship services.

[Elder Sister]

ES, you really are one of my favorite posters on the board. I think I've told you that before.

This part of your post made me remember a conversation I had with my oldest daughter a few months back when I was taking her to a soccer game.

She will occasionally go to church with my parents. They go to a fairly conservative Southern Baptist church. She asked me something like, "What makes our churches different." I told her that we all worship the same God and that we all believe in Jesus, but that their church just has some beliefs that we don't.

She asked what they were and I struggled for a minute with just what I should tell her. I eventually settled on just telling her about how they differ with the roles of women in the church. It seemed pretty simple. I just said to her, "Well, you know how the old pastor of our church used to be a woman? Well, they don't believe that a woman should be allowed to be a pastor."

Oh, man! At that point, my daughter looked at me like I had just told her that the sky was green. "What do you mean they don't think women should be pastors?" she asked.

I told her that they just feel like women shouldn't have any leadership roles in the church. I told her about how our session at church has both men and women on it and how they make decisions together, but the Baptist church only allows men to do that sort of thing too - and at that point, she was quite literally beside herself.

She then yelled, "We HAVE to do something about this!" I had to laugh at her at that point. I told her it had been like that for a long time and it might change one day, but for now, just be glad that we're Presbyterians. She said she was really glad we didn't go to a church like that. Which made me feel good.

I'm pretty sure I have a young feminist on my hands. And I really couldn't be happier about that. :)

Haha! That's pretty awesome. Your daughter sounds fantastic! Keep up the good work. :)

I have attended Episcopalian and Presbyterian as well, and my beliefs line up most consistently with the Episcopal church, but the closest one is 25 miles away. And the little church I attend is 3 miles down the road, and the congregation and pastor are some of the sweetest, most lovely people I've ever met. If and when our pastor moves on, I'll start making the trek to the Episcopal church every Sunday.

[Waldo Frey]

I was born in Vietnam and moved to Hong Kong before the war really got nasty. My father, even though supported China and everything Chairman Mao had said and done, somehow enrolled me into a missionary school where I learned and accepted Jesus as my savior. I didn't know if he ever regreted for sending me to the school but I think that it was the best gift he ever gave me.

My spiritual journey take many twists and turns, but never far from God's protection. I remembered that I cam to Purdue with two luggages and now I have a family. I knew my wife when she was a new believer and now she is a lot more mature spiritually than me. She becomes a mentor to many young women and families. Sometimes I think that she was a fairy from heaven, came down to earth and spent a lifetime with an average guy like me. I always am grateful for this, to her and to God.

Our family attends a non-denominational Christian church. Every Tuesday morning we have a men's gathering for worship, prayer and sharing. That is where I find strength and support for one another both in faith and in life. I believe that throughout my lifetime there are constant learning about the daily walk with the Lord and the trusting in Him.

[Bronson]

Im a catholic, but not really devote , never really been. I go to church say my prayers , take communion.

I think that , In the end, we all get to God no matter what religion or belief system that we subscribe to. God doesn't judge us on how many prayers or verses of Scripture ,Torah , Koran or Sutras we can recite. All you have to be is a good person. :cool4:

[MisterOJ]

Happy Sabbath everyone.

I'll be missing church today because my oldest has a couple soccer games and they're too far away to go to church and make it on time. Oh well, watching her play soccer is probably my favorite pasttime right now. I thank God for my children every day. I'm sure He's cool with me missing a Sunday service to spend time with family. :)

[Lily Valley]

Mr. OJ, I'm certain he won't. Best of luck to the kids' games.

I'm going to a new Church today to try to track down a priest I really like. He served under the archbishop at the Cathedral and has been given his own parish. He's a really uplifting speaker, talking about trying to be a better person every week and giving suggestions that are kind and loving. He used to hear the confession of the Sisters who taught at my son's school and mentor the kids. Everybody loves him.

He does have one habit that makes it hard not to giggle during the transubstantiation. He talks to the host like it's hard of hearing. I mean he puts his face deep INTO the chalice and says,"...this IS THE CHALICE OF MY Blood..." He uses a mike so it really echoes.

I always want to pull him aside and say, "Father, I think Jesus can hear you."

The first time he served as Celebrant I about choked trying not to laugh. It didn't help that captain mischief, my son, was sitting next to me me saying, "What mom? What? What?"

[Arch-MaesterPhilip]

As I was sitting in church today I wondered what your favorite hymns are. Mine are Amazing Grace and the Peace Prayer of St. Francis. What are yours?

[Stubby]

As I was sitting in church today I wondered what your favorite hymns are. Mine are Amazing Grace and the Peace Prayer of St. Francis. What are yours?

I remember being on the docks at Key West when a piper played Amazing Grace at sundown. Spectactular piece of music when played on the bagpipes.

[Littlefingers In The Air]

I don't think I've ever heard a hymn. My favorite gospel song is probably 99 And A Half Won't Do http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X3MVfa4ZUhM

[A Time for Wolves]

I'm not a Christian, but have really enjoyed reading this thread.

[Littlefingers In The Air]

I remember being on the docks at Key West when a piper played Amazing Grace at sundown. Spectactular piece of music when played on the bagpipes.

that had to be beautiful