My dad was Jewish; my mom was Christian. They met in Nazi Germany and fell in love there. My dad and his siblings and parents escaped to Britain and the U.
My parents reunited after the war when he came back as an American soldier and joined his family in the U. By the time I was 13, I had learned what all the whispering among adults had been during my childhood: the Holocaust—who died, who escaped, their lives before and after. It impacted me very hard. As I got older and started to date, religion took on a new importance. Culturally I was drawn to Jews, and most of the guys I dated were Jewish. The one Christian I dated seriously dumped me the moment he found out my dad was Jewish.
I saw it in his eyes immediately. I never dated a Christian again. I went on to marry a Jewish man whose family was as unreligious as my own. I had grown up in a cultural world that was heavily Jewish but religiously pretty agnostic. Those were my own tendencies and still are. I also am repulsed by the people who believe that there is only one way to be Jewish and that is to be an ultra orthodox Jew.
They remind me of those Christians for whom Christianity is limited to the most conservative fundamentalist sects and who want to limit the entire realm of Christianity to their own narrow beliefs. Theirs was a very special union and reminds me that love can conquer—if not everything, an awful lot.
I was born a Protestant and then my father died of polio. My mother re-married to a Jew and so at the age of 2, I became a Jew too. I got a Jewish-sounding last name. I lived in an increasingly Jewish neighbourhood, so the majority of my friends were Jewish and so I just went along as one. My mother went along acting her part, which helped me do the same. My upbringing always had me question this religious thing, being born into one ideology and then converting to another but never feeling accepted, feeling like an outsider.
But I went along and felt I could continue to pull this charade off until one time at Synagogue during Yom Kippur time during yet another Israeli conflict. This is when I took pause to consider this whole religion thing. My last confirmation that these feelings of conflict and confusion were confirmed to me when the very Jewish high school and graduating class decided to have a reunion. I declined the invitation, and I went back to living a peaceful and fulfilling life in the community of the world around me.
I was astounded yet amazingly relieved that I had escaped that world. My own story involves giving up the Reform Judaism in which I was raised and pursuing an orthodox Jewish conversion.
My father is Jewish, not my mother, so only Reform Judaism considers me a Jew. Dramatic though that choice has felt at times, it has come on so gradually that I cannot place a finger on the beginning or any particular turning point. Maybe you already know about it, or maybe it is of no use to you, and at any rate it is a bit dated now, but I just wanted to note it because a lot of what it talks about is still happening among American millennials.
Hey Chris, long-time reader from back in the Dish days. Last month, a lot of leaders in this growing movement held a national convening in New York. I thought some of your readers might be interested in seeing some of the output from that convening, which was covered in several Jewish media outlets, most thoroughly Jewschool. A tip for readers: just never, ever say that. I hope readers who are struggling with this will connect to Jewish Multiracial Network and the other organizations that hosted the national convening.
I was raised to be a lifelong devout Christian, a member of the Southern Baptist church from the time I was in diapers up until I was 18 or 19 years old. I went to church Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings, and Wednesday nights. I went to camp during the summer, and retreats during the fall and spring.
I roofed and painted houses each summer on mission trips. I promised to wait until I was married to have sex. I learned the books of the Bible and can recite them from Genesis to Revelation even to this day. I memorized a litany of scriptures. Conservative politics were espoused from the pulpit on a regular basis, and I learned to respond in typical fashion to any discussion on homosexuality or abortion—the two big no-nos according to Evangelicalism.
I found myself habitually disillusioned and turned off by certain aspects of the faith, and I had a prescient sense that somehow, someway, this lifestyle would not extend much further than my adolescence. Dogma would rub me the wrong way. I doubted. I resented the treatment of women. She was blindsided by the question. I was highly judgmental of the lack of critical thought and inquiry. The final blow that led to my leaving organized religion behind came when I was about 17 years old.
It was Sunday night and the church was voting on the budget for the upcoming year. The money that filtered into that atypically large church astounded me. The salaries!
The power bill! This church was, to borrow a tired metaphor, nothing more than a social club. It left a sour taste in my mouth that lingers to this day. Not for me. Imagine my surprise when, at the age of 26 and desperate to end my unhappy marriage, I found myself regurgitating the teachings of the church. It had been years since I heard it last, but it had left a lasting mark. My parents were in between a rock and a hard place, as it were.
They bore witness to my slow fade, the ways in which I was deteriorating before their very eyes in both body and spirit. But to reject the teachings of their faith in order to support their daughter in this most obvious choice she needed to make proved to be a great challenge for them and therefore a great burden for me.
I desperately wanted their permission and blessing to leave my husband. I wanted some sort of an acknowledgement that not only was leaving an okay thing to do, but it was the right thing to do. While I did eventually garner enough of their support to feel buoyed throughout the separation and divorce, I never quite got them to the point of seeing that it was right.
My divorce presented me with some uncomfortable truths regarding my relationship to religion. While on the surface I was going about my life in a secular fashion, the old-time religion was still deep down there, resting peacefully until the time came for it to pop back up and remind me of the stronghold it still enjoyed over me.
Ties that bind, indeed. I was to have my work cut out for me. The things I was taught as a child did great damage to me and hindered my development as a self-actualized human being. I was wrong. I weighed my own experiences and the things that I had read and learned throughout my twenties regarding religion and decided that it is not innocent, it is not blameless, it does not have a monopoly on morality and ethics, and perhaps, just maybe, we would all be better off without it.
Our fears about what other people think of us are overblown and rarely worth fretting over. Click here to listen to his new podcast series on all things happiness, How to Build a Happy Life. Social media has opened up our heads so that just about any trespasser can wander in. If you tweet whatever crosses your mind about a celebrity, it could quite possibly reach the phone in her hand as she sits on her couch in her house.
We are wired to care about what others think of us. According to these sorts of arguments, people who never go to college stay reasonable, normal, or—depending on how you look at it—asleep. My best friend had gone through a tough divorce and was remarrying. I was thrilled for him. As a bonus, the wedding would take place in New Orleans, where my friend lives.
New Orleans is a miraculous place, and my favorite city to visit in America. The notion of a trip there shone out of the fog and dreariness of this whole era of history. In , when it was released, the song spawned a new microeconomy of commentary denouncing it as a distillation of rape culture , or fretting over whether enjoying its jaunty hook was defensible. In the video, directed by the veteran Diane Martel, three models dressed in transparent thongs peacock and pose with a baffling array of props a lamb, a banjo, a bicycle, a four-foot-long replica of a syringe while Thicke, the producer and one of the co-writers Pharrell Williams, and the rapper T.
If your reaction to this news is something like, Wait a second, what? NASA is trying to land people on the moon again? At least it seems that way, judging by the number of reporters calling me to ask about the sex lives of conjoined twins since the TLC reality show Abby and Brittany went on the air several weeks ago. But not as conflicted as we singletons seem to feel about them having sex. Typically, people who are close to conjoined twins come to adjust and see them as different but normal; they seem fairly untroubled by the idea of conjoined twins pursuing sex and romance.
But those who are watching from afar cannot abide. Then came the end of March, and the first of his two Pfizer shots.
Once vaccinated, Ford, a Ph. He answered with a whisper and walked out to the hallway to take the call. What was so urgent as to pull the chief of staff out of a Supreme Court confirmation hearing just two weeks before a presidential election? The first photo in the post was of Swift with the word VOTE superimposed on it in large blue letters. But a swipe revealed a second photo, of Swift carrying a tray of cookies emblazoned with the Biden-Harris campaign logo.
Vaccination is the best protection against infection. But when breakthroughs do occur, a very basic question still has an unsatisfying answer. And then came Delta. And it also spurred a full-on freak-out that our understanding of who could spread the virus was all wrong. The supposed implication of that finding was even more ominous: Vaccinated people were just as likely to spread the virus as the unvaccinated.
Skip to content. Sign in My Account Subscribe. The Atlantic Crossword. The Print Edition. Latest Issue Past Issues. Only through November Try subscriber newsletters for free. Show 3 Newer Notes. Chris Bodenner.
That suffering severed her faith in God: I feel compelled to share my story because it illustrates a fundamental flaw in religion that is often overlooked. Continue Reading. Another unaired email from that point in the discussion comes from Bert Clere, a long-time Atlantic reader and frequent contributor to Notes as well as the broader site : Theodicy is the great question at the root of all religion, I think.
Nick, a young reader in Georgia, opens up: I am not sure if you are still running your series on religious choices, but I feel like this topic is especially poignant to me. A reader in Arkansas writes: My biggest religious choice was to follow Jesus. Our reader follows up with some devastating news: We learned yesterday that one of our staff members at work was murdered. In her own words: I was raised Catholic.
The reader begins by recalling a moment of divine revelation at a very early age, followed a few years later by a suicide bombing at his school that left him mangled for life: I suppose the Sunday School teacher of the church three houses down the street from ours had just said something crucial to me. From Houstonia : The bell rang and announcements began.
Finding Jesus at Summer Camp. Update from a reader who went to a Christian camp right in the same area: My first summer camp was very near St.
Choosing God, Not Gay. The final paragraph in this reader note from Amy is the most powerful, showing how she was able to embrace who she is without rejecting religion altogether: I grew up at a Southern Baptist church in Louisiana, where I was homeschooled and then attended a fundamentalist evangelical high school.
The Devil in the Days of Segregation. A patron going in colored entrance of the Crescent Theatre in Belzoni, Mississippi, in Wikimedia In this latest note for our religion series , a reader who grew up in the American South during segregation recounts two evil forces in his childhood, one real and one imagined: Satan and institutionalized racism.
At that point, she may have thought I was the Devil. Whistling Past the Devil. A reader from a very traditionalist Muslim family has a colorful story of personal religious choice: Iblis , aka Shaitan, aka Satan Wikimedia I was born into a long line of imams of a Sufi order. When I was about 9 years old, I went on a week-long field trip.
What Makes a Jew a Jew? Update from an old compatriot of mine, Max: Hey Chris, long-time reader from back in the Dish days. Despite this absolute immersion into the Evangelical culture, it did not stick. More Notes From The Atlantic. Most Popular On The Atlantic.
Jan Buchczik No One Cares! Arthur C. I was ultracareful for 18 months. NASA has pushed its next moon landing to But why is it trying to go at all? No one knows exactly what the rules are for post-booster behavior. She had liked an Instagram post from the pop star Taylor Swift. More Popular Stories. As such we have moral responsibility for them.
Such evils are very difficult for us to experience, but are not as problematic to reconcile with a good Creator, since they are caused by us, not by God. These can cause tremendous pain, suffering, and death to creatures both humans and non-humans. Human decisions may have a role in some of these: smoking, which causes cancer, or burning fossil fuels, which affects the climate.
When we look back at the history of life on our planet, we see that it has always included natural disasters, predation, and disease. These have caused animal suffering through pain, death, and even extinction. Did God make the world this way?
These are difficult questions, and humans have wrestled with them for as long as we have records. We will outline two basic approaches to the problem of natural evil. The problem of evil—including animal suffering—has led many people to question the very existence of God. They say that the idea of a perfectly good and loving God is inconsistent with the way the world is, so there must not be such a God.
We believe the evidence from Scripture, reason, tradition, and personal experience provides reasonable grounds for belief in God. Many Christians argue that natural evils, like moral evils, are ultimately to be blamed on human sin. Instead, these natural evils only came to exist after the first humans began sinning. We at BioLogos also reject this view. We recognize the strength of scientific evidence available to us about the vast age of the Earth and the animals that existed before human beings.
This evidence clearly shows that animals lived much the same as they do today. There were parasites, animals killed and ate others, animals got cancer, and natural disasters destroyed them.
What if, instead of blaming human sin for all the bad things in nature, we look to fallen angels as the source of natural evil? This possibility was put forward by leaders of the early church. In his book The Problem of Pain, C. And there are others today who defend versions of it.
A major difficulty with this position is the timeline required. In that case, how can we understand the refrain in Genesis 1 that creation is good?
Instead of arguing that the natural world is not the way God intended it to be, the other approach is to claim the natural world really is good the way it is—that God made the world knowing that animals would eat each other, suffer in other ways, and even go extinct.
Here too there are several ways of making this claim, all of which are open possibilities for us at BioLogos. Some people accept that suffering is an inherently evil thing, but they question whether non-human animals actually suffer.
Clearly animals can be in pain, and we should work to prevent that pain as much as possible. But perhaps they lack the kind of consciousness required to experience the suffering we take to be evil.
Few people think that bacteria suffer in a conscious way similar to our experience of suffering. But as we move up the scale of mental ability, that becomes more difficult to maintain. Maybe worms still have no suffering, but what about birds? And when we get to mammals, the similarity of brain structures to our own seems to suggest that they have the capacities though perhaps in a reduced way to experience suffering.
Supporters of this view admit the physiological similarities, but they typically claim that humans have, in addition to physical brains, an immaterial mind or soul that is lacking in other animals, which is necessary for the conscious experience of suffering.
While some people are comfortable with this position, others find it deeply problematic to deny that any animals suffer. Others acknowledge that animal suffering is real and evil, but attempt to reconcile it as a package deal with the good that comes from it. On this view, the only way God could bring about the kind of creation God wanted was for it to have these effects. For example, a world with no hurricanes and earthquakes would be a sterile, lifeless planet.
The fact that these sometimes cause suffering and death is tragic, but it is outweighed by the greater good of life itself. Furthermore, it may be that a long evolutionary process is the only way to bring about some characteristics God desired for creatures. For example, we see hints and precursors of the moral responsibility humans have in other animals. Perhaps placing organisms in challenging environments is how these abilities developed, just like the speed and grace of the gazelle came from generations of outrunning the lion.
Critics of this view acknowledge there are greater goods to consider, but they question whether pain and suffering is really the only way an all-powerful God could bring those goods about. Those people suffered and died for an all-powerful God who could have stopped it at any moment.
What a jerk. But there is also the farmer who has his crop wiped out by pestilence or drought. Or fire. Or flood. Children born blind, disabled, etc. People plagued by cancer. He just seems really mean. Jesus said he was coming soon. God only loves and does for who he wants.
People worship him and he spits in their face daily. Ask the children who are repeatedly raped. Ask people who beg God for some relief and he does nothing. But yet child molesters, dope dealers and rapists get whatever they want. But a five year old little girl can beg God to stop being raped and he does nothing. Oh, ya, but God loves you! I so relate to the comments. I am turning 51 in a few days and the only deep desire I have had Is to marry and have a child.
I have prayed my whole life for this. I have tried my best to be obedient to God and serve him. We are suppose to trust that His plan for us is the best one.
Then I look at my sister who is not a Christian and has a wonderful husband and two beautiful children. Please explain about this loving God?? As we can see, nobody has the answers to our pain and torture. The bottom line is if you love somebody, you show it. People I love never have to question my love. We Deserve a answer from our father as to his silence to our cries.
Answers like why do you give us 60 years to get it right but satan gets a planet to rule , rape, and ruin our lives, with us under his whip for thousands of years? Havnt humanity suffered enough?
Guess not. I just wish he would explain this to us not as a god but as a father,but good luck with that. Put infinite power into the hands of an ordinary person and bad things will happen. What is the saying?
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. He projects a public persona that is loving and wonderful. I think most of the horrors of our lives is just for his entertainment. Have you tried finding the amazing lady you want to marry. Sometimes God wants us to wait to be blessed sometimes he wants us to work to be blessed. I love God with all my heart. I want Him to be in my life but he keeps failing me. I trust only on him but does He even foe once think of me?
I pray, i fast, i am born again but God hates me and want to dissapoint me everytime. I read His word n believe in it but nothing written there ever works for me. It is hard for me coz all my hope, trust n faith i put in Him but i guess he feel happy seeing me suffer. Why should i suffer if Jesus died for me? God may laugh at the Wicked , not you. If you are keeping his word.
You will be blessed do not only think about this life. Unfortunately evil exists not Just Jehovah.. This is a sad case where misery does not love company, because it. Yet, I too firmly believe the more I pray, the worse things become in my life. I too wonder where the loving God is. I abused myself as a result of these experiences. I ask God to take me home ever day and know one day I will simply end it. I even had therapists abandon me. I have lived in housing that triggered my symptoms and my dreams are gone.
I am middle aged now and have never had a bf. I do pray for others as I am able but I am tired of everything. I take responsibility for my own errors but anyone who knows the pain of incest knows how it can devastate your life. I look at what others have and at the daily struggle I cover up and am sick of it all.
Churches I found to be judgmental places. I have zero hope for my life. God destroyed it all and let satan torture me and I hate Christianity and its promises. Good luck to all those suffering we all need it.
Some people may not understand but I do , I actually get it. I hope you receive All your blessings. So many similar to what I am feeling and going through. No matter how I try to get away. I have been ill most of my life. My youth was stolen from me. I have been homeless. I have been poor my entire life, regardless of how hard I work.
I even went to jail because I tried to defend myself when he was in an alcohol and drug fueled rage. I have been made fun of and laughed at. I have never felt love or security in my life. Now I have just recently been diagnosed with a brain tumor. I just had to let God go. The more I pray, the worse it gets. Nothing good has ever happened to me. Even the smallest of tasks are difficult. All hope is lost, and no one can help. Even knowing you all are suffering too, I am still alone.
Talk to me , I understand completely.. But God honestly does love us. Try thanking God different ways. Have a blessed day. About every other day now I think dead is better. That in spite of the horrors of our world, after life people will be happy with God? Which is it? But God never taught us to destroy deserts or not use them to our benefits, it is humans who decided to exclude ugly creations out of their world when in practice, ugliness can be more useful than beauty.
Reading through all these comments is heartbreaking, and I searched this for the same reason as everyone else — suffering.
Praying and hoping for something to change, a lifetime of sadness and people who are cruel and unjust. I was thinking while reading this, some people do have an advantage, but, what if the point is to start to live our lives for other people. What if the way out is thinking about what we can do for other people and what WE can do for God, instead of only what he can do for us? It is supposed to be a relationship. Seems pretty one sided if we want to take from him but never give.
He wants love too. There are things he wants accomplished on this earth just like we want things in our lives. We are supposed to be his servants. What if all the people in this world who were alone, depressed, abused, etc….
If you ask God what you can do for him, the answer is almost always to help others. Especially in these days. Loving YOU? Who is responsible to do this? We all are, even us who are suffering. Should we be upset that others are happy? I was just thinking, maybe, part of being blessed by the Lord, starts with blessing others. You could be the answer to another persons prayers, and in doing so, gain more joy in your own life.
I understand so many of us struggle with being shy, being afraid because we have been hurt and betrayed so many times, feeling uncomfortable around new people etc… I have this problem too.
I am now at the point where I have no friends and no family but one child. I finally walked away from the last few people I had, because they are so toxic and abusive. I want to be around healthy, kind, loving people who love the Lord and try to behave how he says to. Not people who project, manipulate, are full of rage. I am afraid to try to meet people though, I am shy and a lifetime of emotional, psychological and verbal abuse has beat me down and taken my confidence.
The Lord will start to give it back to you. I am still to afraid to go out and meet people, but, I know I can ask the Lord all day to magically give me friends, but what I need to ask him for is confidence and courage.
I think the Lord blesses this attitude. I am going to try it. I also believe that he allows trials and they either strengthen us and improve our character, or they can destroy us.
Think of it this way — the devil wants your trials to destroy you and cause you to turn away from God, and from truth, and God wants you to overcome, seek him and gain eternal rewards. Who do you want to side with? The one who loves you and is rooting for you to win, or the one who hates you and is rooting for you to fail? God bless you all.
If I could meet or be with any of you, I would be your friend, and I love you. May the Lord bless and protect all who read this. Through all my life of suffering, I am currently suffering the most I ever have, and it is easier than in the past because, this time I realized to ask the Lord regularly for these things: strength, endurance, peace, joy, patience, faith, love, hope, understanding and wisdom.
You can ask the Lord for a job, money, a spouse, friends, etc…. You will get sad again, and the pain will return, but it will be less often, and more bearable. Please try asking him for those things, daily.
Please search out people who need someone to encourage them. I wish more people did that, and then maybe I would have at least one person I could count on in addition to Jesus. I am going to seek first the kingdom of heaven, and trust that then all those things will be added to me. If you made it this far and think, hum, she may have a point, then also please pray and seek more truth, because the time is coming for the final days.
My life actually became so terrible because I had dreams from the Lord about the last days, and when I tried to share with the people I know, they became enraged. You have seen this irrational hatred in the Bible. It is here now too. Maybe it is the devil who hates you, not God.
Not maybe, it is. He wants to keep you from God, heaven, rewards, blessing others. God bless you! This was awesome and I really needed this right now. I thank Jesus for placing these words in you to share with us…because they really and truly spoke to me. I also pray that everything gets better for you and you can overcome your fears and insecurities. Keep on pushing, praying, believing, and putting your faith in the Almighty Father. Again thank you for these words.
There is no Satan, Neither is their god ,that is the truth. Ruthless People Win ,Emotional People loose, serving others will not get you god ,it will get you a terrible death Like the one my mother got. I just read your inspiring, very helpful comments. I would love to be an encourage to you ellen. Why did god make me a boy? Or why did he give me this personality to crave it?
Who knows. I prayed everyday but still nothing. He likes seeing me suffer I guess. Being ugly is the most hurtful thing on earth. It leaves you wondering why God created you. It hurts.
And God doesnt answer ur prayers if you are ugly. It is just too very bad that most of the women of today are Nothing at all like the women in the old days were since it was definitely very easy meeting a good woman back then with No Trouble at all. Women today unfortunately have certainly Changed since then which is very sad. Interesting that this article mentions homosexuality as a reason why people think God hates them, and then has the audacity to say that the reason for this is human cruelty.
It sounds like people are blaming God for everything just because he is the creator. Jesus Christ was perfect and held up the sins of the world before he did making him a man of sin who never sinned. Faith without works is dead. He might just be waiting on ME and his hand will follow once I start. Look at yourselves. The enemy feeds off us turning away fRom god. Hell was never for us. As much as I can hate myself or ask him why I can never deny my father.
Our wants and what we need are different and god knows what we need. You have no clue at all what people are doing or not doing. God has left me in the dessert. No one wants me after I lost my job of 14 years. God is not with me on these interviews He loves to watch me fail. He laughs at me. He must get a kick out of seeing my time wasted. I have forgiven my enemies. That is what Jesus wants me to do. But where is God now? God hates me a lot. I had 9 back surgeries, both hips replaced, a knee replaced, several shoulder operations and a total shoulder replacement.
I also had two heart attacks. I was a Shipping worker for Company X, and I gave that place 20 years of impeccable service, starting there when I was 18 years old. I lost that, along with 20 years of service. This caused permanent, irreversible spinal nerve damage to develop and make me disabled for the rest of my life.
I was terminated from Company X and put on Disability. I filed a workers compensation lawsuit against Company X because I fell off the dock and tore two discs in my lumbar spine. My attorneys dragged my case out ten years, hoping I would suffer a third heart attack and die. God was letting all these things being done to me, one after another for all these years.
Yes, God hates me with a passion. He blessed my crooked doctors, and he blessed my crooked attorneys who were paid off. This is how I was screwed by even my attorneys, and God let it all happen. God could have kept these people honest and get me a decent settlement. Better yet, God could have kept the first back surgeon I saw honest and operate on me before permanent spinal nerve damage developed.
But, because these surgeons were paid off, they lied and they all fluffed me off, dragging my situation out for almost a year before I finally had surgery. But, it was too late and the nerve damage became permanent. None of this had to happen, if God loved me, but He hates me!!! At age 7, I can remember fighting angels at night.
Just like Jacob. I woke each morning in a sweat. I was exhausted. My life was hard every day and school was an awful experience of fights and rejection. I was rejected by my father who beat me and my family rejected me as well. The only exception was my grandmother who taught me the value of never giving up and the love of food. I became a chef and stayed in kitchens until I was 40 years old. My days were filled with unending work. I knew God placed every roadblock imaginable in front of me.
No promotions. No relief from financial burden. No relief from a sick marriage. No acceptance from my family and no friends. No amount of college or hard work took the 10 ton Rick off my shoulders.
I talked to God and frankly I heard his voice. I am not delusional. I asked for relief and God said no. I am not kidding. Then when I turned 56 things suddenly changed in a period of one week. The 10 ton rock was gone and God said to me that I have had enough pain and God told me I was humble enough to be free.
He gave me several talents but also told me that I was not special. God did not give me any more explanation than that. So, 50 years of suffering was what God gave me. I feel a certain sense of peace each day. He evaluates and sets us free for reasons or no reasons. No one ever prepared me for what God really is. God is not a good God. He is like us but has tremendous power.
He can multitask and attend to all living beings. God is without religion. He applies pain and relief to all as he sees fit. God hates humans. We r created in his image so he must be uglier than sin. But he does because he is evil. Your book of short stories tells you that. God is good and evil the story says but it is wrong. He is so EVIL. He is also a liar.
Did anyone die???? Because god is a lying! Your life story is interesting. Some truth and some lies. It does make sense that hard things in life are like a purification process. Like gold and fire. Ron says all things work for our good. The process and outcome work for your good. You are in the hand of God. No one is going to take you out.
What do you want to change in your life? Speak to your Mountain and command it to be cast into the sea. Leave your emotions out. Walk in faith and not by site. What you say is what you get. Guard your mouth. Be positive all the time. Keep putting yourself, your life, and all situations in Gods hands.
He will work it all out for you. Your a winner. I also feel the same pain that you guys are going through. Throughout my life I have never experienced happiness, raised in poverty and sometimes hardly nothing to eat in a day bt I believed everything was to change when I grew up. I came to realise that God has his special people that were well created of whom he has eliminated sufferings and to others like me suffering is the main topic of each day…. I ve reached a point where my heart cannot take it anymore and I ask him to relieve me from all this and take me away but instead he makes each day for me unbearable to live.
Ask him daily for a break through, funny i was reading the comments made by many people, and i thought about how difficult things are in Africa for many people ,black people, especially some arab people also ,i attend an African church in the U. S, many of the church goers are people doing well. Why does that god hate me so much.. He allows it.. I think God only loves certain people. And i am not one. I have prayed and prayed and prayed nothing ever gets answered.
It is to the point I am afraid to pray for others afaid something bad will hapoen to them because I prayed. If God truly loves and cares for us then why can he not answer 1 prayer we ask in his name.
I grew up in church so i pray the way I was taught. But nothing!!!! I googled the question in the first place because I was completely discouraged and giving up on God as a loving Father. It seems like the comments can be divided into two groups: 1- those who believe that God is against them, no matter what they pray, do or believe.
But God does not answer their prayers and it seems that things may even become worse. Therefore, if I want to feel love, I must give love — or whatever else it is that my heart feels desperate for.
I must give it first. How to reconcile both viewpoints? It is very hard to reconcile a belief about an all powerful God allowing continued suffering for those who are seeking him for relief for that suffering.
If we believe he hears us than why does it seem he ignores us or turns his back on us? That is a most discouraging place to be in. It is why many who responded with this deep hurt, desire death.
However, many commenters do not have faith that he is a rewarder because they have sought him, and he did not reward them — being that he did not answer their prayers. Therefore, God must hate them after all. I think it means to make God happy. In the sense that I make God happy when I come to him and trust him — no matter what happens.
I will trust that he is a keeper of his word and sees the bigger picture that he is building in us. When I get discouraged, I am often reminded of the man Jesus healed, who was blind since birth. John In the end, when the man saw Jesus, who had healed him, he believed in him and worshipped him. This event tells me that God knows and allows our circumstances. This event tells me that some people suffer exceedingly through no fault of their own.
This event tells me that those who suffer externally are often severely rejected by others as well. Because when he saw Jesus, the man received him and worshipped him — not as a God who hated him and allowed all his suffering — but he saw Jesus as a God who had been with him through all his suffering.
So again, to reconcile the idea that yes — it is important to love, reach out, forgive, be generous, work for, serve, etc God and others — — and that yes, we can do these things and still feel that God is against us and continues to allow our suffering — What is the reconciliation?
What is the solution? Like the man who was blind since birth. I do not understand what You are doing or why, but I will trust You anyways. Life is short and You have not forgotten nor forsaken me. If you answer my prayers, I will believe that you love me; but if you do not answer my prayers, I will believe that you love me.
You Lord, know the whole picture. Life is but a breath and it is gone. I cannot keep myself in faith, but You Lord, abide faithful and I will trust You.
If I am like the blind beggar, than so be it. I look forward to your coming and I will rest in you. Strange about the blind beggar i am having an issue with my eyes and may need intervention at some point ,but i ask God why now??? I was emotionally and sexually abused as a child. I was born ugly, ungifted, unloved, and unwanted. I have been poor all my life. When I thought it was finally my turn to be happy, my husband turned out to be an abusive meth addict.
Bad things happen to me all the time. Recently I was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. They did a craniotomy to remove part of it. All my life, I have prayed, tried to be a good person, tried to be a good citizen, followed the rules and the laws, worked hard to try to better myself.
All for naught. God does love you. Leave the past in the past. Press the delete button and start fresh. Your words make you or break you. Ask Jesus for all the things you want and need. Believe and not doubt. Ask for prayer online. Things will change for the better. And how is it Ron that I have done that for 20 years and things have just gotten worse?
Every day things are worse no matter that I pray, read the Bible and try to have faith. It is very hard to have faith if your prayers are never ever answered. And no, I do not believe that he is answering , just the answer is no or wait. Why should some christians have good lifes with plenty of good things in their life and others nothing even though they are doing the same things? Im not arguing for the sake of arguing, I truly want answers why?
Im so tired of pain and unhappiness that I know soon , very soon I will end it all. God will be destroyed. If I were to construct a God I would furnish Him with some way and qualities and characteristics which the Present lacks. I would have Him as self-respecting as the better sort of man in these regards.
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