Wh among you still believes in God?

I was 6 I was faithful I prayed and still. God was asleep at the wheel
no, he was there the whole time. and he mourns with you.

Movie Recommendation: The Shack (2017) -- Great illustration of Gods love during trauma (among other things)
 
It's complicated for one reason. Who can give me a clear answer on why God didn't keep me from being abused. Not BS answer but a real solid answer.

This is my problem. I’ve read what @NC-Survivor posted and I am appreciative. I’ve read The Shack and it is a very good book. Along with ‘why did God let it happen’ I struggle with the condemnation from God and Church for the desires I have. I know that CSA doesn’t cause homosexuality or gender issues but I still can’t get it out of my head that the abuse did cause it. Also, that I CHOOSE to have these desires.

I’m very angry at Him.

Also, we don’t have total freewill. Sometimes trauma can affect different parts of the brain to override the PFC...
 
Also, we don’t have total freewill. Sometimes trauma can affect different parts of the brain to override the PFC
That is why He helps us on our Healing Journey so we can appropriately deal with this new "re-wiring" as a result of the trauma done to us.
 
I was born with a not-too visible disability that has greatly affected my life. It is getting worse as I get older, it is degenerative. I can not do certain things that most people take for granted. It has caused alot of pain and anguish. God could easily have healed me if He wanted to, and many times I and others prayed He would, but He chose not to.

I suffered horrible abuse while growing up. I had a violent, alcoholic mother who tried to murder me when I was 9. I was abused by other family members and a step-mother, bullied and ostracized by peers, and molested by a neighbor and a family friend. God could have prevented all this from happening, but He chose not to.

I have never been married or even had a serious relationship, despite trying my whole life to find someone. God could still send someone along, but He apparently is choosing not to.

I could detail all manner of other horrific, sickeningly painful and brutal events that happened to me that would make your toes curl and your hair stand on end. Maybe I'll write a book one day. God could have prevented these, but He choose to let me go through them.

I don't have any answers as to the why's for any of this, nor do I expect to on this side of the grave. I struggle with a lot of this. I struggle with God and all the why's. But I know He is there. I know He has helped me go through these situations and more. Sometimes in miraculous ways. I didn't want to go through them, I wanted to go around them. But that never happened. I'm still going through hell on earth in some circumstances. But at least now I have more peace, partly because I have faced some of the worst things that life can offer and I'm still here. So I know that I can go through them if I must, with God's help. There were many days I was barely hanging on, just wanting to die. Especially in 2018 after my last major surgery.

I believe that this life is not all there is, and that I will be much better off in the next life. So that gives me some comfort. I am not asked to understand what is going on or why, and I never will understand. But I am asked to allow God to be God. That is probably the hardest thing to do. But if I can do that, and be thankful for what I do have as opposed to what I don't have, then I feel that I will at least have accomplished something. It will never be perfect and I will always struggle with the why's and how's and get frustrated and depressed. But I refuse to give up holding onto God despite all the hardships. Maybe that means absolutely nothing to most people, but it is truthfully all I have.
 
I was born with a not-too visible disability that has greatly affected my life. It is getting worse as I get older, it is degenerative. I can not do certain things that most people take for granted. It has caused alot of pain and anguish. God could easily have healed me if He wanted to, and many times I and others prayed He would, but He chose not to.

I suffered horrible abuse while growing up. I had a violent, alcoholic mother who tried to murder me when I was 9. I was abused by other family members and a step-mother, bullied and ostracized by peers, and molested by a neighbor and a family friend. God could have prevented all this from happening, but He chose not to.

I have never been married or even had a serious relationship, despite trying my whole life to find someone. God could still send someone along, but He apparently is choosing not to.

I could detail all manner of other horrific, sickeningly painful and brutal events that happened to me that would make your toes curl and your hair stand on end. Maybe I'll write a book one day. God could have prevented these, but He choose to let me go through them.

I don't have any answers as to the why's for any of this, nor do I expect to on this side of the grave. I struggle with a lot of this. I struggle with God and all the why's. But I know He is there. I know He has helped me go through these situations and more. Sometimes in miraculous ways. I didn't want to go through them, I wanted to go around them. But that never happened. I'm still going through hell on earth in some circumstances. But at least now I have more peace, partly because I have faced some of the worst things that life can offer and I'm still here. So I know that I can go through them if I must, with God's help. There were many days I was barely hanging on, just wanting to die. Especially in 2018 after my last major surgery.

I believe that this life is not all there is, and that I will be much better off in the next life. So that gives me some comfort. I am not asked to understand what is going on or why, and I never will understand. But I am asked to allow God to be God. That is probably the hardest thing to do. But if I can do that, and be thankful for what I do have as opposed to what I don't have, then I feel that I will at least have accomplished something. It will never be perfect and I will always struggle with the why's and how's and get frustrated and depressed. But I refuse to give up holding onto God despite all the hardships. Maybe that means absolutely nothing to most people, but it is truthfully all I have.
Thanks for sharing this Chris... I’m sorry you have been through so much.
 
I was born with a not-too visible disability that has greatly affected my life. It is getting worse as I get older, it is degenerative. I can not do certain things that most people take for granted. It has caused alot of pain and anguish. God could easily have healed me if He wanted to, and many times I and others prayed He would, but He chose not to.

I suffered horrible abuse while growing up. I had a violent, alcoholic mother who tried to murder me when I was 9. I was abused by other family members and a step-mother, bullied and ostracized by peers, and molested by a neighbor and a family friend. God could have prevented all this from happening, but He chose not to.

I have never been married or even had a serious relationship, despite trying my whole life to find someone. God could still send someone along, but He apparently is choosing not to.

I could detail all manner of other horrific, sickeningly painful and brutal events that happened to me that would make your toes curl and your hair stand on end. Maybe I'll write a book one day. God could have prevented these, but He choose to let me go through them.

I don't have any answers as to the why's for any of this, nor do I expect to on this side of the grave. I struggle with a lot of this. I struggle with God and all the why's. But I know He is there. I know He has helped me go through these situations and more. Sometimes in miraculous ways. I didn't want to go through them, I wanted to go around them. But that never happened. I'm still going through hell on earth in some circumstances. But at least now I have more peace, partly because I have faced some of the worst things that life can offer and I'm still here. So I know that I can go through them if I must, with God's help. There were many days I was barely hanging on, just wanting to die. Especially in 2018 after my last major surgery.

I believe that this life is not all there is, and that I will be much better off in the next life. So that gives me some comfort. I am not asked to understand what is going on or why, and I never will understand. But I am asked to allow God to be God. That is probably the hardest thing to do. But if I can do that, and be thankful for what I do have as opposed to what I don't have, then I feel that I will at least have accomplished something. It will never be perfect and I will always struggle with the why's and how's and get frustrated and depressed. But I refuse to give up holding onto God despite all the hardships. Maybe that means absolutely nothing to most people, but it is truthfully all I have.
Great, great post Chris.
I also have yearned and prayed and cried out to God for relief, for the pain to stop.
Eventually I stopped praying.
I also stopped believing all the iron-clad truths I had been taught about God from infancy.

(My opinion) God is more than is in the Bible. Not even the Bible (written by humans) has a corner on God’s truth. God is basically a mystery, God is what makes you and me conscious beings, and God is what keeps this universe together.
God seems to love us at times, based on our experiences of great joy and connection and stuff. Through human connection.
Other times God appears to not care, or even hate us. Again through human torment. We are our own worst enemy.

Like you said, let God be God. No one should get too fussy over their own mastery of God’s truth. Hopefully God is love, and love will save us from doom. Hopefully love wins in the bitter end, not fear or hate.

If someone had a God (or even no god) who wants them to love and do no harm to others, that’s basically the point of religion. It took me a long time to stop focusing on the need for eternal life and the insecurity and fear of my own inevitable death (still not ever gonna be ready to die, but I’m becoming less afraid of living a full life).
 
I appreciate that in the 12 Steps one is invited to define one's Higher Power. Many in those rooms struggle with that invitation. I certainly have. I was raised in a protestant church founded by six families, including my own. It eventually became the second largest church in a major metropolitan area. We were all involved over the years. I wasn't abused by a clergy member or by anyone involved with the church. But I was abused and reciting every Sunday during the service that "I am by nature sinful and unclean" was difficult. Although I had no memory of the abuse either at the hands of my mother or next door neighbors, I was frightened and bewildered by my own feelings, my sexual fixations. I really needed to get away from that environment and I did when i left for college.

I've traveled East in my quest for spiritual truth, then found myself immersed in Christian mysticism which led to a Christmas pilgrimage to Assisi, Italy with a lovely Jewish man who had a love affair with St. Francis. I read deeply about biblical scholarship, then went to India to sit at the feet of a famous guru. I spent time with Tibetan Buddhists and meditated with Zen Buddhists at a local temple. I've read the early texts by Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen as well as many books from participants of the Jesus Seminar. I visited the Sistine Chapel and saw God with his finger extended as depicted by Michelangelo. So I had a bit of background to my consideration of what/who might be a Higher Power I could rely on in my healing journey. I concluded there is no God up in the sky or for that matter outside myself or in any organized religion. I'm more inclined toward the God found in the Upanishads who resides within each of us.

Two birds, one of them mortal, the other immortal, live in the same tree. The first one pecks at the fruit, sweet or bitter; the second looks on without eating. Thus the personal self pecks at the fruit of this world, bewildered by suffering, always hungry for more. But when he meets the True Self, the resplendent God, the source of creation, all his cravings are stilled. Perceiving Self in all creatures, he forgets himself in the service of all; good and evil both vanish; delighting in Self, playing like a child with Self, he does whatever is called for, whatever the result.

Self is everywhere, shining forth from all beings, vaster than the vast, subtler than the most subtle, unreachable, yet nearer than breath, than heartbeat. Eye cannot see it, ear cannot hear it nor tongue utter it; only in deep absorption can the mind, grown pure and silent, merge with the formless truth. He who finds it is free; he has found himself; he has solved the great riddle; his heart forever is at peace. Whole, he enters the Whole. His personal self returns to its radiant, intimate, deathless source. As rivers lose name and form when they disappear into the sea, the sage leaves behind all traces when he disappears into the light. Perceiving the truth, he becomes the truth; he passes beyond all suffering, beyond death; all the knots of his heart are loosed.


Mundaka Upanishad, III.1.1-2.9, 1500 B.C.E. quoted in
The Enlightened Heart, edited by Stephen Mitchell
 
no, he was there the whole time. and he mourns with you.

Movie Recommendation: The Shack (2017) -- Great illustration of Gods love during trauma (among other things)
I was 5. I love the book and the movie The Shack which you mentioned. God's love is unconditional. The book is fiction filled with spiritual truth. The author experienced sex abuse in his childhood. I think this book is his way of expressing how God (God's love) has sustained him.
 
I lost my faith a very long time ago. I was raised Catholic and i prayed everyday for 15 years for Him to stop my dad but it never stopped. I prayed for him to end my life so that i didnt have to feel this pain anymore. I still dont understand how an all loving god can allow these things to happen. I know people believe in free will but also believe that he knows what we will do. And they say that oh he is hoping for us to make the right decision. Which is crap because he already knows what we will do so there is no chance we will make the right choice. And yet he created us anyways fully in the knowledge of what would happen to us.
I have no problem with people believing. I wish i could still believe and i even tried to go to my childhood church years ago and when i said that i was gay they ignored me. I never heard from them. Shunned by a church i received my first communion and my confirmation. I went every sunday and prayed. I still prayed after i lost my faith.

And to be completely honest until someone can tell me how God can be both all-knowing and all-loving. How can God allow children to be hurt like this. No one has given me an answer i can accept. And ive even asked a gay friendly church and they didnt even bother giving me an answer so i never returned. But i wish i could still believe because to me it seems like people who are filled with belief and love for God heal quicker. They believe there is a reason for everything and can look at the good things. They can see the beauty in the world and in humankind.

I cant. I have no faith in God or in humanity. I have absolutely no trust in people that i cant even talk to people face to face. I havent had a best friend since my senior year of high school 13 years ago.
 
I lost my faith a very long time ago. I was raised Catholic and i prayed everyday for 15 years for Him to stop my dad but it never stopped. I prayed for him to end my life so that i didnt have to feel this pain anymore. I still dont understand how an all loving god can allow these things to happen. I know people believe in free will but also believe that he knows what we will do. And they say that oh he is hoping for us to make the right decision. Which is crap because he already knows what we will do so there is no chance we will make the right choice. And yet he created us anyways fully in the knowledge of what would happen to us.
I have no problem with people believing. I wish i could still believe and i even tried to go to my childhood church years ago and when i said that i was gay they ignored me. I never heard from them. Shunned by a church i received my first communion and my confirmation. I went every sunday and prayed. I still prayed after i lost my faith.

And to be completely honest until someone can tell me how God can be both all-knowing and all-loving. How can God allow children to be hurt like this. No one has given me an answer i can accept. And ive even asked a gay friendly church and they didnt even bother giving me an answer so i never returned. But i wish i could still believe because to me it seems like people who are filled with belief and love for God heal quicker. They believe there is a reason for everything and can look at the good things. They can see the beauty in the world and in humankind.

I cant. I have no faith in God or in humanity. I have absolutely no trust in people that i cant even talk to people face to face. I havent had a best friend since my senior year of high school 13 years ago.
I don’t think God is at all shocked by our concerns.

I share many of the same thoughts that you have. However, I sort of don’t see the point in having a relationship with a god that won’t or can’t answer prayers like these. Moreover, allows these things to happen for our own good in the long run.

Wednesday night at church, my pastor read in Romans 9:

18Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.

19 One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?”

20 But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ ”

21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?

22 What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction?

Which just makes furious! So my perp stepfather gets to abuse me. Makes peace with God on His deathbed. I get left with all kinds of ‘sinful’ Desires and habits... I’m pretty sure these verses are talking about me.
 
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