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I hope I won't be damned for belonging to the wrong church

I hope I won't be damned for belonging to the wrong church

Postby deadwhitemale » January 24th, 2009, 11:34 am

Well, I hope I won't be damned at all, for whatever cause, even if I belong to the right church. :undecided: I'm nominally a Southern Baptist. But for some time (twenty years or longer) I have found it ever-less satisfying. That sense of dissatisfaction or inadequacy has increased with the cruel deaths of several people close to me in the past few years. I discovered that I had no great confidence that they had gone to Heaven, no matter what they believed in life.

For that matter, I felt no great confidence in their continued existence in any form but as embalmed bodies slowly turning into skeletons, or in one case a box of "cremains" (ashes), which I buried personally, with my own hands. (That was my birth mother, cremated against my wishes; I was adopted by another in infancy, and so was not legally the next of kin; and I couldn't pay for a traditional burial, so I had no vote in the matter. Her legal daughter (my half-sister) and her husband chose cremation chiefly because it was cheaper, I suspect.)

Many people have reported a vivid sense of some deceased love one's or friend's continued presence. I have never felt any such thing,neither at their graves, nor in their one-time homes now empty and cold, nor when alone in my own quarters.

:undecided: Anyway, if I could only be sure one church or another was definitely the right one, I guess I'd convert to that one, or at least I'd try to force myself to. My dissatisfaction with the Baptist church largely boils downto that business of "thick versus thin" that Lewis wrote about, if anyone recalls that. To me the Baptist church seems very "thin."

DWM
"It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun." -- Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim(1899?)
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Re: I hope I won't be damned for belonging to the wrong church

Postby Karen » January 24th, 2009, 2:16 pm

Well from my Episcopalian point of view, there is no one "right" church, only Christians trying their best (one hopes) to be conformed to the image of Christ. That desire leads people to very different sorts of churches, but has nothing to do with one's salvation.

I should add that I used to belong to a non-denominational, fairly conservative church. I too grew dissatisfied at its 'thinnness', and found that I longed for a liturgy, for more frequent communion, and for a community where the focus of the service was the worship of God, not (what seemed to me) an extended Bible study. I didn't 'force' myself to change - I felt led by God to another sort of church. Have you visited other churches to see if you felt that leading?
I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library. -- Jorge Luis Borges
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Re: I hope I won't be damned for belonging to the wrong church

Postby deadwhitemale » January 24th, 2009, 4:11 pm

Well, some things about Catholicism attract me, and other things don't. There's this odd half-attraction, half-repulsion thing going on. I was raised a Baptist and "joined the church" (as Baptists say) at about age nine-going-on-ten, circa late-1966.

Sometime in the early or middle Eighties, I began to take an interest in Catholicism, cultivated some Catholic friends, and sort of toyed or flirted with the idea of converting. I couldn't quite go through with it, though. It was just too different in a lot of ways. I could understand the theory or rationale behind some specifically Catholic practices and beliefs, but I didn't think I could ever get used to it. And it would have upset my parents greatly.

But Mom (who adopted and raised me) died six months and a day ago. Dad's close to being a vegetable, and probably wouldn't notice the difference unless I went out of my way to rub it in. When Jean, my birth mother, died in 2005, I was so worried about her condition in the hereafter (she'd had a checkered past) that I actually got two different Catholic priests (one local, and one in England I only knew online) to pray for her at mass, and I even attended the local mass, though of course I did not take comunion. I had gotten the idea that it was sort of customary to offer the rough equivalent of a day's wages for this, and I tried to do so in each case. I lit a candle or two myself. But I have to say I didn't feel like I'd accomplished much or done any good for her.

I didn't go that route when Mom died last July, because, well, she had been a fairly faithful, God-fearing, churchgoing woman while he was still able, and it didn't feel right to, in a sense, impose something she would have considered alien on her, even posthumously, if that makes any kind of sense. We (Dad and I) did pray and read Bible verses and sing hymns over her on her death bed, and I even sent for (Baptist, or at least Protestant) ministers to help us with that, when it looked like Mom was going. The day she actually died we had to settle for the help of a lady at the nursing home who was sort of a lay minister, in a way. None of this seemed to help much either. Of course I hope it helped Mom somehow, but if it did I couldn't feel it.

I don't suppose I'm particularly anyone whose prayers would carry much weight. There's something bad wrong with me. I mean there's something missing inside that ought to be there but it's not.

DWM
"It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun." -- Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim(1899?)
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Re: I hope I won't be damned for belonging to the wrong church

Postby Karen » January 24th, 2009, 7:29 pm

I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library. -- Jorge Luis Borges
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Re: I hope I won't be damned for belonging to the wrong church

Postby friendofbill » January 25th, 2009, 8:19 pm

There are different denominations because people have diferent psychologies and different spiritual needs. I found that the Baptist, Pentecostal and Charismatic approach fed the emotions but not the intellect. The Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox traditions feed both the emotions and the intellect. Christianity is, or can be, a veritble feast for the intellect, though if it is nothing but intellectual it has no more value than any other philosophy.

Yopu might find some guidance towards what you are seeking in the writings of Marcus Borg, John Shelby Spong and others of the Jesus Seminar. They make clear a distinction between Christainity as "belief centered" (traditional) and Christianity as "transformation centered" (The Emerging Church). Is the purpose of faith "salvation?" Yes. But is "salvation" tomorrow, in a hoped-for heaven, or is it now, in a life committed to and directed by Jesus Christ? Borg in particular addreses this question very well.

Pax Domini
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Re: I hope I won't be damned for belonging to the wrong church

Postby Karen » January 25th, 2009, 8:30 pm

I would also suggest reading NT Wright, particularly his Simply Christian, which is like a Mere Christianity updated for the 21st c.
I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library. -- Jorge Luis Borges
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Re: I hope I won't be damned for belonging to the wrong church

Postby Eucalypt » January 26th, 2009, 1:07 am

Your mum is in heaven right now if she accepted, while she was in this life, God's amazing gift of grace - namely, forgiveness of her sin and life in the world to come. Because Christ, though completely innocent, took our punishment - bore the full measure of the righteous wrath of God on our behalf.

John 10:29 (NIV)
"I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die."

John 3:17 - 18
"For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son."

If your mum believed in Christ, she is not condemned. She has stepped through the door we call 'death' to real life with her Father. We/you may not be sure of the true state of her heart when she died, but the fact stands that if she trusted in Christ, she has not spiritually died. (Whether you feel her presence or not is no indication of her salvation or lack thereof.) In all gentleness I encourage you to see that the important factor (according to the Word of God, not merely my opinion) is the state of her relationship with God before she died, not whether somebody - or enough somebodies - prayed for her enough, or gave enough, or lighted enough candles, or said enough masses, or sang enough hymns - or whether she belonged to the "right church". Christ did all that was necessary for her salvation - the question is, did she accept it? We may never know in this life.

I pray that God will give you peace.

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Re: I hope I won't be damned for belonging to the wrong church

Postby deadwhitemale » January 26th, 2009, 7:09 am

"It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun." -- Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim(1899?)
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Re: I hope I won't be damned for belonging to the wrong church

Postby Karen » January 26th, 2009, 1:26 pm

I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library. -- Jorge Luis Borges
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Re: I hope I won't be damned for belonging to the wrong church

Postby archenland_knight » January 26th, 2009, 5:17 pm

DWM: I sent you a private message. I'll address other issues later.
Romans 5:8 "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
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Re: I hope I won't be damned for belonging to the wrong church

Postby rusmeister » January 27th, 2009, 2:48 am

All I'll say, DWM, is that I was raised Baptist, and left it as a young adult (after several years of seriously practicing/studying it) tio become a lazy agnostic. I later found everything that was good and right in the Baptist faith while turning around everything I objected to in the Orthodox Church.

I'll pm, if you like, but am no longer interested in public debating here.

Come and see! (John 1:39, 46)
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Re: I hope I won't be damned for belonging to the wrong church

Postby deadwhitemale » January 27th, 2009, 6:38 am

Karen wrote: "From what you say about aversion therapy, you may have seen a psychologist/psychiatrist at some point?"

Well, I was forced to see one in my last year of high school before I quit. (I was forced to get this "treatment" if I wanted to graduate. I quit rather than go on being forced into therapy. I didn't want to graduate that bad.) That wasn't about my phobia)s), though (which were far milder then, anyway).

It was more about me reacting violently to what people like to call "bullying." (It's funny how what would be consideredd serious criminal behavior in any other context is dismissed as and winked at as "bullying" when it goes on in or before or after school.) It was considered a mental illness to object to being constantly harassed, ridiculed, mocked, threatened, and physically assaulted, and downright insanity to tey to fight back, however ineffectively.

Then I was court-ordered into therapy in my early twenties, after getting into a fight with a drug dealer the girl I was enamored of had left me for. I lost the fight, and "my" girl, and I was charged and forced to plead quilty, and sent to "rehab" or whatever instead of jail. I was struck by how hostile towards and contemptuous of any sort of religion the mental health professionals were. I was not even a very nice guy, but they thought a big part of my problem was that I was too religious. Of course to them, if you'd ever opened a Bible or given it a moment's thought you were too religious.

This experienced greatly furthered, if it did not complete, a process of radicalization begun by my public school experiences. (Bear in mind school attendance was legally compulsory.) I think I mentioned before that I am very far outside of what most people consider the political/ideological/philosophical "mainstream." I suppose I am more like a sort of extreme libertarian (with a small L) than anything else that has a formal name. But even that could cause confusion. Many libertarians (especially the doctrinairre Randians) are hostile to religion per se, and I am not. (They think all religion is always hostile to freedom of thought and action. I don't think so. In fact, all the greatest threats to freedom these days come from purely secular quarters.) Also, while I wasn't looking, someone seems to have redefined libertarianism to mean something I never meant by it. I called myself a libertarian for decades, and I thought it was true. But then one day I woke up to discover it now meant I had to embrace things I don't embrace, or at least am not sold on.

In any case, I set a FAR higher value on individual freedom of thought and action than 99 percent of the human race does. And, while I have many flaws, and am not even necessarily a very nice guy, I am often right -- I mean both factually correct and morally in the right -- about a lot of things most people are wrong about. I mean I seem to be able to see through a lot of things most people never question or examine for an instant. A large part of what most people just accept and believe without question -- which it never even occurs to them to question -- I dispute or positively deny.

You'd be surprised by what some of these things are. You'd be surprised how much hot water you can get into just by asking questions such as, "What is education? What should it be? What is it for?" (The discussion usually gets immediately dverted into a rather dull Evolution versus Creation debate, which doesn't ineterst me much, and wasn't what I was talking about. In any case, most people just assume that education is a Good Thing, and that everyone should be educated in the ame way and about the same things.) Before you know it, someone wants to serve you a bowl of piping hot hemlock to shut you up.

Also, some things seem really obvious and elementary to me, but most people deny them. For instance, I don't believe "everything comes from within." I believe a person's external, objective circumstances are very much a determining factor in how they feel about things. Furthermore, I believe people are entitled to their feelings about their external circumstances. If someone's external circumstances make them unhappy, I don't say they should just try to feel better about living in unhappy circumstances. I say, change those circumstances through concrete action.

However, I don't mean anything remotely like "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps," or "Root, hog, or die." I understand very well that many people's circumstances are at least temporarily beyond their control, that they lack the means to change them. For example, I am very unhappy with my present living quarters, but at present I lack the means to purchase (or build) better ones. And people blame me for lacking the means, and for being unhappy about it, as if I could just magically conjure the means out of thin air, or as if they weren't hemorrhaging away at a rate of about $6,000 a month.

All I can do is paraphrase a line of Gandalf's in Fellowship of the Ring: "I cannot burn snow. I must have something to work with." You better believe that the moment I have something in my hands to work with -- something besides snow to burn -- a lot is going to happen fast. I mean I aim to seize the reins and swing into action in a way that'll make everyones' heads swim.

But I digress, I think. I appreciate all the good wishes and advice (even advice I can't follow), and the prayers most of all. I know you all mean well, and I thank you.

DWM
"It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun." -- Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim(1899?)
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Re: I hope I won't be damned for belonging to the wrong church

Postby girlfreddy » January 27th, 2009, 10:14 pm

How would telling people to be nice to one another get a man crucified? What government would execute Mister Rogers or Captain Kangaroo?
Philip Yancey

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Re: I hope I won't be damned for belonging to the wrong church

Postby Eucalypt » January 27th, 2009, 10:47 pm

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Re: I hope I won't be damned for belonging to the wrong church

Postby splashen » January 28th, 2009, 3:29 am

I don't believe a person gets damned for belonging to the wrong church or religion(for the most part, anyway).
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