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To them all faith is blind faith

To them all faith is blind faith

Postby deadwhitemale » March 10th, 2009, 4:59 am

On the few other message board forums I haven't been exiled from (yet) -- on the few where I am tolerated chiefly just as a laughing stock, the butt of relentless ridicule, mockery, and personal attacks/smears (usually of a really nasty, vicious, below-the-belt sort) -- they think I have too much faith. I, of all people, when what I have is little or no more than a cold, dull intellectual assent to a set of doctrines or dogmas. I just think it's true.

But "the devils also believe, and tremble." I don't think God is on my side. I don't quite see how believing any of it helps me or works to my benefit in the here and now. I shake my head in bewilderment at these people who have suffered some ghastly misfortune -- like that country musician whose daughter was run over and killed in his own driveway, or the family of that woman who was mutilated by the chimpanzee -- who go on TV and talk about how their faith has sustained them.

I get no such sustenance from my so-called "faith." I am actually afraid to pray anymore, since I can usually count on the exact opposite of whatever I pray for happening. I feel like whoever that was the Psalmist cursed to have his very prayers rebound or ricochet onto him as curses. I have relatively little confidence that I will even get any of the pie in the sky, by and by.

And yet, they mock me for having a faith that can hardly be called a faith, and consider me too religious, even crazily so (and they are all amateur psychologists, and love to throw out pseudo-medical diagnoses like "paranoid" and "crazy") for just barely believing Christianity is true, at least in its essentials.

They are unable to distinguish a miserable, wretched clod like me from these people (whom I call "Jerkies," after those folks in Lewis' unfinished novel, The Dark Tower), who wear permanent, frozen, rictus-like grins, hopping up and down in place with hand claps and glad little cries of "Praise, praise!" or whatever.

They think everyone who believes anything at all is like that, or else is some kind of abortion clinic bomber. (And they seem to think there are an awful lot of abortion clinic bombers running around loose. I can only name one, off the top of my head, and I believe he's in prison.)

A lot of days I can't even open the mail anymore. I can't even go down and get the mail, or take out my trash, or go out and buy groceries, and I have no one to help me with anything. I'm just growing old and I guess dying alone, like I always knew I would. (And now someone will say "always knowing I would" made it happen, that it's a "self-fulfilling prophecy." Yeah, they really believe in the power of positive thinking, that "wishing (or fearing) makes it so." I might say they're the ones with the blind faith. Maybe I always had pretty good idea how things were going to play out because I was relatively good at reading the writing on the wall.)

Aaand I just realized I probably posted this in the wrong forum. I guess it should really go in Religion, Science, and Philosophy. Feel free to move it there, whoever can. I won't kick.

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: To them all faith is blind faith

Postby postodave » March 10th, 2009, 8:52 am

You remind me of some of the darker psalms - I wish I could think of the numbers - but the ones where David feels everybody is mocking him and his God. In my darker moments I have taken comfort in David saying 'I would have despaired if I had not believed I would see the goodness of God in the land of the living'. And I am sure you are in many ways closer to God than some who are more at ease. What happens if you read some of the darker strands of Christian poetry, the despairing believers like Hopkins terrible sonnets or Donne in his moments of doubt or Lewis in A Grief Observed. Can you perhaps find some fellowship with those who have trod the dark path in the past.
So I drew my sword and got ready
But the lamb ran away with the crown
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Re: To them all faith is blind faith

Postby john » March 10th, 2009, 8:55 am

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Re: To them all faith is blind faith

Postby deadwhitemale » March 10th, 2009, 12:32 pm

"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: To them all faith is blind faith

Postby deadwhitemale » March 10th, 2009, 12:42 pm

Last edited by deadwhitemale on March 10th, 2009, 1:21 pm, edited 2 times in total.
"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: To them all faith is blind faith

Postby Karen » March 10th, 2009, 1:11 pm

DWM, I'd stay away from message boards where you're being mocked. Why deliberately subject yourself to more pain?

postodave has suggested some excellent reading. I would add St. John of the Cross' Dark Night of the Soul, which you can read online

It's pretty clear to me that you're suffering from depression, but there is help available for you. Please, please, get in touch with your local mental health center. If you tell me where you live (either post it or by PM), I'll be happy to look up the nearest place for you.
I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library. -- Jorge Luis Borges
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Re: To them all faith is blind faith

Postby archenland_knight » March 10th, 2009, 2:09 pm

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: To them all faith is blind faith

Postby john » March 10th, 2009, 2:41 pm

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Re: To them all faith is blind faith

Postby Peter P » March 10th, 2009, 7:08 pm

DWM -

this probably won't help much, but I think it was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who wrote in his prison diaries (just before being executed by the Nazis in April 1945) that "We serve a God who forces us to live in a world without God".

Not quite the stuff of uplifting hymns, and I've struggled long and hard to try to understand what he really meant by it, and whether I agree with it.

But Bonhoeffer was a special man. And the saying is a very "hard" one, and for those two reasons alone I'd bet that it's true!

To be honest, it does ring true in my own experience....

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Re: To them all faith is blind faith

Postby AllanS » March 10th, 2009, 8:51 pm

Many forums are orc-pits that confirm Lewis's vision of Hell. The very air is toxic. It takes a special breed of angel to live there for long.

Remember Job. "Though he slay me, yet will I love him." Let the mockers have their moment. As for you (and me), seek God defiantly. Even heroically.
“And turn their grief into song?" he replied. "That would be a gracious act and a good beginning."

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Re: To them all faith is blind faith

Postby postodave » March 10th, 2009, 11:30 pm

So I drew my sword and got ready
But the lamb ran away with the crown
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