I have accepted God as real, and I've accepted that Christianity is a fully realized, existential stance to all of the limits of the human condition. The problem I run into isn't God or physics - it's history, being able to affirm the events of the Gospels as historically true.
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Replying to @xstntlprvrt69 @michaelcurzi and
So, like, these stories are really important - they point to the more-than-life, but I just can't say I find them plausible as historical propositions. And it's pretty obvious that Christianity did not just drop down as a revelation from heaven.
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Replying to @xstntlprvrt69 @michaelcurzi and
It's a finally tuned machine made up of works by wiser, smarter and saintlier men than me. BUT... religion seems to work better for people who *believe* in the *literal* truth of at least some solid core events.
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Replying to @xstntlprvrt69 @michaelcurzi and
What if they're truer than true? An event is only incidentally true, a lesson however *necessarily* obtains.
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Replying to @nosilverv @michaelcurzi and
Historically, most religious believers would have believed in the literal, historical truth of their religious claims.
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Replying to @xstntlprvrt69 @nosilverv and
I am not sure that we can derive the same nutrients from them without this belief.
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It’s a good question. My take on this has been that the/a purpose of religion is to help mankind with the difficulties that we face. Existential despair, uncertainty about the basis of everything are some of these challenges...
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Before we had the thing we think about as religion, we had different, terrifying difficulties that we thankfully don’t have to nearly the degree that we do now. So it’s possible that the same answers won’t work for us as worked for people in the past. Still, the teachings aren’t
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meant to be a cure-all. They can’t be because mankind hasn’t cured all things. Which just an indirect way of saying - if your lack of belief in the old stories seems to be holding you back from faith or progress, then maybe your path has a different shape than you were thinking.
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Despair of this kind is yet another thing we can ask God for help with.
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It is very, very hard to be serious about your spiritual life outside of a confessional tradition. Reading Jung's autobiography gives me some faith that it's possible.
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And didn’t Jung or Freud say something about therapy being the reestablishment of confession for the modern era? (
@jean_yujing_fan ?) (Which is not to say it succeeded.) Friends, community, writing, existing spiritual masters can help. But I agree this is very hard in our time.1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @michaelcurzi @nosilverv and
Community is a big one, because I do much better with accountability, and I think most people do.
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