@Josh
It’s great that by honestly sharing this, you have opened up a number of people in this forum in a deeper way, even though some of the posts are longer than normal.
This is how I have begun to see things in regard to the issues of what to believe when it’s clear some things we were taught are off base:
- Christians don’t have their act together, generally speaking, any more than non-Christians do. Everyone is deeply flawed. Everyone has handicaps. What ‘advantage’ Christians have is that they admit (or they should) that they are broken sinners. It’s like AA, we are coming to say we admit that we are broken sinners, and that we need to look to God and the community of fellow believers to encourage us to live good, godly lives.
- Christianity has become what I would call “Churchianity” for many Christians. They have added rules, traditions, and ways of thinking that are not true Christianity. One of the biggest themes of Jesus’ ministry was rejection of the Pharisaic way of focusing on the superficial and pushing those beliefs on others. We tend to look back on the portrayal of Pharisees as “those people” who were so bad, yet we have a lot of that going on and if we admit it we may have some of that going on inside ourselves.
- It’s possible to have too “high” of a view of scripture. If you look at the history of scripture, it was pretty messy. None of the original documents are available and even YEC sites like Answers in Genesis admit that the translations could have flaws. Obviously God could have waited until later in history when communication was more reliable or he could have used more dramatic, miraculously ways to convey clear and flawless scripture. But, it seems that he did not intend to do that and did not want us to make scripture TOO high. After all, he also gave us a personal relationship with him, through Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
- A lot of people, including Christians, gravitate towards ‘rules.’ I’m not saying that there aren’t any important rules that God promotes through scripture. But for some Christians, there is a tendency to carry them far beyond what scripture says. That’s because rules are easier for some than a dynamic personal relationship with God. Plus, we often don’t have a clue of what God is telling us. We have to work hard to get close enough to hear God. We tend to allow a lot of voices into our life that interfere with being sensitive enough to hear from God. That may be through TV, the Internet, and the values within them, that seep into our way of thinking. Or it could be some of the people we associate with.
- I believe that we need to work at letting God’s voice seep into our thinking. That includes scripture and pastors/teachers and others who say things that resonate in our soul. We need to “test everything, hold on to what is good.” and “think on whatever is true, honorable, right, pure…” In my experience, God can work through many different methods to teach me. And I don’t often learn when things are going good, but it’s through the difficult things and their aftermath that I learn the most. For example, one of the things I learned through a terribly difficult breakup of an engagement was God doesn’t always ‘rescue’ us from pain and grief. He is like any good parent: once the child gets old enough, God gives us ‘tough love’ and pushes us to stand on the two feet he gave us. For me, I also realized that my soul is in a struggle against ‘the dark side.’ We have to use everything within our power to stop feeding the ‘dark side’ (which makes it grow) and feed more God’s side in our life. That includes, eating right, exercising, avoiding bad influences, practicing good psychological health, studying & thinking on good things, helping others, getting/maintaining a healthy ‘support’ group, etc. (To be sure, it requires not over-spiritualizing things that are just plain unhealthy). I have learned a lot through others in my ‘support group’ (which includes a small group, but also my sphere of family and friends). Interestingly, some of those friends are YECers who nevertheless, have so many positive things they have taught me and are among the most loving people I know. I have come to realize that ‘dark side’ that I picked up from years of the world seeping in, have told me that it’s natural to feel superior, hold resentment or anger, to blame others or even to be too hard on myself. But when I go to bed at night, I take ‘an inner look’ and sometimes see that something that doesn’t feel quite right. I talk to God about helping me to see and overcome the dark side influence. For me (and I suspect for others here) it might include a sense of condemnation or superiority that I feel over other Christians because they are not as ‘enlightened’ as I am. But God is slowly helping me to realize that that is wrong and in my own ways, I am just as bad as others. I need to grow in humility, godly character, and loving others (although true love sometimes means ‘tough love’).
