/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

>be me

>looking at some occult stuff

>contemplate what a "Self-justifying being" is

>Go into acute despair realizing I am not such a being, nor can I comprehend this being's nature (spoiler alert: Its The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit)

>I lay down, I drink water. I cannot find rest because I have contemplated this mystery with no concept of who God is

>I finally think of Christ. I find peace and I break down and cry

>Okay so I'm Gnostic now

>keep looking at occult stuff believing Christ is saving us from what life is (rather than giving it more abundantly)

>God tells me to go pray (I haven't prayed for 16 years, when I was 8 years old, at this point)

>This is physically painful, I have to be delivered because my sin is so great. I look at myself in the mirror because I keep putting this off, I look like some kind of pathetic gremlin (it was horrifying) I'm having thoughts of just going outside with a knife and stabbing people and getting myself run over by a car (given by the demons that had dominion over me)

>Finally I threw up and then I had this thought of myself spiralling into the void via a helix sprouting from the top of my head (yeah no, not today satan)

>I keep praying and I feel the Holy Spirit come over me, its like a warm embrace and sense of glorious light

>So I'm good now right, I'm saved. I'm not going to do something stupid that puts me in despair again

>Well I start talking to my mom and talking about this experience and I'm going on about how great my sin was

>She asks me what I did that was so bad

>Holy Spirit says tell her you have CP (I told you my sin was great)

>I say something else

>immediately spirit is grieved, this feeling of peace is greatly diminished

>I start looking at videos on the unpardonable sin and praying I didn't do it and all this kind of thing.

>by the morning I feel I am descending into hell, just a total feeling of despair and deadness. Not to mention there is a strange feeling in my loins coupled with compulsions to blaspheme God which I am fighting.

>My dad has to take me to the hospital to have me committed

>We get to the hospital

>We get to the elevators, I get a look at myself in the pane of glass, I swear I looked like lucifer, just this prideful, essentially evil look but it was me. I am terrified even more than when I looked like the gremlin thing

>I start screaming for Jesus and the feeling just gets worse and worse and by the time the staff are crowded around me tying me to the bed, I am saying "I'm dead, I'm dead"

>I can't tell you what its like to be spiritually dead but it was something I understood was just and I brought it upon myself and it was the most horrendous thing I ever experienced and I couldn't even recall it for that reason.

>They knock me out. I wake up in the psych emergency room

>Its over. I know I've been forgiven.

>I am still an idiot though. Do I break down and cry about the mercy I've been given. Do I meditate on it. Do I appreciate the magnitude of the grace?

>Not really. I just start trying to live like a Christian while I'm in the hospital. I'm still totally unmoved by how great God is.

I'll continue this later. I have maybe the longest testimony of conversion ever and its largely because of the extent of the deceptions of the adversary. And I do find the testimony important in explaining how I have settled upon a position of Fideism and why I believe it is the rock of a firm foundation of faith that can stand in the day of evil. I hope what I've written so far gives you an idea of the supernatural as the essential realm for the Christian life. I will finally explain that I believe you need a Faith that can stand against your reasoning mind, rather than a sort of belief that finds its entire basis there.

That was a good read. Though a faith that resists the test of time could not be built over the ecstatic, but needs to be based in an everday serene mystery like the blue sky that both conceals and illuminates.

>>843476

You're probably right there. I just mean that without previous experiences and personal revelation of Jesus, I reckon I would have no reason to believe in him. But I definitely don't espouse living by feelings instead of faith either, which once again is some charismatic nonsense.

Very good thread but I think you're missing the mark on your criticism of the rational faith view, especially when you bring up calvinism. To not be a fideist or charismatic doesn't mean believing in evolution of subscribing to a soft "scientism", it also doesn't mean rejecting personal experience of God or the reality of spiritual warfare.

I also agree that my personal experience of being born again is a necessary component of knowing the Christian God to be true

>>843477

There are indeed people who mistake sensuality for faith, western religious art is made to incite these feelings. I don't think you're one of them.

I take justifications to hit an end, which isn't visions or intuitions but a commitment that becomes clearer and strengths itself retroactively.

Continuing my very long testimony

>Get out of hospital

>days later I feel convicted by the Holy Spirit to take my "porn tablet" with the CP on it to the police.

>I show up at the police station. I say "This tablet has child pornography on it and I'm turning myself in because the Spirit of God has convicted me" and I'm sobbing because I had been such a coward my entire life, I never would have imagined I would do something this self-damaging.

>They let me go until my court date. When I leave I feel the fullness of the spirit and this time I appreciate it.

>I start following the hyper-charismatic cult of Finalcall07, Warningthepeople, and Robert Lyte

>I figure, okay these guys don't even have personalities, they say they are guided by the Holy Spirit in every little decision. I think this is what it means to be a true believer.

>This gives me an impression of a very unforgiving God who will cut you off for anything (for instance finalcall07 has a video where he says he was puking blood because he let someone put a copy of software on his computer.

>Meanwhile I'm still holding onto some of my old ideas, like antinatalism (after all now hell is definitely on the line now)

>I have a blasphemous thought

>I try to do penance. Nothing is working. Worried God is going to cut me off

>I promise, in prayer, a 30 day fast (really it should have been 40 days if I knew my scripture)

>I leave the house intending to go out into the wildnerness so I won't be tempted by food.

>I end up passing by my mother's house at the other end of the city.

>I go in there telling her what I'm about to do.

>they want to take me to the hospital again

>I go

>Doctor thinks I'm fine so they don't admit me

>I end up staying the night

>I break the fast because my family says its impossible to fast that long (Finalcall07 gave me the idea it could be done)

>next night I have a dream

>I am being attacked by demon of gluttony and a demon of lust

>I feel Jesus grab me and start pulling me through a vortex of light

>I mistrust him, for the same reason I had the blasphemous thought and continue to have such thoughts, the lies I had been exposed to via the occult. Anyway I fall and the demons enter me, the dream is over, I wake up.

>For some reason I go a few days still thinking God has forgiven me for this

>But then a guilt sets in and I believe I have denied him. I am despairing again. I have to see my psychiatrist. He decides that I am anxious and need to be admitted.

>I get put into a psych emergency room, which is essentially like solitary confinement

>I have told this story here before. I think I am wasting away because I am lean and I did fast for 3 days but I think God is making me waste away for breaking my fast.

>I am guilted relentlessly by my dream

>I get into a state of increasing despair over a number of days

>Eventually, the bright idea enters my head (which I now understand was of demonic suggestion) well what if my inner child were to go up and see Jesus instead of me mistrusting him

>I literally try to bargain my soul for favor. I say "Jesus, don't take me. Take the child."

>I feel a presence leave my chest like a bird fleeing

>I believe this is the departing of the spirit

>I immediately start acting like a jerk

>eventually the devil comes and possesses me

>accuses me of everything I did wrong as a Christian. Uses a terrifying version of my own voice (which sounded quite a bit like the Joker from TDK) which I couldn't even replicate.

>Cusses out all members of the trinity, once again this is my voice being used

>I feel like a darkness take the place where the holy spirit seemed to have fled

>He says "have fun" and then leaves.

>I'm catatonic for a couple days at least

>>843542

>ffwd years

>I have wasted 2 years distracting myself from anything related to my spiritual existence. I am more antinatalist than ever. I feel like my soul purpose is to encourage people not to have kids because they'll probably just go to hell. I make a shirt which says "Hell is real. Don't have kids" which is sort of an idea I stole from Jan Boshoff (finalcall07) but supporting my own ideas.

>I am writing essays, exegeting scripture in a way that makes antinatalism reconcilable (it worked surprisingly well)

>But mostly I'm just distracting myself with hobbies and media to avoid confronting my fate (which I pretty much dedicated the 8 months I was in hospital to anyway)

>But all of a sudden the despair just hits me like a tidal wave. Its almost like a slower and less acute version of the experience I had descending into hell the first time.

>I had thought for some time that I wouldn't even call out to God if I was in the very pit of hell, at least not genuinely

>This is seeming more apparent than ever

>So I am like this for days this time but I realize that I've been wrong about antinatalism and hating life. I really understand that life is a blessing which was hard for me to think before.

>But I figure its too late to do anything with this revelation and I've earned permanent separation from God and I cannot distract myself with the world either.

>It gets to a point where I feel indistinguishable from inanimate objects, like I'm dissolving into the material world

>It gets worse because later I feel like my mind is now just an attempt by the devil to diversify his conscious experience

>Eventually I say enough is enough. I'm just going to have hope. I don't have the slightest inclination that I want to repent but I'm going to do it anyway.

>I start speaking Good about Christ (just to myself) and remembering passages of scripture (in particular the phrase "the peace that surpasses all understanding can help)

>The real turning point is when I admit the extent of the evil I did in that psyche emergency room but thinking that God could forgive even that. When I both admit the monstrous evil of what I did (instead of trying to diminish it and make excuses) and consider that God could still forgive, I start to feel tenderness again.

>But the devil fights hard. He says, well if the Holy Spirit comes back, that would contravene scripture so now whatever comes will be an evil spirit.

>I don't know what to do. And the devil is trying to make me commit the unpardonable sin which is to call good evil and evil good.

>Eventually I'm saying "there is nothing the devil can do to pluck me from God's hand" and that turns into "there is nothing he can do to pluck me from your hand"

>I have like a weird sense the house is in the desert. I don't know how to explain that. I start praying. I feel my soul stir in me. I realize I've been restored. Praise the Lord!

>And better yet what I've learned from this experience is that I don't know anything. I can't trust my thoughts and feelings. I can only trust Christ. His word alone heals.

>>843543

Now I'll leave out the part about how, by some serendipity I was finally properly baptized via submersion, because what I have laid out is the basis of my Fideism. I had basically every reason to believe I was a reprobate. I had felt a presence like a dove flee my chest, been possessed by the devil. I had perjured in my court case (basically got off on my history of mental illness), which put me on mere probation for a year. I broke the terms of the probation and used a phone. I loaded it up with more porn of just about every kind, except CP (depends if you call Loli that I suppose). I didn't feel conviction for any of this. I started to feel despair and once again, I didn't even sense that I wanted to come back to God. Literally nothing about my experiences or thoughts suggested I had the remotest opportunity to come back to Christ. And then I just decided to try anyway and I was restored. Essentially, I had lived by faith, not by feelings nor reason, just faith alone. So now I am a Fideist. Not only because my experience showed me that I don't know anything on my own, but because these experiences of God's love are so much more important to me than reasoned ideas, which I think are highly susceptible to suggestion.

Now I ask you, when these occult doctrines are unloaded on you (some of which either of us might not even know) and, as promised in the Scriptures, WITH lying signs and wonders, whose faith will stand. The man with the reasoned belief, saying "Well you know what, I used to believe in Jesus but you make a really sound argument A.C." or the man saying "No, you didn't come in the name of Christ. You could tell me the most persuasive thing you want and if its not of Christ, I won't believe it." I'm not even bragging that I am the latter but surely the man, persuaded by logic, his "faith" will fall and the man persuaded only by Christ, his faith will stand. This is why you don't want to be someone who thinks about his Christian life in terms of reason, like a John Macarthur. Man's reason is a foundation of sand. The love of God is a foundation of rock.

If you don't think logically you're not a human. You're a monster.

>>843545

I think logically but only when its preceded by faith. Fideism doesn't mean just totally lose your mind, it means faith precedes reason.

some might argue, cessationist type calvinists who hold to sola scriptura for instance, that they have constant personal experiences of God every time they pick up His revelation of Himself that He provided for men so as to both reveal His character and fully equip them for every good deed He ordained for the believer from before the beginning of the world

'course that doesn't allow one a sense of pride in a superior spirituality to the bible-bashers, but it's so simple it just might work

>>843542

>>I show up at the police station. I say "This tablet has child pornography on it and I'm turning myself in because the Spirit of God has convicted me" and I'm sobbing because I had been such a coward my entire life, I never would have imagined I would do something this self-damaging.

That was very courageous.

>>843545

If logical thought is that which can be based, this basis cannot be called either logical or illogical. The basis is not something seen by the eyes of the soul or the feeling of assuredness but our very livelyhood, the daily bread given by grace called faith.

>>843450

First of all, thank you for your testimony. I have had a direct experience with God that has led me to understand many of the things you have noted. I too believe that Faith in God is a personal gift that comes from being touched by Him and that you truly cannot know God in even our very limited way without him revealing himself directly. This is what imparts our Faith. Before being awakened, I always thought believers were idiots because quite frankly, without the Holy Spirit, the scripture doesn't make any sense. I still doubt any hardcore bible thumper for this reason and see a very utilitarian bent in their approach. The bible is an "I told you so" and not - I don' think - the beginning of faith. Let's not forget our religion predates the scriptures.

What you have not addressed however is why Fideism proper and only. I personally think you are again rationalizing your own beliefs much in the same way you did when you were a new-ager or a gnostic.

So I understand your position on fideism and it is truly important to have that faith above all, but St Thomas quite nicely demonstrated that God can be known by Faith and by human reason. And i believe this to be true for minds not tainted by sin. I think that to know God as we do takes a personal experience, but i also think that you can get there by reasoning your way into that faithful position. In my own case, the seed was sown by philosophical reasoning about first origins, entropy, death and such…and then only when i was convinced intellectually was I ready to accept the gift of faith. it seems God does reveal himself to those who seek, even if not done out of shear desperation. But still always because we direly need HIm, even if not aware of it at the time.

We can see that both human reason, when rightly ordered towards truth, and revealed faith/truth both combined in the person of Jesus to take humanity out of the doldrums of degeneracy and launch a new philosophical and scientific era in which faith and reason combined to elevate the human race. What i mean by this is that Jesus Christ took the dead end faith of the Hebrews and bridged that to the dead end pantheistic philosophy/theology of the Greeks in order to further reveal his nature and to create a living faith that has sustained us for millenia. Both the revealed faith of the Hebrews and the human reason of the Greeks were necessary to allow for all those Saints and Doctors of the Church in the first place, and what we could not perceive from senses alone, we could develop with the help of Faith by human reason. That all that, and so much more, was done in the mystery of the incarnation is a miracle we could not even begin to comprehend if it were not for human reason. The danger of leaning too far in one direction or the other is evident in how both those societies came to a religious bottleneck that - in the case of the Hebrews - degenerated into unruly behaviour excused by faith and - in the case of the greeks - degeneracy in the form of ever dividing deities as numerous as the personalities of man himself. Not to mention all other forms of degeneracy that the miracle of the incarnation gave individuals, and those societies they were to build, the power to overcome.

So while i agree that supernatural faith, as the Catholic Church calls it, is the strongest attribute the end times Saints could have, those with an solid intellectual faith could also have the right tools to sustain whatever persecution comes their way. For in the end, even true Supernatural Faith can be shaken by despair at what we perceive around us, and one convinced only by rational arguments can be deceived by more rational arguments. For Faith to be truly strong, it must be rooted in both the Supernatural Faith that is a personal gift of God and Human reason, which is a gift to mankind. Because if God is nothing else, He is Truth and the the Truth can be grasped by those endowed with that greatest attribute; human reason. Also, i think it is dangerous to say that only Faith of the Supernatural type is required to make Saints because one living the faith as we have described can inspire others to live a life worthy of salvation. This is why God touches the worst of sinners; so they can be living testimonies of the power of God.

>>845020

Is there a motive for you to say reason is man's greatest attribute?

>>845029

Yes, because it is man's greatest natural gift. The gift by which we can know Truth and God. It was given to us for this very purpose. It is by reason that we to or from the gift of Faith. Whether it precedes or succeds it.

>>845035

*grow to or from the gist of Faith.

>>845035

So, do you believe it is the greatest gift because it allows one to know God?

I, for one, don't see it that way. Can you explain why do you think it leads to the Triune God, God incarnate and Resurrection of the Dead?

>>845060

>So, do you believe it is the greatest gift because it allows one to know God?

Yes, besides Faith freely given by God to the individual, reason is innate in all humans. it is how one can apprehend the truth. the truth cannot be be nonsensical and illogic as it emanates from complete and total order, God. It can be mysterious but not illogical. God has not revealed all to us but he has given us reason to fill in the blanks. As God is order and logic itself, reason correctly applied to faith and revelation uncovers the truth. It is why the greeks apprehended the truth of Jesus, without prior revelation. Fideism without reason leads to a purely willful God, the god of the mohammedans, for example. Pure will without logic or reason, it is why the islamists cannot admit the invention of the wheel t obe human and why they cannot make any scientific discovery without attributing it to God's revelation. Fideism also leads away from the truth of the Triune God because the persons experience is the only marker for the validity of an experience.

>Can you explain why do you think it leads to the Triune God, God incarnate and Resurrection of the Dead?

I'm not sure what you're asking here because none of those things were revealed explicitly and had to be grasped by reason based on limited revelation. that it can e reasoned and supported by all other data points tells us that it's the truth. that and thta fact that his chuch teaches it. But it di not come form revelation, personal or public.

>>845066

Does by illogical you mean not being able to be deduced?

Do you not believe the Resurrection of the Dead rests on revelation alone?

>>845067

Illogical would be a deduction not following the laws of logic. 2+2=5

Aaiin i don't understand your question. you lumped in two indirect revelations with a central dogma as revealed and practiced by Christ HImself. Not sure where you are going with this.

>>845071

Do you believe one can deduce the Resurrection of the Dead through intellectual efforts?