The genocidal God and St. Hitler?
Regards
DL
Eric, a few questions:
I have wholehearted and sincere respect for your work and your trust in God. But the question was not about faith in God and His love, the question was how you came to believe in life after death.EricPH wrote: ↑January 7th, 2022, 10:56 am I started to search for God when I was in my late forties, a number of profound events happened. No one can prove to me that God exists, or Jesus died and rose from the dead; or that he loves me as he loves himself. I have to prove this to myself in some way. I have to do something. There is a big difference between belief and faith. I can sit here and say; I believe parachuting is easy. But the only way to have faith in parachuting; is to put one on; go up in a plane and jump. To jump once is to have faith once, to jump a hundred times is to test our faith a hundred times.
To put our trust in God; when our health and safety could be at risk; has proved to be a profound experience for the last fourteen years. We shall be out wondering the streets of our town again tonight, and finish around 4 am tomorrow. We can be in the middle of drunken angry violence like last week. We can meet distressed and anxious people, suicide and of course we meet lots of wonderful people too. We don’t do self defence or carry any protective equipment other than disposable gloves. We pray, we put our trust in God and go. We hope to make our town a kinder and more caring place to live; but we have to be the change we want to see and do something.
Thanks for your reply, Eric. That looks to me like religious belief being put to good use. I have to admit being curious about the profound events that triggered your interest, but fear that this may be probing too much into your private affairs. I had an amazing peak experience about a decade ago that I expect those less inclined to question would have assumed was God. The next few days my mind was unusually clear, and I generally felt very well. I never entirely returned to "normal" afterwards because you can't experience something like that without questioning the usual assumptions about consciousness and the nature of reality.EricPH wrote: ↑January 7th, 2022, 10:56 am I started to search for God when I was in my late forties, a number of profound events happened. No one can prove to me that God exists, or Jesus died and rose from the dead; or that he loves me as he loves himself. I have to prove this to myself in some way. I have to do something. There is a big difference between belief and faith. I can sit here and say; I believe parachuting is easy. But the only way to have faith in parachuting; is to put one on; go up in a plane and jump. To jump once is to have faith once, to jump a hundred times is to test our faith a hundred times.
To put our trust in God; when our health and safety could be at risk; has proved to be a profound experience for the last fourteen years. We shall be out wondering the streets of our town again tonight, and finish around 4 am tomorrow. We can be in the middle of drunken angry violence like last week. We can meet distressed and anxious people, suicide and of course we meet lots of wonderful people too. We don’t do self defence or carry any protective equipment other than disposable gloves. We pray, we put our trust in God and go. We hope to make our town a kinder and more caring place to live; but we have to be the change we want to see and do something.
We gradually lost our mum over a period of about thirty years through multiple sclerosis. She lost the use of both legs and both hands; and for about the last fifteen years she was paralysed from the neck down. My mum went into a coma and was rushed to hospital, her breathing was a horrible gurgling sound, nicknamed the death rattle. The doctors said she had days to live and there was nothing they could do for her. We called a priest, although none of us had a faith at the time, we just thought it was what you should do as mum was bought up a Catholic.
Hi Sy; this happened over thirty years ago; and I have to say I was a sceptic at the time. I am sure the priest introduced himself, but none of us recall his name for many different reasons. I truthfully thought we were saying goodbye and the priest was an outsider. There have been times I would have liked to thank him; but this cannot happen. I know deep down it was nothing to do with the priest, it was God working in mysterious ways.
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