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[Newbie]

why would God that loves me and want the best for me not present himself in such a way that i would not have to second guess? i have never felt God or even heard a word from him to any satisfactory for me believing there is someone listening.I not once ever went into it without anything but praying and pleading for him to inspire me into believing in him. but it never came to be. does this means God doesn't love me or want me to see him, or better yet is no one listening? I will not lie to myself and live on a hope that "he hears me but just being quiet to mess with my head". He knows exactly what i will take from every interaction and what he needs to convince me He is there. the day i get that will be the day i will worship. why would he withhold himself from me? these are questions i ask

growing up went to catholic church, knew some of the kids were very religious holding a firm belief in God, and looking back i always wondered" why can't God convenience me? why has he touched them and not me? how come i have never heard what these people hear? when will God reveal himself to me? and as stated above,has never come to fruition.

i'm not even asking for scientific proof of God, honestly because if there is a God he must not love me to much, to withhold himself from me. and before you tell me" i have to let him in" well iv tried, and God knows i'm open to him, and he knows exactly what it takes to convince me and has yet to present it.

[jimwalton]

I appreciate your openness and honesty, and I will respond likewise. I'll be as honest as I can here: I have found in my life that prayer is not how God reveals himself to me. I know we can read about people like St. Teresa of Avila, and obviously something very different was going on there. I've never had an experience like that, and neither has 99.9999% of the planet. I begged and screamed and pleaded and devoted and searched for many many years in prayer. I learned tremendous things, and one of them was that God doesn't reveal himself to me in prayers. Maybe he does that for some people, but not for me. (And, frankly, I don't think he does it for most people.) I'll even say with some confidence that he rarely even answers my prayers. But I learned that prayer is not to get stuff, but just me expressing my relationship to God. I found that the way God presents himself so that i don't have to second guess, the way God reveals himself to me is through his Word. When I'm quiet in prayer (even for hours), nothing happens. When I ask God for things in prayer, they usually don't come about. But when I meditate on God's Word, that's when a lot happens. The truths jump out at me; I discover thoughts and behaviors I need to change; I learn about who God is and who I am. It's in the Bible that God presents himself in a way that is satisfactory, certainly more objective than the subjectivity of my thoughts during prayer, and inspiring.

As a Catholic you were probably discouraged from reading the Bible yourself. "Let the priest tell you what it means." I'll counsel you differently: read the Bible and digest it. That's where what you seek is.

For years I felt as you do: God must hate me, why doesn't God talk to me, why am I so desperate for him and so empty as a result? We could talk A LOT more about this; I've been to the depths of hell on this one, even suicidal. But I've come up out of the mud, on the other side of THE WALL, and I can see clearly now.

[Mom's new friend]

Thanks for the reply, man! I wouldn't consider myself an atheist—more of an agnostic, with a very open mind. I read a lot about religion. I figure it's one of the most important things I can come to understand. I think this thing is a journey, I have to find as I go and maybe one day I'll come to a better insight into my reality. But until then I'll be open minded and not afraid to change my opinion.

[jimwalton]

You're right: it's a journey, all right. And I'm glad you're keeping an open mind. The best course is continue to read, think, (pray?), talk, and follow the truth wherever it leads.

[Dennis Jensen]

You’re both touching on, in my thinking, the most difficult issues in Christianity. On the one hand Jesus said that anyone who seeks God will find and will discover that Christianity is true (e.g. John 7.17) and I could give you examples of numerous people who claim to have discovered once they began to seek God. A friend was about to cut her wrists out of deep depression when she cried out to God. She said that nothing happened and then she just felt—a presence. It was just enough to hold on to until she ran into other kinds of evidence that did fully persuade her. This brings up the point that God doesn’t always give an experience; sometimes God leads people to other reasons to believe. And remember that the evidence can never be overwhelming or undeniable. God will give us enough evidence to believe, but usually not more than that. God wants our choice to be uncoerced; God allows the evidence to be weak enough so that if we don’t want to believe we can persuade ourselves that it is not true and eventually feel justified in doing so.

So on the one hand we have all those people who say that by seeking they have found. On the other hand, there are many people like yourself and Jim who haven’t had the kind of experience you thought God should give. What do you do if you honestly do not believe God has given you enough reason to believe: no experience of the presence of God and no awareness of what you would consider persuasive evidence (scientific, historical, philosophical, etc.)? Now I suspect that if you look around Jim’s webpage here you will run into some pretty good evidence. (One of the most persuasive lines of evidence I’ve ever run into is just the testimonies of other people. Sometimes after hearing them, I walk away with a deep sense of certainty that it is true. And I think this kind of experience is justifiable reason to believe.) But let’s just suppose that, for whatever reason, nothing is really persuasive or you have intellectual blockages to faith that make you judge the evidence as insubstantial.

If someone can honestly say they have not run into sufficiently persuasive evidence, then I would simply say, keep seeking. I wouldn’t say you should take some leap of faith and just believe. No, I think you should never claim something is true you have no reason to believe is true. One should maintain an honest but humble agnosticism. I know of very hateful atheists who say they have asked but have never experienced God. Just because they have not found is no reason to turn against God. God may have reason for keeping silent for the time being. One may have no reason to believe, but one does not have reason to disbelieve. If you have to admit that you don’t know that God is there, you should also honestly admit that you don’t know that God isn’t there. The latter is another very big point Jim makes in this website. The arguments against God just don’t have any substance.

An honest agnosticism does not merely mean maintaining humility before God (on the possibility that God is there) but it also involves living a moral life. You know right from wrong. Live by the moral awareness that is built into you (I would say the moral awareness God has planted into you) until God shows you that he is there.

My suggestion is that if you honestly feel that you have no reason to believe, just keep asking God. Maybe take some time each night before you go to sleep and read a chapter from one of the gospels. I’d suggest John’s Gospel to start. Before you read, just ask God to show you if this is true or not. Tell him that you would give him your complete commitment, that you would do all that he asks of you, if he would just show you that he is there. If nothing happens, keep doing this. I know of someone who honestly sought the truth from God and only many years later did God give him an experience which was sufficient to persuade him that God is there. God just gave him a simple awareness, a sense of certainty, that this is really true. If you want to question whether such an experience is justifiably sufficient to persuade an honest person, I would argue that it definitely is. This is the same grounds we have to believe most of the things in the world we think we have reason to believe (e.g. the existence of an external world, memories, other minds, etc).

So what happens if you keep seeking like this, asking God for the truth every night, and nothing ever happens? No experience, no chance encounter with persuasive evidence; none of that. Well, Jesus never promised you would find the evidence you need immediately; he never said how long it would take. I don’t think it will happen that you will spend your life seeking but never finding, but if you do, then God would never hold you responsible for failing to believe so long as you have no good reason to believe. If Christianity is true, you will discover it to be true eventually and you will then be obligated to give your life to him. Until then, just maintain an honest and humble agnosticism. I feel very certain that you will find eventually.