To Believe or To Not Believe

Pss. 27:13” I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.”

To Believe or To Not Believe

When I see this kind of rhetoric as comments across many different sites, the animosity and verbiage are the same towards Christian believer.

*not the actual screen names
nosheeplepeople says:
“You're busy playing the children's Game of Make-Believe, Christian Version, that even has your imaginary magical friend you call Yahweh playing your edition of the children's Game of Hide 'N Seek as a subplot in your Land of Pretend. Your Game of Make-Believe even includes a talking bush, a talking donkey, a talking serpent and a talking volcano.
The cartoons you watched with talking animals weren't true even though you believed they were true.”

And a response went like this:

Josh said:
If your perspective of my trust in God is nothing to you, why are you getting so worked up about it? If I simply believed that the world was made out of jello, you wouldn't give a second thought to my belief, and you'd go on about your day on to things that actually mattered, but that is not the case here, your soul is so disturbed by my trust in an all powerful Creator, that you must put in your efforts and attempts to make the disturbance in your soul, a part of my reality. I could dismiss your attempts as imaginary, and make believe, but then I'd be suppressing the subjective evidence of your existence, much like you do with the reality of God's existence.

This response was not liked by the sheeple so he tried to one up Josh by saying,

Sheeple said:
“Christians have been sold an invisible product that has an invisible cure for an invisible disease that harms an invisible soul so that the invisible soul can go to an unseen place that is invisible until they die based on a guilt trip their Pastor told them that they should have.”

Josh replied:
You know, it's funny that I address the objections or points that you make. But legit answers that I give, and points and objections to your objections that I make, never seem to be addressed. They are ignored, repressed, and then it’s on to your next objection. What is the point of trying to give an answer to your objections, when you never take them into consideration in our dialogue here? You’re not seeking the truth, you’re seeking to establish your own agenda. May God bless you, have a nice day :)

Pss 78:22 “Because they believed not in God, and trusted not in his salvation:”

I have to say, Josh had a good debate going and that his words were sound. But the sheeple guy sounded like a broken robot that I’ve heard in Yahoo comments, YouTube comments and anyplace the very word God is uttered; my God is fake and they (atheist) have no God. Sheeple continued to have this same conversation with himself.

The comments went on and on and on. I’m so used to this kind of hate towards Christians because that is what satan has himself formed out of the world. No, he didn’t magically create anything, satan has a tendency to work through the mind to bend whatever truth you may hold.

I have come to find that satan is working in EVERY faith and religion to distort and turn your thoughts away from the Creator. He puts these doubts in your mind and they fester until you are turned against God and you know what, God is okay with that because the non-believers need to be weeded out anyway. 

I’m okay with people NOT believing but don’t judge me and call my God a fairytale because of a book you might have read and not believed. If billions of people are wrong, then so be it, I’m one among many. I’m going to dissect what the sheeple wrote.

“Christians have been sold an invisible product [is he calling God a product? Sorry sheeple, God is a spiritual entity.] that has an invisible cure [cure? Where, I need one pronto!] for an invisible disease [I wish my disability was invisible!] that harms an invisible soul [I actually KNOW I have a soul because every word this person said touched me. Having never been touched, sheeple does not have a soul and if he does it is a lonely and empty one] so that the invisible soul can go to an unseen place [unseen place? Sorry buddy, I’ve SEEN heaven and tasted it and that is why I long to be there!] that is invisible until they die [not true] based on a guilt trip their Pastor told them that they should have.” [Umm, this person must’ve really been hurt by the church and a pastor because he was well versed in my Bible, KJV, but to think that everyone finds God via a church or a pastor is illogical. Did he ever think that God finds YOU? Not always the other way around?

God made His presence known to me at around age three and then I looked for Him everywhere I went as I aged. Sometimes God finds you, some people are taught about God, some are raised on the bible and attended church regularly since grade school and yes they were allowed to experience Him for themselves and make their OWN judgment call on whether to believe or not to believe. My invisible God placed within me FREE WILL to believe or not believe what I want, also! 

To the atheist, God can be explained away by scientific answers to everything that exists but to me, a believer, if God didn’t exist neither would science/scientists! You can’t have one without the other. Now my faith is invisible, the only way you see my faith is by what I project to the world. You either see it or you don’t. You have the free will to believe or to not believe. 

Prov. 14:15 “The simple believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh well to his going.”

Quotation Saturday ~ There Is Hope

Pss. 130:5  “I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope.”

ATHEIST

“I don't profess any religion; I don't think it’s possible that there is a God; I have the greatest difficulty in understanding what is meant by the words ‘spiritual’ or ‘spirituality.'”
[Interview, The New Yorker, Dec. 26, 2005] 
― Philip Pullman

“The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven. The Bible is the product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.” 
― Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

“...it is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist, he takes the side of spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin. I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it... Among the sayings & discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence: and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being."

[Letter to William Short, 13 April 1820]
― Thomas Jefferson,

AGNOSTIC

“As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.” 
― Bertrand Russell

“You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human fallibility.” 
― Carl Sagan

“My lack of faith in God is not a dilapidated house.
It does not need to be razed to the ground or burned down to cinders.
I refuse to be the wounded woman on a cross
that you crucify with your disapproval like nails;
I will only be the woman who believes in thunderstorms
the same way lightning loves the tops of trees it strikes
every time it gets tired of being pent up in an unforgiving sky,
the only difference is that I believe these are natural weather phenomenons,
not God’s belly rumbling or synapses firing.
When my doorway is filled with groups of people
wielding religious conversion pamphlets like crossbows,
I will be the martyr who steps aside to let the arrows
crack through the plaster in my wall instead of piercing my chest.
This is not a eulogy to the believer I could have been.
This is a battle cry to the believer I always have been,
believer in sunsets like splashes of paint, handholding
like willow branches brushing one another, new mornings
after old nights spent drowning in despair, believer
in love as an entire language instead of a single word.
Just because my beliefs align themselves on a different spectrum
does not mean they are the wrong wavelength or color.
And even though I think the universe was created by the Big Bang
instead of a God with magic dust shooting from his fingertips,
my universe does not contain fewer stars.” 
― Meggie Royer

FAITH

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” 
― C.S. Lewis

“God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas but for scars.” 
― Elbert Hubbard

“Sometimes beautiful things come into our lives out of nowhere. We can't always understand them, but we have to trust in them. I know you want to question everything, but sometimes it pays to just have a little faith.” 
― Lauren Kate

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.” 
― Søren Kierkegaard

BELIEF

“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.” 
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.” 
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.” 
― Mitch Albom

“For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible.” 
― Stuart Chase

HOPE

“I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you're going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.” 
― C. JoyBell C.

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” 
― Paulo Coelho

“Hope is the thing with feathers 
That perches in the soul 
And sings the tune without the words 
And never stops at all.” 
― Emily Dickinson

“The things you do for yourself are gone when you are gone, but the things you do for others remain as your legacy.” 
― Kalu Ndukwe Kalu

Agnostic vs. Atheist

2 Thes. 2:13 “But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:”

I don’t know much about agnosticism or atheism but I’m going to do a little research and find out. Maybe it’s because I don’t understand the language.

I have a friend who said he’s agnostic but now he says he’s a Christian; my son who was a Christian now says he’s agnostic. This riddled my brain because I’ve been a Christian for the majority of my life and I don’t understand the concept of not believing or needing proof. My son tells me that my beliefs are like a foreign language to him, he doesn’t understand me, and so here I am trying to understand something I may never understand. 

The definition of agnostic is:
A person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.

The definition of atheist is:
A person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods.

To me, an agnostic needs proof to believe in the existence of God where an atheist could care less if there is a God and they live every day waiting for the cold, clammy earth that awaits them after death. 

Agnostic vs. atheist - Atheism is about belief, or specifically what you don't believe. Agnosticism is about knowledge, or specifically about what you don't know. An atheist doesn't believe in any gods. An agnostic doesn't know if any gods exist or not.

When raising my son I took him to church, a church that baptized him and saw him through the ritualistic practices every Sunday. He attended the youth groups and he enjoyed it at first but I always told him that he was his own person and could believe in what he wanted to believe and that I could not force him to believe in what I believed. 

Around the age of seventeen my son told me that he didn’t have the same belief as me, he was now an agnostic and though it was a little startling, seeing as I tried so hard raising him right, it hit me like a swift angry wind, it stung. What did I do wrong? I was assured I had done nothing wrong and realized he was now his own person and could make decisions on his own. 

When I asked him what had happened, as vocal as the young man is, he told me point blank, hypocrites happened. Adam has eyes to see and ears to hear and when he witnessed so-called Christians, they were of the Sunday only variety. They looked and performed the Christianity on Sunday but the rest of the week they would drink, curse and be filled with hate so unchristianlike he assumed most Christians were fakes hiding behind masks. He also told me this, “Not all Christians are like you mom, they don’t see what you see.” He went on to say that it was like if I went over to China I would not understand their language just as they wouldn’t understand my language or my faith. He did have a point. I tried to teach him a language he didn’t understand.

As I dug deeper into this agnostic vs. atheist it helped me to understand where my son was coming from in his beliefs, since we were obviously on different pages. I asked him if he believed in Jesus and he said yes because there is proof of His existence. 

This site answered it better than I ever could. 

Tim Staples wrote: “An agnostic is someone who believes human beings simply cannot know anything metaphysical or beyond the physical realm; therefore, they cannot know whether things like spirit, angels or God exist at all.”

Pss. 53:4 “Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread: they have not called upon God.”

There it is in a nutshell for ME. You see, I’ve always put God on the metaphysical level understanding the spirit so as not to be led into a belief of some man high in the clouds sitting on a golden throne judging the lower man of earth. To ME, Jesus was a man, God was the spirit in which He was created thus to me, Jesus IS the Son of God. 

I hit another point to ponder: Austin Cline wrote: “One major problem is that atheism and agnosticism both deal with questions about the existence of gods, but whereas atheism involves what a person does or does not believe, agnosticism involves what a person does or does not know. Belief and knowledge are related but nevertheless separate issues.”

An AHA moment for sure. Belief and knowledge are related but totally separate issues. I wonder if there is another blog topic in here that I will most likely do research on, belief and knowledge. To ME, my belief is my faith and my faith is built on MY knowledge. I can’t judge what others believe because it is a foreign language to me. Only they know what knowledge they have so who am I to judge whether a person is an agnostic or an atheist.

The so-called Christians who turned my son from God is another topic I’ll delve into because they certainly have their eyes on me so I will turn the camera on them. 

Job 36:4 “For truly my words shall not be false: he that is perfect in knowledge is with thee.”