PureX
Veteran Member
That may very well be. But you are clearly quite intelligent, and so just imagine the freedom you will feel when you can recognize that, and finally let go of that ingrained need/fear to be 'right'. To "believe" without any doubt. (Sometimes that takes a little bit of practice, though.)I think growing up in a cult really messed up my thinking patterns, hence the black and white, truth and lie views, and my perspective that reality is cold.
I was raised Catholic, but had an "experience" of God when I was very young, and so the religiosity of Catholicism never really found a home in me. The God I experienced was not a religious God. It was just intense, unqualified, overwhelming love. So the scary Bible stories were just stories to me. I didn't associate them with God in any real sense. That experience of God (or whatever it was) seemed to have immunized me to religion.
Later in life I discovered Taoism (the philosophy, not the religion) and it was like breathing cool fresh air for the fist time. As Taoist philosophy is based on the human condition of our NOT knowing. And on our not trying to 'know'. But instead on humbly aligning ourselves with the ebb and flow of existence. This can include deism of whatever sort if we feel so inclined, but Taoism neither promotes it nor negates it. Taoism just accepts it as part of the "way of man". (Tao means "way".)
Yes, and I assume that came with a lot of threats and punishments, creating a lot of fear if you "get it wrong". But the truth of life is that we humans get things wrong all the time. How could it be otherwise when there is so much we don't know? And so what we need is not fear, or pretend certainty, but 'slack', and forgiveness. For ourselves and for everyone. Or at least it seems that way to me.There was one way that was truth, and everything else was false and evil. The cult said: Do x and you have hope and safety.
The 'world' is a whole lot of stuff. Good, bad, and everything in between. If I were looking for God, I would look for God 'in the world', mostly because that's where I would need God the most. And If I were looking for God, I'd only look for a loving, forgiving, kind God. Because why would I want to find God at all if God weren't that way?The cult said 'the world is meaningless'. Their favorite scripture was:
15Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. 17And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
So I've grown up feeling that way, but after discovering the lies I abandoned all religion in search of certainty, but now that 'world' is all I have.
So I would look for God in my fellow humans. Because THEY are loving, forgiving, kind, generous, honest, and helpful ... at least some of them are, some of the time. And so when I see this in them, I wonder to myself; "am I seeing God right now?" And the answer is I don't know, but it IS possible, and I can choose to hope in that. And to trust in that hope. And try to live by it.
No religion, no belief, just a little faith in a God of my own understanding.
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