Why I admire Christianity with my heart and soul and yet not become a Christian?

[Indian Iconoclast]

Hello Falvlun and others who no longer wish to be called Christians!

My salutes!

I too like you folks, have shed my religious identity that I had stuck on to for three fourths of my life out of ignorance an parochialism and the partisan intolerant traditions followed religiously by the family I was destined to be born in. Destined? Destiny? Fate? Well these are words that I have been speaking, talking and writing all my life without actually knowing the real meanings! No experience whatsoever has occurred so far to me, on getting the real feel of these words. Maybe folks in this forum who have better understanding and experience, shall share them with me.

It may seem confusing to you, but many a times from my schooldays and after, Christianity and its original Roman Catholic Apostolic faith has affected my heart and soul so deeply that I have had very strong urges, almost unstoppable cravings, to go to a church preferably a Roman Catholic church and ask the Padre or the priest for giving me baptism! The reason is that I was educated from childhood to High Schools in India, run by Jesuit fathers from America's Chicago and Maryland provinces. The zest of these Jesuit missionaries in imparting leadership and moral science is exemplary and perhaps unequaled anywhere in any other religious movement. I have respected the fact that these people did not ever try to criticize my own faith and proselytize or evangelize the Catholic Christianity to me or any other non Catholic or non Christian student. All they taught us in these schools is that we have to be pure in our hearts in thought word and deed and harbor no malice to anyone and to be faithful to our God and our country. I shall talk about some of these Jesuit Fathers later.

The effect from that high school education was that it opened my eyes and mind from the bounds of my traditional faith and led me to study and understand other faiths and tenets and their motto. And that meant a lot of reading. The three main books that have shaped my spirituality today were all written by Catholic Priests! They are:-
1). Imitation of Christ by Reverend Thomas A Kempis (English translation from original German published by St. Paul's Press worldwide)
2). Exercitia Spiritualia (Spiritual Exercises) By Saint Inigo Lopez De Loyola or Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus. (English translation by Saint Edmund Campion S.J. British Jesuit martyred in England at orders of Queen Elizabeth I. (Published and circulated by the Little Flowers Press Calcutta, India)
3). Susamaachaaram Muktirgatih Evam Avigyaanam Shri Khrishtacharitam (The Good News of Salvation from Lord Jesus Christ's life and ways) by Padre Roberto De Nobili S.J. (Sanskrit manuscript on dried coconut leaves preserved in The (Dar Ul Tarjumeh) Department of Translations, Osmania University, Hyderabad, India and translated by late Pandit Vishnu Mahadev Aurangabadkar and published in Marathi at Pune, Maharashtra, India. This is the first ever Sanskrit text bettering the Brahmans of those days and these days, by an extremely scholastic Italian Jesuit visiting and living till death in India.

Why did I not embrace the Catholic Apostolic faith? The answer is that Saint Ignatius Loyola, Father Thomas A Kempis, and Padre Roberto De Nobili has taught me from their writings to try to be a good human being first by heart and soul before flaunting to the world the fact that I am a Christian, to be which it is imperial to make myself worthy of being called a human being created in God's own form. Also I do not want myself to be branded by religious identities any more than the cattle getting brands on their hides, as belonging to any particular faith or following! If Jesus Christ of Nazareth, King of the Jews, Son of Mary, and the only begotten Son of God, is an Avatar of the unseen God in whom I still believe, then he is my master too whether I be a Catholic Christian or not as long I remain true to myself and to him!

Bye!

 

[Luke Morningstar]

...to try to be a good human being first by heart and soul before flaunting to the world the fact that I am a Christian, to be which it is imperial to make myself worthy of being called a human being created in God's own form. Also I do not want myself to be branded by religious identities any more than the cattle getting brands on their hides, as belonging to any particular faith or following!

I like your style.

 

[Indian Iconoclast]

I like your style.

Thanks a lot!

 

[Sha'irullah]

I am very much like this. I am capable of admiring many religions even if I am strongly opposed to them.

Christianity and Islam are my primary oppositions on a theological and social level. But I strongly love both and enjoy diving into their inner esoteric levels of mysticism.

 

[Indian Iconoclast]

I am very much like this. I am capable of admiring many religions even if I am strongly opposed to them.

Christianity and Islam are my primary oppositions on a theological and social level. But I strongly love both and enjoy diving into their inner esoteric levels of mysticism.

Good for you my brother Sterling Archer!

Admire not religions, but the message of humanity and love and charity that they convey even if you see their practitioners actually living up to them. Also do some homework and background research on any of these religions that you primarily oppose, with an unbiased mind and a non malicious heart.

I have spent years of studies and now find the very subject of religions only useful to the extent of its historical value. I want to called a spiritual man today more than a religious one. And please do not confuse this matter of spiritual studies with what is talked about in the subject of Chemistry! I am not talking of methyl, ethyl, denatured alcohol or its derivatives or other liquids containing them like whiskey, rum, gin etc., etc., at all! Capisce? :yes:

 

[Sha'irullah]

Good for you my brother Sterling Archer!

Admire not religions, but the message of humanity and love and charity that they convey even if you see their practitioners actually living up to them. Also do some homework and background research on any of these religions that you primarily oppose, with an unbiased mind and a non malicious heart.

Many seem to think I am overly critical of religions and that I harbor a hatred for them . I have a hatred for the awful things done in religion but I study and learn as much as I can about them from a very unbiased and neutral standpoint of Deism.

I have spent years of studies and now find the very subject of religions only useful to the extent of its historical value. I want to called a spiritual man today more than a religious one. And please do not confuse this matter of spiritual studies with what is talked about in the subject of Chemistry! I am not talking of methyl, ethyl, denatured alcohol or its derivatives or other liquids containing them like whiskey, rum, gin etc., etc., at all! Capisce? :yes:

I do not study religions for their historical value but instead for their philosophical advancements. No religions however unbeneficial it may seem still holds some scrap of salvageable information.

I still study Sufi magic and inner wisdom, Bramhoism and Advaita thought

 

[Indian Iconoclast]

I still study Sufi magic and inner wisdom, Bramhoism and Advaita thought

Bramhoism???? What was that again? Did you mean the tenets of the Calcuttan BRAHMO SAMAAJ founded by the 19th Century Bengali theologians like Keshav Chandra Sen, Devendra Nath Thakur and Raja Ram Mohan Roy and others?

Also what is Sufi Magic my dear Archer? Are or were there Sufi magicians too on this earth? I thought the word originated from the Arabic Soof meaning wool and gaining fame from the heavily wool blanketed mystics and faqeers begging alms at the Muslim saints graves in cities like Baghdad in the days of the Abbasid Caliphs. I am yet to hear or see a Sufi magician or his show!:thud:

 

[Sha'irullah]

Bramhoism???? What was that again? Did you mean the tenets of the Calcuttan BRAHMO SAMAAJ founded by the 19th Century Bengali theologians like Keshav Chandra Sen, Devendra Nath Thakur and Raja Ram Mohan Roy and others?

Yep yep. I have been heavily inspired by them for their Deistic standards. Us Deists assert that only rationality is good enough to come to an understanding of god and Brahmo Samaj have done this while staying within the Hindu standpoint.

Also what is Sufi Magic my dear Archer? Are or were there Sufi magicians too on this earth? I thought the word originated from the Arabic Soof meaning wool and gaining fame from the heavily wool blanketed mystics and faqeers begging alms at the Muslim saints graves in cities like Baghdad in the days of the Abbasid Caliphs. I am yet to hear or see a Sufi magician or his show!:thud:

Magic in accordance to sophisticated thought along the Sufi standpoint has nothing to do with sorcery as we understand it.

Magic is mystical attainment of wisdom and insight. Something in which I embark upon often. The Fakirs in India are not the magicians I refer to.

The usage of ruhaniyyah is different from black magic or the colloquial result of magic. I as a Deist assert that my lord is far to great to change the principles of the physics he laid out for this world. What has been done has been done in accordance to his will and being a perfect being his will is absolute and flawless, no need for intervention necessary or it would deny its own greatness.
True magic or attainment of wisdom or Marifa(knowledge) is capable though.