Losing my faith

General General Discussion
1

This is going to sound like an “Oh woe is me” thread but I really need to get this off my chest.

I am not a “practicing” Christian in that I go to church every Wednesday night and twice on Sunday, but I have always had a strong belief in God and have lived my life by Christian tenets as long as I can remember but here recently, I am really beginning to doubt.

I never smoked, took drugs or even drank any alcohol until I was 22 years old. I didn’t cuss, I was very respectful to my elders. I did good in school. I always treated everyone the way I would want them to treat me. I got pleasure out of serving others, even to the point of being taken advantage of. I was a Boy Scout through and through.

My parents were good Christian parents who took care of me and my brother and their family/community. I could never have asked for better more Biblical parents.

Where do I begin…

-I met a beautiful Christian girl and both of us were virgins when we got married, we can’t have kids even after multiple attempts at reproductive therapy.
-Not long after I got married and moved out my father retired and promptly was diagnosed with colon cancer and passed away 2 years later, this occured 10 years ago.

I could deal with all of this and I have been.

Then in November of last year my Mom came down with pneumonia after pressure washing her house. She couldn’t seem to shake it. Then 3 months later (this Feb) she was admitted to the hospital and was diagnosed with Stage IV Non Small Cell Lung cancer. Never smoked a cigarette in her life and neither did my father. They did testing and she was EGFR Positive with Exon 19 deletion. That meant that she could take targeted therapy that should not be as harsh as standard chemo and she had a prognosis of at least 2.5 years possibly up to 5 years depending on response to the Tarceva and 2nd line treatment due to her never smoking. So that was a blessing, right?

Well, nothing worked, it all made her worse. She passed May 2nd.

I prayed and I pray and I begged and begged God to keep my Momma.

Not only did it not work, it seemed the more I prayed the worse she got. Everytime it was worse. First it was just pneumonia, then just blood clots, then just Stage I cancer (curable), then maybe just Stage II, then probably Stage IIIB, then definitely Stage IV with multiple mets throughout the body. Then treatable. Then treatment gave her esophagitis. Then the feeding tube would work. Then she was gone. All of this since November 17th of last year with diagnosis of cancer on Feb 14th.

If there is a God…

Why?

Why take both my parents? Neither families have any history whatsoever of cancer. Family members that are much older that are drinking the same water, breathing the same air and eating the same foods are in their 70’s and 80’s. Many of them long time smokers. They were good people who took care of their families and even others. The joke in my family was that my Mom ran a free taxi/sitting service. When people would get sick, she would go and care for them and take them to doctors appointments or babysit their kids. Both family and non family.

By the way. None of those self same people (and there are DOZENS of them) offered to stay with/care for my Mom or drive her to appointments after her diagnosis. Only one, and she charged $8/hr to do it while my Mom always did it for free for her and others. Even when asked.

At the same time, I have an acquaintance here at work that has a father who is a homeless bum in Florida that has taken drugs and smoked his whole life who has never taken care of his kids and only contacts them when he wants money to buy drugs or to brag about who he has stolen from who also has lung cancer and refuses to treat it and has been living for at least 2 years since diagnosis.

I have family members who do nothing but live off of “disability” and take drugs, lay around watching daytime TV and hunt and fish every day, who also have 3 kids but can’t be bothered to come to the funeral. Even though my Mom, who is only related to them by marriage, took them on multiple occasions to get set up for disability or doctor’s appointments and other such things even though they are in walking distance from the church she was buried in.

Why are my Mom and Dad gone and people like these and all the other scum bags that I know still alive (and probably will be for years more)?

It has been all I could do to keep from responding to “It is better this way” with, “No, it would be better if it were you in the casket and my Mom was here, leave me the **** alone.”

I can deal with the grief.

It is the hole that I have now where I used to know that there was a God and everything was going according to his plan that I am having trouble with.

2

I’m not a very religious person so I can’t really relate on the feelings of your faith letting you down, but I will leave you with a piece of advice. You can’t beat yourself up over thing that you have no control over. I do this all the time so I know how it feels and I also know that the end result is never something that can be changed. The bottom line is that there are some things in life that you can’t choose the outcome of. It only prolongs the grieving process to ask yourself why.

3

I lost many family members to the Holocaust. Several relatives lived but were disfigured. Whole villages and families were wiped off the face of the earth. The struggle you are going through has been shared by many.

My answer is one that applies to me/us; maybe to you. I have no illusions that what works for me in regards to religion will work for anyone else nor will my path to my decisions be one that everyone takes. I am hoping that I can simply help in some way.

Very, very few Jews lost faith due to the Holocaust. We simply cannot understand the “mind” of Hashem. My faith means I trust The Lord to do what is best for me even if I cannot comprehend the path I am being led on. It is much more complicated than that, but those are my personal Cliff Notes.

Also, I speak of this attitude when just in the past several weeks I have had some heart issues. Ironically I am in great physical shape. So right now I am living day to day knowing I may drop dead at any time and leave 2 small children and a wife I love with all my heart fatherless and husbandless. My faith has never been stronger even though it’s hard to get through the day without crying when thinking about leaving my family alone.

4

This is why I am an atheist. I have many religious friends who will say that this is a test by got to see the depth of your faith an so on. To be it’s simple; if there is a god, and this is how he/she/it tests you, by taking your loved ones from you, by killing innocent children with horrible diseases, by allowing despots to commit mass genocide, etc, then why would I want to believe? Why would I spend any time paying homage to such a deity?

5

Sorry for the loss of your parents, Crow Hunter. I have lost both mine as well, but they lived well into their 80s, but both suffered long term illnesses such as Parkinsons and repeated congestive heart failure.

God does not promise us a rosy life if we believe and follow his Son. If you read the lives of the great saints most of them had continual hardship and often persecution from their own superiors or fellow religious. Very many Saints died at a very early age (12-33). What God does promise is salvation, eternal life in His presence. Christ himself suffered greatly, he the most innocent and blameless, at the hands of his fellow man and died according to God’s plan in a brutal manner in order to save mankind. If we want to be true friends of Christ should we not also expect to suffer as he did (in a variety of ways)?

As Saint Teresa of Avila once quipped in prayer during her intense sufferings, “Dear Jesus, if this is how you treat your friends no wonder you have so few!”

So do not discount that your faithful parents did not reap great eternal reward from their suffering and early death. It was very hard for us to watch my Dad slowly lose physical abilities and even speech with Parkinsons. He had been a very robust strong man all through his life and for several years he was bed-ridden, unable to move or speak and we changed his diaper, fed him and did what we could. As much as all that pained me to see I also knew his patient suffering would be a beautiful sacrifice and that he is surely enjoying heaven.

During our comparatively brief time on earth some will enjoy ease and others suffering. I don’t know if any can make sense of why it is one way or another for different people. But our faith is tested and can be strengthened or last in times of trial. While I would like to see my family and friends enjoy a long life of comfort that is probably the worst thing for building faith. What I do pray for them is consolation and salvation of their souls. I don’t wish for suffering, but recognize it as an opportunity to pray harder for strength, patience and understanding, and an opportunity to better understand the suffering and love of Christ.

I think it is a great dis-service that some Christians seem to think if they pray well they will get rich, have a steady job, be “lucky.” No, pray for salvation, that we not falter in our faith and at the end whether soon or late we can say as St. Paul did, “I have run the race well.”

I will pray for you Crow Hunter, that your soul does find consolation in this time of grief and confusion. God never leaves us, it is up to us whether we leave God or stay faithful regardless of earthly trials. That is how we are judged at our end. God bless you.

6

Mentioning Job would be a little cliché, so I won’t, plus providing a myriad of examples of others who have experienced a greater loss in numbers or frequency doesn’t display empathy.

I am sorry for your loss, I cannot imagine the toll. I’m more sorry for where your at and will pray for you. Nothing is more important than clinching to your faith. Your parents were believers, they were taken to Heaven. What a glory to know where they went for all eternity and you have the ability to see them again. Those others, the less fortunate, lost, “takers”, there time and outcome is not for us to determine. As much as we would appreciate a judgement or at least payment; we are all measured equally. The ultimate loss being separation from Him which nobody deserves. That has been a tough pill for me to swallow. Consider 2 Cor. 4:8: “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair.”

Life is hard, harder for some. But this life and it’s trials are a sneeze in time when eternity is considered. Take hold of your faith now more than ever because the enemy will exploit the emotion to the nth degree.

God is good always brother, and “it is well…”

http://m.voices.yahoo.com/horatio-g-spafford-story-behind-hymn-is-1620793.html

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7

Alex- We’ve both been on the site for a while and hopefully have noticed I do not participate in religious discussions. I am going to bow out after this comment unless asked a question. Not here to promote/denigrate any religion.

I don’t know if it is a test or not. Being quite familiar with the Torah it could also be a punishment for my sins or sins of family that has come before me.

Can I answer why Hashem lets the horrible things happen? No.

A lot of issues stem from the fact He gave us Free Will. This is obviously an extremely complex topic and deciding why The Lord does what he does isn’t going to happen on M4C.
In Judaism there are troves of commentaries over the centuries on suffering and hardship. Free Will has been hotly debated as well.

All I am trying to do is help in any way I can. I am not here to argue with anyone. I fully understand some may call religion horseshit.

8

PM Sent…

9

How would YOU do things, if you were God?

Give everyone infinite life on earth with no sickness, no injury, no sadness? Never any pain or discomfort?

Then might you be highly popular with your creatures, because everything is just so fine and dandy all the time?

10

Nobody lives forever. Your parents’ time was coming sooner or later, just like we’ll all experience death ourselves. Cancer is a nasty disease. Its the number 1 cause of death in my family (as many others). It seems like death is the number one cause to have people questioning their faith. I’ve know 2 people who have been in the same boat as you. One went back to Christianity and believing in God, the other didn’t. Supposedly scientists are on the verge of curing cancer. You lost your parents to it, so pray they find a cure. It could be you, or someone even closer to you next. I pray you find your faith, and your suffering is overcome with peace.

I think NWPilgrim says it best.

11

Prayers sent, crow hunter, for you and your faith.

12

God created this world to be good, but humanity’s rejection of him makes everything go awry, evil in all forms has run amok, and there’s absolute chaos. Sadly, this means that often there’s no correlation between doing good and having good results, and it also means that being evil doesn’t necessarily lead to destruction…at least in this age.

We live in a culture that preaches prosperity theology, and makes the assumption that anything good or bad that happens to you is due to your own good or evil. We also have the false notion that harder you find it to trust God, the harder He’s going to make it to trust him, and that if your prayers are not answered, it means you didn’t have enough faith. One the hardest things Christians have to do, and one of the main reasons why so many leave the faith, is trying to reconcile God’s sovereignty with free will, and the tragedy and pain that comes in a fallen world. It’s a mantra that you hear in church every time something bad happens: “God has a reason for this. It’s all part of His plan.” It’s sad really, because this a major misinterpretation of sovereignty, and it’s also assuming in a world consumed by evil, that things are still fair.

I’ve stopped trying to find what kind of “plan” God has for everything, good and bad, that happens. I’ve stopped trying to ask why He did, or allowed, something. I no longer try to assume that if something I prayed for happens the way I wanted that it was God creating a situation that otherwise would not have been possible to happen on its own, nor do I assume that if I don’t get what I prayed for that God is telling me an absolute “NO!” This is not to say that I don’t think that God intervenes in the world, I do, but I find that you will drive yourself nuts trying to pinpoint what was an answered prayer, what was a refused prayer, and trying to find the pattern in what is allegedly the master plan for the fate of the cosmos.

I think the best way I’ve kept my faith is through intellectual study that has led me to the conclusion that the Bible is true and thus, God exists. I’ve also come to the conclusion that God is not always going to give us justice or cure all our ills in this life and age, but that in the age to come, all will be reconciled.

13

I tell people this everyday, and believe it. “You are not defined by what happens to you, you are defined by how you react to what happens to you”.

Every single person on this planet will have really shitty shit happen to them everyday. It is a fact of life. It has nothing to do with religion.

14

These kinds of tragic situations are one major reason why Man created god.

15

…or blame God?

16

I hope you somehow find peace and solace in your Mother’s passing.

Just a thought… Why not try talking to your Priest, even if just to listen? Talking about things, and getting them off your chest, will most definitely help.

17

To explain the unexplainable. To provide solace when random chance kicks you in the ass. It somehow helps to believe that it’s all part of some grand plan.

18

I don’t know what to tell you. I do know that people who have “belief systems” have an extra option when it comes to dealing with all the stuff life sometimes sticks to you. But you have to actual believe, not profess to believe or it won’t bring you any peace of mind.

For me personally, believing in a plan that I can’t understand never brought me a lot of comfort, but I know some people who are are able to cope simply because they do believe that.

All I know is my short list of “good people” keeps getting shorter, just lost another one yesterday, and it seems shitbirds get to live forever. If that is all some kind of plan, I’ll never figure it out.

19

If you believe this, I would be interested to hear how you believe the notion of a savior first began and under what circumstances.

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20

I actually don’t have a priest/preacher. Other than my cousin’s husband.

I have a personal problem with priests/preachers. It is 100% in me, but I can’t look past the human sinner element of a preacher when speaking to them. Whether it is true or not, I always get the feeling when speaking with them, that they are lying to me and speaking to me through a veil of Godliness that covers a heart much more wicked than my own. That makes me uncomfortable because I know my disgust is showing through.

One of the reasons that I don’t go to church now.

Honestly, I get better “vibes” from priests not of my own faith. Specifically Buddhist priests. But Stupas are very rare in my part of the South.