What I recommend is getting there not through the intellect but through practice. Go to church (synagogue, mosque, temple, etc) and simply do what everybody else does. Start showing up every week and following other people’s lead. It’s going to feel weird and awkward but stick with it. It’s all in the practice, ritual, and community. Religion is not about solitary striving. It allows you to be part of something that’s bigger than yourself. It gives you a respite from having to choose and decide everything for yourself. Many, many generations of people worked hard to give you the gift of a consolidated ritual where all you need to do is show up.
Religion doesn’t have a ticket to entry. You don’t need to have it all settled in your mind before starting the practice. Instead, you can simply fold yourself into the ritual that’s all there for you and enjoy the sheer restfulness of it.
As for reading, even the tiniest of parishes have a Bible study, a reading group, a prayer group. This is best done in the spirit of togetherness.
When I first started going to church, I was the mother of a small child and overwhelmed by responsibility at home and at work. I found Orthodox service to be extremely long and confusing. I knew nothing about the dogma. But the relief of being in a place where I didn’t need to decide anything because it had all been decided for me a thousand years ago was magnetic. It doesn’t matter why you go. It matters that you go.
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Or…..just don’t believe? There are plenty of ways to connect to the beauty and majesty of our world and of the human experience without religion. Get out in nature, take a beautiful walk at sunset, go to an art museum and look at something beautiful, read a poem, go to a symphony. You can even sit in a beautiful cathedral…look at the stained glass, smell the incense. Generally, forcing belief on yourself will just make you feel unhappy and bereft. Engage in moments of meaning and you will be uplifted. Your spirit can soar without religion.
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Sunsets and art museums are great but they don’t answer the big questions about life and death.
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You can’t force belief on yourself.
But there are a lot of things that aren’t accessible to the intellect: the only way to grasp them is by *doing*. And the doing is worth it.
-ethyl
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That’s exactly it. Start showing up in church, and let the magic work on you. That’s the only way.
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Yeah, if you have to understand, grasp, believe, etc. *before* doing anything… you’ll never get there. It’s a closed door.
But, you know, ask, seek, knock. That promise is legit.
-ethyl
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“It’s all in the practice, ritual, and community”
This reminds me of a story about a Nepalese (IIRC) openly Hindu sociologist doing research in a small town in the Netherlands. He regularly attended local churches and people often invited him to their homes for coffee and cake after the service.
Then (like good western protestants) they would ask what his religious beliefs were, which he found to be an exotic and unanswerable question….
(paraphrasing)”People in the west always talk about belief and we don’t. Of course, you should believe but the important part is taking part in the ceremonies.”
Years and years ago I’d noticed Polish people didn’t really talk about Catholicism in terms of belief very much. It was about attending mass and making sure you did the big life events (baptism, confirmation, marriage, funeral) in accordance with the church. When life turned out otherwise and they couldn’t/didn’t want to follow some part of church doctrine (like getting divorced or using birth control or pre-marital sex) they still wanted to take part in what they could (or simply put that in one box that they didn’t examine in church).
As a non-believing cultural protestant substituting practice for belief doesn’t really work. It might if I spent a really long time at it but… that’s not on my bucket list. I like going to mass occasionally (I stand when others do, sit when they sit or kneel) but otherwise just observe. I would probably occasionally go to the local cerkiew if it were more convenient. I did once years and years ago and it was interesting (not prepared for every single person to line up and take communion but absenting myself would have been more obvious). During mass here usually only a quarter to third at most take communion.
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The original question was about wanting to believe, just not being able to.
If you don’t want it, that’s fine.
If you do want it, it’s not a thing you can just talk yourself into. But you can go a very long way by showing up, doing the things. When you’re trying to overcome an intellectual hangup, sometimes the answer is to detour around the intellect.
-ethyl
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The first question I feel that should be asked is this. What would you require to believe that God is real. Not who he is, not your salvation, no just a baseline, what would you need as proof that God exists.
Its all well and good to ask if someone believes in God, but what is enough proof for them might not be for you. For instance there have been scientists who were as atheistic as they came who would tell you till they were blue in the face that God didn’t exist. Then as years passed and they studied human DNA, or chemistry, or life science, etc. They would find things that could only be explained by an act of God, and they came to believe. These scientists later found salvation, but they understood God was real first.
Others who didn’t believe have called out to the Lord in times of desperation. “Lord if you are real, if you exist, please help me.” Sometimes he answers and they came to belief, and later salvation.
Others are stiff-necked and hardheaded and will quite literally have to see the saved vanish, and the Great Tribulation before they come to belief and salvation.
Others of a more historical bent, come to belief, first in the Word of God, and later in God himself, as archeology proves the Bible true, time and time again.
There are a million and one ways to understand that there is a God, there is only one way to be saved.
So the first question that needs to be asked. What proof do you require before acknowledging that God is real? What is the line that must be crossed before you can accept that there is a Creator, a designer, a God watching out for us. What proof do you need. Once you know that, then you can ask. Pray for revelation, and ask those who are saved to pray on your behalf as well.
Once you come to a point where you understand that there is a God, then you need to come to salvation.
1st Corinthians 15:1-4 “Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.”
There is but one way to God and that is through Jesus. We every single one of us was born with a sin nature, every single one of us has sinned, and thus cannot enter heaven. Jesus was sent, the Son of God, he lived a perfect sinless life, the only one to have ever done so or to ever do so. He went willingly to his death upon that cross. He willingly took our sins upon himself. He offered his sacrifice freely, that any would would believe who accepted would find salvation.
We are given free will, God does not want anyone to come to him unwillingly. He is not a demanding God. Matthew 11:28-30 “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meak and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
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The very first talk I attended at Yale (obligatory for incoming students) was by an astronomer who shared precisely this kind of journey. She herself was kind of stunned by it. I didn’t retain the details of her scientific explanation but, in short, she said that at the very core of the universes she observes something that goes in the exact opposite direction than what should happen scientifically and she has no explanation for it other than the will of God. It was 2003. A different Yale, for sure.
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