Why is it so hard for me to believe?

Question

I am a Christian, but I'm not overly religiuos. However, I don't believe in God 100%. It's so hard going through school and listening to all the scientific ways in which humans, and the Earth came about, and then reading the Bible and it saying how God made us. It doesn't make sense. I would think that a person dies and they are just a material thing and they just stay in the Earth. But when I go through hard times, I refer to God for help. So I don't know what to think anymore, and I don't know what I believe. I will always remain an Orthodox Christian though.

Answer 1

Visit http://www.orthodoxytoday.org

Always remember that many martyrs died because they believed in Jesus while the Roman Emperor believed that he was Zeus. Other than a few misguided pagans - we no longer worship Zeus nor do our leaders claim that they are Zeus.

Ignore the other posters - they are all Protestants and pray for their souls. Do not judge me by my screen name of Borat - I'm merely going through a phase.

Answer 2

Excuse me, but I'm not sure what an '' orthodox christian '' is. I am a Christian and a Bible reader and Believer. No, I do not believe everything in my Bible can be taken literally. I think that some is just trying to make a point, etc. I really am not sure. But there are parts that I believe with all of my heart. Jesus is a big one. I believe that he was sent to earth to die on the cross for the forgivness of our sins so that we may go to heaven.... for eternity. I wish that I had my bible handy. I am not sure of the exact wording, but I do know basic idea. Jesus said '' If you are hot, great. If you are cold, thats fine. But if you are LUKEWARM, I will spew you out of my mouth''. or something like that. Basically, he was saying that if you believe, thats great and if you don't believe, he will accept that too. But if you '' kinda '' believe, or just believe when you feel the need, then he will totally reject you. If you are in, then you are in 100%. It is said somewhere in the Bible that'' to reject Jesus is to reject God.''

I guess that I am asking you to explain more. What do you mean when you say that you don't believe God 100% ? When you are going thru the hard times and you refer to God for help, do you receive the help ?

I have a lot to say but I think it might take up too much room. I would love try to answer any questions you have. I will be ready the next time. If you ever want to drop me a line, I would gladly try to answer better. I will try my best to tell you how to believe.

As for the scientific ways that humans came about, I don't pretend to know all of the answers, but I also think that there is a lot of filling in the blanks. We, as humans, want and need to know '' why''. It is our nature. I think that a lot of theories are there because it's simply the best guess. Let me ask this. Can you comprehend forever ? No begining no end ? How about space ? It goes on forever, no end ? I don't think that our minds are capable of understanding it all.

Answer 3

The Holy Bible Douay-Rheims Version

With Challoner Revisions 1749-52
1899 Edition of the John Murphy Company

IMPRIMATUR:
James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, September 1, 1899.

Pope Damasus assembled the first list of books of the Bible at the Roman Council in 382 A.D. He commissioned St. Jerome to translate the original Greek and Hebrew texts into Latin, which became known as the Latin Vulgate Bible and was declared by the Church to be the only authentic and official version, in 1546.

The DR New Testament was first published by the English College at Rheims in 1582 A.D. The DR Old Testament was first published by the English College at Douay in 1609 A.D. The first King James Version was not published until 1611. This online DRV contains all 73 books, including the seven Deutero-Canonical books (erroneously called Apocrypha by Protestants). These seven books were included in the 1611 KJV, but not in later KJV Bibles.

The whole Douay-Rheims Bible was revised and diligently compared with the Latin Vulgate by Bishop Richard Challoner in 1749-1752 A.D. The notes included in the text were written by Dr. Challoner.

The DR Bible was photographically reproduced from the 1899 edition of the John Murphy Company, Baltimore, Maryland, by Tan Books in 1971. Eventually, this edition was optically scanned to produce a large text file which this publisher used for creating this website, with the aid of text-processing software.

One important goal of this project was to preserve the original text "as is", without making any changes in the wording, because the original text had the Imprimatur of James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, dated Sept 1st 1899.

The text file was checked quite thoroughly by software written by the publisher for punctuation errors and verses out of order. The index was humanly checked for misspelled words and the corrections were made to the text. However, some spelling errors may still be present in the text. Many verses were out of order in the original file. These have been corrected.

Every effort was made to ensure that this online version is an exact match to the original printed version. No words were added or ommitted from the text, except for correcting errors caused by the scanning process. No words were rearranged. No verse numbers were changed, except in the case of Psalm 9.

Psalm 9 originally contained 21 verses and there were 2 versions of Psalm 10, numbering 1-18 and 1-8. This obviously caused a conflict, so it was decided to make the first Psalm 10 as the last part of Psalm 9 and renumber the verses 22-39. This retains the same numbering as all the Douay Rheims. Note, in the Protestant Bibles the numbering of Psalms 10 through 146 differs by one.

Answer 4

See Jane1 this is where I don't agree with you, common sense is not Satan taking over, it's common sense (I know you were being sarcastic).
I have to agree with Xo, and I don't think it is so far fetched that hard core religious folks can't grasp it. We do have more knowledge now than eons ago and thinking has to evolve with it, perhaps so to with religion.
But can't we have both? I don't see why not. I think we can make intelligent decisions and still carry our faith. It may be a bit skewed acording to some but isn't religion boiled down to worshipping one God, and basically doing unto others..
I don't think that by accepting scientific facts that we are worshipping a science god.
Maybe that's a bit confusing but whose to say we got it all straight from the get go in the first place.

Answer 5

It is a sign that your rational mind is still there. Those of us who are free thinkers would call this common sense, the fundies will say "it is the voice of satan trying to confuse you"

Keep thinking about it. The bible makes no sense at all. It is full of contradictions, inconsistencies and just plain illogical, non-factual statements. Do read your bible, but read it on your own, not just cherry pick verses that your pastor chooses for you. Read the whole thing from beginning to end. The more you read your bible with a truly opened mind, the more it will become obvious it is fairy tales and myth.

Answer 6

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).

http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/JP2FIDES.HTM#Ch2b

Answer 7

It's no use trying to trick yourself into something. Take some time to sit down and figure out exactly what makes you believe in God and what gives you trouble. You're the only one who can decide which way to go with this.

Answer 8

Of all the scientific theories you have learned ... didn't each one have to start or begin with something that was already there? The smallest atom, gases in the darkness of the universe, just any substance at all? Well, how did that get there? If something exists, it had to be created at some point, therefore, regardless of how far you trace it back and how little of substance it began with, it still had a beginning. Someone had to have put it there. An Intelligent Designer = God!

Answer 9

Take a look at the web sites listed below.
Also try doing some web searches with different key words that you find there for more info (like "human dinosaur footprints).

Answer 10

To make it easier for to believe just look inside u and see how great who created this human being could it created by chance??