Out of body religious experiences

[TomOfSweden]

My faith is intensly personal, mostly because I was not looking for it. One of the reasons I like to point to C. S. Lewis is that his journey to faith was similar to mine. He described God as "The Hound of Heaven," and said that God loved Him enough to drag him "Kicking and screaming through the gates of heaven."

His journey and mine were similar because I had given up finding God, even though I had decided that Christianity was the faith that made the most sense, I was unable to make the leap of faith to believe. Then my life hit a low point, and I tried bargaining with God. Surprisingly enough, that did not work. I say surprisingly because there are a lot of testimonies about how God helps people out of jams like an indulgent father.

My life went from bad to worse, yet I struggled on. Then one day, God reached down and got my attention. He basically told me that He does not make deals to get people to follow Him, they either do it in the midst of trouble, or they do not. That is their choice, and mine. He drug me into His house, made me believe, than let me choose. Very personal thing, but not the sort of testimony that inspires others to believe, yet I do.

You seem reluctant to share with us your “intensely personal” reasons that permitted you to make a rational leap of faith, so I won’t push it. I’ve so far never seen or heard an explanation for belief in God that is in any way supported by anything rational. I always get this “secret club” vibe, where the key isn’t to understand anything, because there’s nothing to understand, only to convince oneself that one does, without testing it as much as you really would need to. Somebody saying that “you’ll understand it when it happens to you”, doesn’t fly with me. In this case, it to me implies that there’s nothing there.

We are, the language is different is all. I am not defending Christianity as much as I am promoting the existence of God. Most of the accepted tenets of Christianity are not supported in the Bible.

My interpretation of God is based on my understanding of the Bible, and of nature itself. I find myself in conflict with a lot of people who want to paint God in a different light than I see Him. I try not to accept something just because everyone lese does. This makes me quite a few enemies along the way.

Sorry, I don’t think I was clear enough. I was wondering about the link between God and the Bible. What phenomena or religious experiences have caused you to give any validity to the Bible? People have all through out history had religious experiences and only in recent times in geographically limited areas have they drawn the conclusion that it must be the being described in the Bible. This I would have thought would make it a lot more difficult to accept that any supernatural phenomena be linked to the Bible. It would need a very strong connection. So where is this connection? When God appears, does it refer to passages or something? What makes you so sure that your experiences can be linked to a specific book? Couldn’t the God be another religions God? Or as in the case of Buddhism, can’t the God be you?

You also tend to lump me in with what you think of as Christians, at least you used to as I know you do not think of me that way now.

Our discussions have taught me a lot about Christians and Christian perceptions of the world. But it has admittedly caused me to understand Christians less, because I still don’t see how somebody as enlightened as you manage to draw the conclusions you do. I still have a fair bit to go I think.