"Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it will be opened unto you."
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Were you aware of what is known as "the dark night of the soul"? Even the most holy of RCC saints endured it. I've gone through a couple, and I believe them to be the most dark, lonely, and desperate periods of my life. I didn't understand why God left me. I was angry. I was afraid. I didn't know what I could do to put an end to it. It was finally a complete surrender to something that brought it to an end with such a spiritual epiphany that I immediately knew what it was what God had wanted with me.
He has rewarded me for my surrender, faith, and endurance with riches that I can hardly believe.
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"Accept like a child." We all know how children can believe. With innocence. With love. Children are a natural for God and Heaven. It's when they grow and learn doubt that they fall.
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As long as you don't intentionally exclude yourself from God, He will forgive you.
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Don't loose faith. Good luck, my friend.
I find this somewhat troubling in that, as I mentioned, I did seek. I did knock. I found nothing and no one answered the door. This wasn't for a few weeks, it was close to half a decade. As a child, I might add. God would subject a child to a "dark night of the soul"
before giving
any reason for faith beyond the written word? If children are naturals for faith, where was mine? I wasn't questioning. I accepted what my parents told me. God existed. I just never felt its presence, ever. When I was old enough to articulate that lack of feeling, that was when I started to have questions.
So it wasn't that I moved away from God. It was that I felt there was nothing to move away from. There was just me, trying to move closer to something I couldn't sense at all and never had.
I feel I should mention that my childhood was free of hardships from outside myself. There was no, "How can God let these terrible things happen to me?" experience at all. There was simply no feeling of "God" in my life, despite reading Bible stories and being baptized and praying before bed every night. It was just never there, not once that I can remember. And it does seem like the sort of thing a person would remember if s/he'd ever had it, based on descriptions.
That's why I find those types of quotes so frustrating. As I child, I sought as a child, I strove to believe, I begged for help, I tried to have faith in something that had never felt real. You say you've had payoffs for your faith after "dark nights" in the past. It never came for me, and at the time I gave up trying, I'd been actively begging for one-third of my life. Maybe God would disagree, but I think I was pretty patient, especially for an adolescent child.
So I don't feel like I'm excluding myself from God even in my disbelief. I came to the conclusion that, since it was promised that a knock would be answered and no one came when I tried really hard, there must be no one home to answer the door (or else he doesn't want to see me, which seems unlikely in the conceit* I'm spinning here). If no one is home, there's no point in continuing to knock, so I might as well get on with my life. If, when I leave my home, it turns out I'm moving to that house after all, I'll explain that I came by every day for a long time and there was no one around, so I had to continue with grocery shopping and work and everything else he told me was good to do; if the guy who lives there is worth staying with, he'll let me in because he's seen me be a good person for my whole life (except that time in middle school when I was cruel, but I've felt really sorry about it ever since) and that I tried in good faith, for lack of a better term, to get in touch with him.
And if he sends me to the crackhouse down the street because I didn't keep pounding fruitlessly on his door for the rest of my life, that's totally Not Cool.
Thank you, Huntster. I really appreciate that you took the time to answer my questions. With all the arguing that goes on in these threads, it's nice to be able to have at least a brief exchange of civility. I also thank you for your well wishes and I hope life (and whatever after) goes well for you, too.
*5. an elaborate, fanciful metaphor, esp. of a strained or far-fetched nature. by dictionary.com
P.S. Darth Rotor, come on. English for college graduates? As though proficiency in the language comes only through a college education? I hope you didn't mean that, because it's very silly. There must be more sensible ways to insult people who lack comprehension.
