How do I find God?
That question marks the starting point for all seekers. But, surprisingly, many books on spirituality often downplay or ignore them. Some writers assume you already believe in God, that you have already found God or that God is already part of your life. But it is somewhat ridiculous not to address those questions when it comes to the spiritual life. It would be like writing a book about swimming without first talking about how to float.
To begin to answer that question, "How do I find God?" let's start with something more familiar. Let's look at the ways that many people seek God. Even though there are as many individual ways to God as there are people on the earth, for the sake of clarity, I'll break down the myriad ways into six broad paths. These paths, which will form a six-part series for The Huffington Post, are taken from my book The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything.
Each has its benefits and pitfalls. You may find yourself on several different paths during your lifetime. You may even feel like you're on more than one path at the same time.
The Path of Belief
For people on this first path, belief in God has always been part of their lives. They were born into a religious family or were introduced to religion at an early age. They move through life more or less confident of their belief in God. Faith has always been an essential element of their lives. They pray regularly, attend religious services frequently and feel comfortable talking about God. Their lives, like every life, are not free from suffering, but faith enables them to put their sufferings into a framework of meaning.
The early life of Walter Ciszek, an American Jesuit priest who spent 20 years in Soviet prisons and Siberian labor camps beginning in the 1940s, reflects this kind of upbringing. In his autobiography With God in Russia, published after his return to the United States, Ciszek describes growing up in a devout Catholic family in the coal belt of Pennsylvania. Family life centered around the local parish: Sunday Masses, special feast days, weekly confessions. So it is not a surprise when Ciszek says this in his book's first chapter: "[I]t must have been through my mother's prayers and example that I made up my mind in the eighth grade, out of a clear blue sky, that I would be a priest."
What for many people would be a difficult decision was for young Walter Ciszek the most natural thing in the world.
The benefits of walking along the path of belief are clear: faith gives meaning to both the joys and struggles of life. Faith in God means that you know that you are never alone. You know and are known. Life within a worshiping community provides companionship. During times of hardship, faith is an anchor. And the Christian faith also holds out the promise of hope beyond this earthly life.
This kind of faith sustained Walter Ciszek during his years in the Soviet labor camps, and enabled him, as he finally left Russia in 1963, to bless the country whose government had caused him untold physical and mental suffering. At times he struggled with his belief -- who wouldn't in such conditions? -- but ultimately his faith remained firm. With God in Russia ends with these haunting words, describing what Ciszek does as his plane takes off: "Slowly, carefully, I made the sign of the cross over the land I was leaving."
Others often envy people who walk along the path of belief. "If only I had faith like you!" a friend often tells me. While I understand her sentiment, that perspective makes faith seem like something you "have" rather than have to work at keeping. It's as if you're born with unquestioning faith, like being born with red hair or brown eyes. Or as if faith were like pulling into a gas station and filling your tank.
Neither metaphor is apt. Ultimately, faith is a gift from God. But faith isn't something that you just "have." Perhaps a better metaphor is that faith is like a garden: while you may already have the basics -- soil, seeds, water -- you have to cultivate and nourish it. Like a garden, faith takes patience, persistence and even work.
If you envy those on the path of belief, don't worry -- many people go through a period of doubt and confusion before they come to know God. Sometimes for a long time. Ignatius finally accepted God's presence at an age when many of his peers were on their way to a family and financial success.
None of these six paths is free from dangers. One pitfall for those on the path of belief is an inability to understand people on other paths, and a temptation to judge them for their doubt or disbelief. Certainty prevents some believers from being compassionate, sympathetic or even tolerant of others who are not as certain in their faith. Their arrogance turns them into the "frozen chosen," consciously or unconsciously excluding others from their cozy, believing world. This is the crabbed, joyless and ungenerous religiosity that Jesus spoke against: spiritual blindness.
There is a more subtle danger for this group: a complacency that makes one's relationship with God stagnate. Some people cling to ways of understanding their faith learned in childhood that might not work for an adult. For example, you might cling to your childhood notion of a God who will never let anything bad happen. When tragedy strikes, since your youthful image of God is not reflected in reality, you may abandon the God of your youth. Or you may abandon God completely.
An adult life requires an adult faith. Think of it this way: You wouldn't consider yourself equipped to face life with a third-grader's understanding of Math. Yet people often expect the religious instruction they had in grammar school to sustain them in the adult world.
In his book A Friendship Like No Other, the Jesuit spiritual writer William A. Barry invites adults to relate to God as an adult. Just as an adult child needs to relate to his or her parent in a new way, so adult believers need to relate to God in new ways as they mature. Otherwise, one remains stuck in a childlike view of God that prevents fully embracing a mature faith.
Like all of the six paths, the path of belief is not a path without stumbling blocks.
Next: The Path of Independence.
James Martin, SJ is a Jesuit priest, culture editor of America magazine, and author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life, from which this series is adapted.
Kerry Weber: Starting a Dialogue With God
Christianity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Why is Obama Talking More About his Christian Faith?
The Lasting Impact Of The King James Bible, 400 Years Later
"Just a little while longer and the wicked one will be no more you will certainly give attention to his place but he will not be but the meek ones will inherit the earth," Meek = teachable which is the opposite of proud . Psalms 37:10 and 11
So now we can understand why they come to articles like this. And why they post their anti God anti Christ Anti bible views. They want you to think like them.
They have beliefs but there is no basis for their beliefs.
They cannot even explain our geology and the extensive strata with all of the buried fossils.
Our beliefs are as solid as a rock that the strata became after it was all bent and then hardened into rock.
No one can ever explain away the truth and actual recorded history that is confirmed by our geology.
And why do you post your pro God, pro Christ, pro bible views? Is is possible you want them to think like you? I think you've got to realize that many atheists are just as sure that they're right as you think that you're right. And why shouldn't they?
I apoogize, I didnt mention the article said that a NEW group of atheists has arisen in society . Called the NEW atheists . These are the atheists the article was referring to. Sounds like some of them have been commenting on this article as well as others on HP.
As for your other question why do i post my pro bible views ? Answer me this question and i will answer your question, Why do atheists continue to post their anti God anti Christ anti bible views on articles such as this one? The article is about finding God. I think its obvious why Im commenting about God Jesus and the bible here .
it involved a level of spirituality in which I felt
danger from the spirtuality of someone
I recognise as a person here on earth...
it is possible that the spiritual likeness to the person is coincidental...
or from a completely different era...before us or after us...
It is possible that the likeness is a physical likeness of degree...and that the face I see in my mind's eye is not the face I see in my physical...face to face eye...
In any case..as my fear escalated...and the moment drew nearer in which this face might cause me adversity...I glanced to see the face appear on the wall beside me...and suddenly realised and believed that this spirit had been removed from the issue at hand...
put on the wall...
just another brick...
the songs were all done by the eighties...
we need only look at them...
and observe the world around us.
It is nearly impossible to sell Christianity to an educated adult because it has so many holes and requires you to just IGNORE them or do incredible mental acrobatics to get around these problems, fallacies or inconsistencies. However, if you have no education, or better yet, if you are an unknowing and trusting child, it is easy for this nonsense to take hold. It can then be reinforced or pounded into their mental wiring for years before they have developed enough mentally to question it. Usually by then it is too late. Pride kicks in and they spend their lives defending the indefensible...
If it makes you feel better about yourself and your own existence, then, by all means, indulge in this belief. But not a single person in the history of humanity has a single iota of evidence to offer for God's existence.
Billions of people throughout time also thought the world was flat and that the sun revolved around the earth. Billions of people can be ignorant and wrong.
God's word has also been proven to be true and our geology confirms what the Bible says about our history and that all life on earth was destroyed by the flood.
I myself have proved the existence of God because the elements that are parts working together inside of us are not able to work with intent and purpose like they do without a Creator.
No amount of speculation will ever get rid of all of the observable evidence of Creation.
The universe is not a creation, but rather a formation. We exist in response to the universe and life has used the elements of the universe within its own growth because those are the elements available and they are plentiful, renewable, abundant and multifunctional.
Your marveling at our form is not without some merit, life has produced such an incredible array of forms over the past 4 Billion years, most of which were not perfect and failed. But life doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be malleable, adaptive and constantly changing. That is the definition of life: it is living and changing to fit with its environment and it can do so because it was produced by its environment.
Look, you have your beliefs, and that is all well and good, but you sadly and willfully ignorant. Now, don't take that as in insult, you aren't stupid, you are just choosing not to know. If that is your choice, than so be it. I'm not going to spend any more time debating a broken record who refuses to learn. Peace.
Yes i agree billions of people can be ignorant wrong. Thats why i stick to bible teachings. The bible told us the earth was round many years BEFORE humans discovered it was. Isaiah 40: 22 says There is one who is dwelling above the CIRCLE of the earth, the dwellers in which are as grasshoppers ,
The "science" of the Bible is exactly what we'd expect to find: Primitive explanations of how the universe works as understood by a bunch of farmers and bedouins.
A good portion of the educated world did not think that the earth was flat, in fact by 680 BCE, the Greeks and the Egyptians actually calculated the circumference of the planet, and the Chinese were circumnavigating the planet by 3200 BCE having mapped out much of North and South America and the outer edges of Antarctica. It seems that the only people who thought the world was flat were those reading the The Torah, The Koran or The Bible.
...but no, they have to deny it and complain about everything.
times by a billion people are still false."
- Travis Walton, Fire in the Sky
That pattern seeking part of our mind also can be a great deceiver in the real world, trying to find logic where there is none, always seeking for patterns based on notions of the mind. This is why people see faces on things like tree stumps and see Jesus burned into a grilled cheese sandwich or the Virgin Mary in a sprinkler pattern on the side of a glass building.
Our mind looks for things that it expects to find and many have conditioned their minds to expect to find God, Jesus, and a relationship with these things. When they feel good, they interpret it as God moving their emotions, when they need strength they ask God for peace, strength and convictionÂ. The very act of believing that there is something out there beyond you that is helping you out gives your mind the strength that it needs to persevere. The credit for this strength is then falsely attributed to God, when you had it in you all along.
The mind is a truly incredible thing.
The proof that God exists is the working elements that we are made of that could not make themselves to literally obey preexisting observable directives that make us what we are.
If these verses were inspired by or written by an all knowing god, we'd expect to find wildly complicated explanations for the way weather, the atmosphere, gravity, the stellar systems, comets, the moons and planets, chemical compounds, earthquakes, tornados, volcanos and a thousand other concepts….but we do not.
The "science" of the Bible is exactly what we'd expect to find as far as explanations of how the universe works if it were invented by a bunch of farmers and bedouins.
There are so many counterpoints to Christianity, that it would fill a thousand Bibles...and no Christian, no matter how educated, has an honest answer or response to a single counterpoint.
The way I see it, the only way to keep believing is to shut it all down, deny it all, close your eyes and turn your back on reality. It is not hard to see why people who have turned their back to reality and disconnected themselves with it, have begun to lose ground in this age of information. Religion thrived when knowledge and information was repressed.
As such, belief is at it's core, is a 'non-Christian' approach to spirituality, if Christianity teaches the need to observe brotherhood. One can be Christian without belief.
the believer in myths.
It is observable evidence of a Creator.
The reality is that we have working parts inside of us that require a Creator.
I really wanted to read this thread but it's another one that has been totally dominated and hijacked by Daleri Rileda, making it unreadable. Too bad :(
Do you have something to say?
"Think of a wonderful thought, any merry little thought, thing of winter, think of snow, think of sleigh-bells, off you go, you can fly, you can fly, you can fly."
See how easy it is to find god. You just have to imagine it. Oh, yes, and stay a child as Peter Pan did.
Hydrogen
Nitrogen
Oxygen
Carbon
Phosphorus
Sodium
Chlorine
Sulfur
Iron
I count at least nine of the most basic elements in the universe that we are made of and that the universe is also made up of that are all working together inside of us and we need to have virtually every one of those elements in order for us to live.
Does anyone even know what the odds are that nine of the most basic elements of the universe would all be working together inside of us?
One working part cannot exist without a maker and we have at least nine of the elements and there are not even that many more elements that exist and we use the rest of the elements to make things.
That is one big arrow pointing to a Creator that not only made us but also stretched out the rest of the entire universe made of the same basic elements that are the working parts inside of us.
There, we found God. He is our Creator ...and I didn't use even one word of Scripture to find God.
...and the fact that we are living in the face of such a great God is the evidence of His provision for us that only He can make for us Himself.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PL9HGZM
Hydrogen
Nitrogen
Oxygen
Carbon
Phosphorus
Sodium
Chlorine
Sulfur
Iron
I count at least nine of the most basic elements in the universe that we are made of and that the universe is also made up of that are all working together inside of us and we need to have virtually every one of those elements in order for us to live.
Does anyone even know what the odds are that nine of the most basic elements of the universe would all be working together inside of us?
One working part cannot exist without a maker and we have at least nine of the elements and there are not even that many more elements that exist and we use the rest of the elements to make things.
That is one big arrow pointing to a Creator that not only made us but also stretched out the rest of the entire universe made of the same basic elements that are the working parts inside of us.
There, we found God. He is our Creator ...and I didn't use even one word of Scripture to find God.
...and the fact that we are living in the face of such a great God is the evidence of His provision for us that only He can make for us Himself.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PL9HGZM
that’s a great question have you considered the odds? Has someone told you exactly, or are you just assuming based on your limited knowledge of the universe that it would be impossible?
"There, we found God. He is our Creator ...and I didn't use even one word of Scripture to find God."
Yea you left it to ODDS or a gamble as most people call it. That’s real nice proof.
"One working part cannot exist without a maker"
You only assume that because you cant comprehend the functions of a part before you assign a specific purpose, and you assume that a "part" is a part at all, and not a completely stand alone object, with unrelated, and related functionality.
"and the fact that we are living in the face of such a great God is the evidence of His provision for us that only He can make for us Himself"
You didnt use the bible, but that’s straight from sunday school. I can tell because it makes absolutely no sense, and yet its said with total confidence lol!
i am still waiting for the question I have asked you over and over
where do you get your information, and who tells you its trustworthy?
There is a way to God (our Creator who does exist) and it is through God's one and only Son.
Check out the "Romans Road" or the "Way of John".
Stop attacking the truth of God's word. He is invincible. There is nothing you can say to get rid of the truth. There will always be working functioning elements inside of all life forms that did not design, make or order themselve by themselves or any other way.
There is nothing you can say.