hello.
First of all, im surprised that this discussion hasnt yet lead to a flame war, respect to that!
Of course i dont have an answer to the question does god exist or does he not.
i just wanna add my two cents and tell my not-so-little story about my experience with god. read it or dont, its up to you. excuse mistakes, im after all, german.
im 21 years old and from germany. a few years ago i met the girl that i will be soon marrying on the internet. shes from usa, and up to now ive been there visiting quite alot of times. (for those thinking about nerds and internet relationships, it all worked out naturally, no “lets be together now” in front of the computer monitor)
my fiances family happens to be christians, and so am i now.
but it wasnt always like that. i hated religion. faith was a good thing for me, but i deeply hated any kind of religion. with a passion. alot. point made.
being from germany i grew up with catholic churches and classes at school. , which is probably the reason i so hated it. i never even read the bible.
back to my fiance. whenever i was there, we went to church every sunday. it made me sick, sometimes literally. i couldnt stand it, just went because it were a few more hours i could spend with her before i had to go back to germany.
not until lately, something changed tho. i could feel something during church, call it the holy spirit, call it what u want. and it didnt make me as sick anymore. quite the opposite actually, i was wondering, became curious, wanted to know more about it. so i talked to the preacher. hes pretty cool, not much older than i am, and he was a great help to me.
we read the bible, whenever i had questions i asked, and he answered. he gave me tons of books and videos and whatnot which i didnt/couldnt all read/watch.
i started enjoying church, not the singing part, but him preaching, it was awesome. i just wanted to know more, deal with it since i never had before.
im not much of a feeling person, im more the logical type, so he gave me some books on that topic that id like to recommend to everyone here, they are really good books in my opinion and helped me make alot more sense to the mistery called god and jesus.
one is called “the case for christ” by Lee Strobel, i guess you could look it up on amazon for more details. it was like made for me and answered alot of questions and also things i hadnt thot about before.
then, science and faith were never really a contradiction for me. it all fit, god made it how it is now. (ive always been a science person, had physics advanced class [“leistungskurs” for all the germans here] and enjoyed it!)
then i thot about it some more and the creation of the world kinda seemed to make a few problems here, evolution vs god made it all.
thus i read another book, which i already had but never read before.
its called “the evolution of a creationist” by jobe martin. it wasnt as good as the case for christ, not as clearly written , and i was also looking for more “neutral” material on that issue, thus the “isnt god great!” parts of that book werent really to my liking. nevertheless, filtering out all the information, it was pretty interesting! i sure will look further into that matter, get a few more books on that topic, but that one got me started., it explained it pretty well for me.
i think amazon could provide a more detailed description of that book.
right now im reading “my utmost for his highest” by oswald chamber and another devotional bible study book, and it helps me to get to know more.
i like my new-found faith, although its harder to do than i thought it would be.
this is only my story, no “be more open-minded” or “do this do that” talk, its ur decision what u do with it. being more open-minded helped me and looking back i realized how blind i was before.
again, im glad this didnt become a flame war like it does most of the times.
this said, keep on posting!
.Christoph
Well, thesquire, that is an interesting story. Im not positive whether your point had anything to do with why you suddenly were interested in religion and excited about it, or if it was more about the books, but I will address it anyway. I think, that it had nothing to do with anything other than your fiance. I think what happened was a kind of association, your fiance went to church, and you went to spend time with her. since you went more and more, you began to like it, and possibly associate it in your mind (subconciously) with her, so that it became a pleasant, and even entertaining or enjoyable experience.
Well, thesquire, that is an interesting story. Im not positive whether your point had anything to do with why you suddenly were interested in religion and excited about it, or if it was more about the books, but I will address it anyway. I think, that it had nothing to do with anything other than your fiance. I think what happened was a kind of association, your fiance went to church, and you went to spend time with her. since you went more and more, you began to like it, and possibly associate it in your mind (subconciously) with her, so that it became a pleasant, and even entertaining or enjoyable experience.
If my g/f made me go to anything it would piss me off even more. Especially if it was something i had hated since childhood for whatever reason.
no she didnt make me, lots of times i just didnt go. but what was i supposed to do, she had her point, our time was limited, so i just took the bitter pill and went, and believe me, it did make me mad, not at her, guess at life in general to make me suffer that , or ironically maybe at god :D
and it took me about 2 years to finally “like” church enough to find out more about it.
so ya, you might say its my fiances “fault” that i now believe in god, but i dont see it negativly at all. and why did it take 2 years for me? it just changed like that, no “well this week it was a little better”, one day i started feeling the holy spirit and then it started.
i dont really know what my point was, guess just writing my story, cos i cant convince anyone if he/she doesnt want to get convinced. those two books (3 actually) helped a great deal.
the reason i hated it was 1. the catholic church and 2. my lack of knowledge about god/bible/jesus/etc. that is, had i known more i probly wouldnt have hated it ,as you can see now. most ppl wont even touch a bible and still they rant about how stupid believing in god is. i say why not learn a little more about it, what do u have to lose?
.christoph
I’ve seen that Protestant services are more of a celebration of God and life. Alot of singing and such. Catholic services deal with ritual and ceremony. The sermons however, do present a moral lesson or a New Testament event.
thesquire- Is your fiance’ Catholic or Protestant? A digruntled Catholic moving to a Protestant arena may enjoy Church more…
I’ve seen that Protestant services are more of a celebration of God and life. Alot of singing and such. Catholic services deal with ritual and ceremony. The sermons however, do present a moral lesson or a New Testament event.
yeah thats what i noticed too, and thats what made me change. im “evangelisch”, which is protestant, in germany, been baptized too and all, but at school and pretty much everytime i dealt with it it was catholic (i was on a catholic school).
my fiance and her family are going to the baptist church and it is alooot different from catholic, not as much ritual and ceremony.
i like that and i think if it were more like that here in germany, alot more people would actually go to church.
.Christoph
The Protestant Reformation was born in Germany, but it sounds like you may have grown up in a strong Catholic area anyway. Where I grew up in New Jersey was like that as well. If you are still searching for a more agreeable Christian group to join, Germany should have various groups such as the Lutherans or Calvinists to check out hopefully within a local area…
no atually both my parents didnt raise me into any religion , altho i was baptised protestant. i went to church on christmas (catholic) and i went to a catholic private school, with religion class until year 13.
the only thing i did “protestant” was catuchemen(spelling?) classes when i was like 14,they were protestant (and i liked it alot better already than catholic, but still not enough), and i only did that cos of the money u got afterwards from all ur relatives.
@Field:
The Protestant Reformation was born in Germany, but it sounds like you may have grown up in a strong Catholic area anyway. Where I grew up in New Jersey was like that as well. If you are still searching for a more agreeable Christian group to join, Germany should have various groups such as the Lutherans or Calvinists to check out hopefully within a local area…
don’t forget the Mennonites :)
we spent over 100 years in Germany and most Mennonites i know still speak some high AND low German (plautdiesche).
Also many of us are very pleasant . . . .
nuh uh!! dont tell me ur a mennonite!! Theres a family working for my fiances dad that are! and they speak low german!! unfortunately i dont understand much of what they say, just a few words here and there. guess its like a mix of alot of different languages.
but they are very nice people!
.Christoph
Seems like you are more from the south of Germany then :)
Seems like you are more from the south of Germany then
excuse me?! no im not! stupid bavarian ppl :D
im from western germany….
grins that’s southern for me :)
u have a bad sense of geography then :roll:
hehe! :wink:
Tsss…… everything south of the Elbe river is south :)
uuuh…NO!
(postcount go up yipee!)
:D
How can you be not sure whether you believe in God or not?
Not believing in him doen’t claim that he does not exist, it simply states that there’s nothing which made me believe he does. So if I’m not sure whether he exists, I do not believe he exists.
Nobody can prove God does not exist, nor can anybody prove Dragons do not exist or Mickey Mouse, but it is very unlikely.
How can you be not sure whether you believe in God or not?
Not believing in him doen’t claim that he does not exist, it simply states that there’s nothing which made me believe he does. So if I’m not sure whether he exists, I do not believe he exists.
Nobody can prove God does not exist, nor can anybody prove Dragons do not exist or Mickey Mouse, but it is very unlikely.
are you certain that you’re not really FinsterniS in disguise? 'Cuz if you were, you forgot about the toothfairy.
FinsterniS? toothfairy? I don’t know any of those.
Though FinsterniS is German meaning DarknesS.
I just wanted to point out that “I don’t know” does not mean, “I don’t know whether god exists or not”, but “I don’t know whether I believe or not”.
And the last sounds pretty strange to me, unless you didn’t talk to you recently.
FinsterniS? toothfairy? I don’t know any of those.
Though FinsterniS is German meaning DarknesS.I just wanted to point out that “I don’t know” does not mean, “I don’t know whether god exists or not”, but “I don’t know whether I believe or not”.
And the last sounds pretty strange to me, unless you didn’t talk to you recently.
FinsterniS was a poster here previously. Fairly logical and very antagonizable (is that a word?). He used the same logic as you - i.e. "just because i can not prove that the tooth fairy does not exist does not mean that it does . . . ".
