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Monotheistic Religion of Free-Thinkers?

oldbadger

Skanky Old Mongrel!
I wasn't suggesting that she ask you to start a thread. I was suggesting that she start a Monotheistic religion of Free-thinkers or ask you to start one if she'll join.
Fair enough.
Thing is, not only do Deists not need a 'Deist building' to visit, but Deists' perceptions are so individual that the idea of a Deists club is unimaginable.
Anyway I don't join clubs, not even the local model-boat club. :p

I'll tell you a secret, but please keep it to yourself............ about once a year I visit a Kingdom Hall for the Easter celebration service, and on occasional Thursdays I go to the Sally-Army snack-and-chat meets, and on Friday mornings the Baptist Hall coffee-time. Some Mondays visit a Christian-Spiritualist chapel and on Monday 16th October 2017 at 1330hrs GMT a healer may well have saved my life. We Deists just get about. :p
 

TransmutingSoul

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Is there such a thing? When I was researching Deists, I was disappointed that there was no brick-and-mortar place of worship where one could go to fellowship with other believers. Than again, Deists I guess don't really see the need to worship God, so that may be why. I looked into Unitarian Universalists and Liberal Quakers, but these, while originally Christian off-shoots, now espouse the whole gamut of possible beliefs, so again, I don't feel like I'm really worshipping God with others since actual belief in any gods, much less One God, are not necessary.

Besides Judaism and Islam and Zoroastrianism, are there any other faiths where worship of the one creator God is a priority? I'm not sure about Zoroastrianism, but I don't think "free-thinker" can be said of Islam. And while I do think it can be said of Judaism (at least other than the most fundamentalists), I am not interested in encroaching on an ethnic identity that is not my own. (For this same reason, Hinduism is also out.)

Have I exhausted my options? Does anyone recommend I look into Zoroastrianism?

Well your choice to look at the Baha'i Faith, it may be what you are looking for, it may not?

This is a link to learn about what that offers - The Bahá’í Faith - The website of the worldwide Bahá’í community No obligation of course.

Regards Tony
 
Is there such a thing? When I was researching Deists, I was disappointed that there was no brick-and-mortar place of worship where one could go to fellowship with other believers. Than again, Deists I guess don't really see the need to worship God, so that may be why. I looked into Unitarian Universalists and Liberal Quakers, but these, while originally Christian off-shoots, now espouse the whole gamut of possible beliefs, so again, I don't feel like I'm really worshipping God with others since actual belief in any gods, much less One God, are not necessary.

Besides Judaism and Islam and Zoroastrianism, are there any other faiths where worship of the one creator God is a priority? I'm not sure about Zoroastrianism, but I don't think "free-thinker" can be said of Islam. And while I do think it can be said of Judaism (at least other than the most fundamentalists), I am not interested in encroaching on an ethnic identity that is not my own. (For this same reason, Hinduism is also out.)

Have I exhausted my options? Does anyone recommend I look into Zoroastrianism?
You said 'I don't think "free-thinker" can be said of Islam'. 'I think' is an opinion, you should talk with facts. Islam has produced ‘The Largest Practised Religion’ of about 1.7 billion followers and ‘The Fastest Growing Religion.
And it's up to you if you want ymyo accept Islam or not.
Read Quran: surah Al baqarah: verse 255-257
 

Karolina

Member
Again, my apologies for leaving certain assumptions unsaid. One of the main things I have in mind when I say "free thinker" has to do with LGBTQ affirmation. Neither Islam nor Baha'i faith affirm LGBTQ people. Their faith, as with the majority of Christians and Jews, is based on their respective holy books. Restricting my thoughts and beliefs to what was supposedly revealed to people (men) centuries or even millennia ago is not exactly free thinking. What about what God reveals to me directly? Why trust self-proclaimed prophets who can no longer clarify their claims when God continues to speak today to everyone willing to listen?
I most certainly do not agree that God always required membership in organized religion. If we take the first generations of Genesis literally (which I do not), none of them are a part of an organized religion. Monotheism doesn't even start until Abraham realizes child sacrifice is horrid. Or monotheism starts with Zoroaster, take your pick. But it starts; it's not always been there. And the countless indigenous tribes around the world who hold to traditional beliefs, these are not "organized" in the sense of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. There's a lot of freedom there. Well, Judaism I guess is a hybrid between an indigenous tribal faith (starting with the ancient Hebrews) and a world religion.
Anyway, I appreciate all the feedback as it's helping me isolate what exactly I am looking for. In the spirit of "seek and you shall find", for anyone concerned that I'm not asking what God wants but rather looking for what I want. My deepest held desired were placed on my heart by God. What I can be certain of is my personal lived experience. If I am asked to overlook that for the personal lived experience of someone else (say, self-proclaimed prophets), I find that manipulative and arrogant. I don't believe God operates that way, even though most of "His" followers portray "Him" that way.
 

Jim

Nets of Wonder
@Karolina, Now it looks to me like you’re looking for a community of people in which no one will ever disapprove of what you think about anything, or try to change your mind about anything, and whose members can only be people who think the same way you do about God, prophets, and LGBTQ issues. Are there any other belief requirements for membership in your community that you forgot to mention?
 

Jim

Nets of Wonder
@Karolina You might be able to find or form a circle of friends who never disapprove of what you think about anything, or try to change your mind about anything. You might be able to find or form a circle of friends whose beliefs and views conform to all your requirements. It might be much easier to do that with two circles than with one. It might be much easier to find that in other communities besides religious ones.

if you miss the practices and community life that you had in Catholic communities, maybe you could find it in a Catholic church where you have not been before. Tell them honestly that you don’t believe the way they do, but you like some of the practices and would like to participate in them without being a member. You might still need or want a circle of friends who like you the way you are, and another circle of friends who think the same way you do. That might possibly be easier to find or organize than trying to find it all in one community.
 

Jim

Nets of Wonder
@Karolina Now I’m wondering, do you think that God has written some desires on your heart without telling you where or how to find them? Have there been times before when God wrote desires on your heart, and you found them? How did you find them? Do you think that when He writes desires on your heart that He always means for you to go looking for them? Maybe He could be preparing your heart for what He’s going to do, if you just trust Him and busy yourself with serving Him.

is there anything in your idea of God about serving Him?

If God has put a desire in your heart for a community, without telling you where or how to look for it, then maybe He doesn’t mean for you to go looking for it. Maybe He means for you to prepare yourself to be a responsible member of that community, when He puts it on your path. For example, by practicing spiritual growth and community service. :D
 
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Karolina

Member
@Karolina Now I’m wondering, do you you think that God has written some desires on your heart without telling you where or how to find them? Have there been times before when God wrote desires on your heart, and you found them? How did you find them? Do you you think that when He writes desires on your heart that He always means for you to go looking for them? Maybe He could be preparing your heart for what He’s going to do, if you just trust Him and busy yourself with serving Him.

is there anything in your idea of God about serving Him?

@Jim you, sir, speak the truth. Reading my "requirements" in your words sounds, of course, pretty hilarious. And impossible. And highlights the obsessive nature of this search of mine. I often forget that others also have disagreements and pet beliefs, they just don't worry about these matching those of others.
Yes, service is actually a major reason I started my most recent search, and as I think about it, I see how I've been engaged in magical thinking and wanting everything handed to me without my having to work for it. I've felt the need to somehow serve my community now that my kids aren't as tiny anymore, but the opportunities at my Catholic Church didn't line up with my strengths or availability. It's a hot mess in my head, lol.
We recently decided to move and the new area will have the kind of opportunities for service that I can do, and they won't need to be via a faith community. Perhaps everything will clear up after the move.
I'm sure the desires on my heart are meant to prepare me for something, and perhaps the search in itself is teaching me all I need to know without ultimately leading to any particular religious affiliation. But I won't know that if I don't pursue the quest.
 

Jim

Nets of Wonder
@Jim you, sir, speak the truth. Reading my "requirements" in your words sounds, of course, pretty hilarious. And impossible. And highlights the obsessive nature of this search of mine. I often forget that others also have disagreements and pet beliefs, they just don't worry about these matching those of others.
Yes, service is actually a major reason I started my most recent search, and as I think about it, I see how I've been engaged in magical thinking and wanting everything handed to me without my having to work for it. I've felt the need to somehow serve my community now that my kids aren't as tiny anymore, but the opportunities at my Catholic Church didn't line up with my strengths or availability. It's a hot mess in my head, lol.
We recently decided to move and the new area will have the kind of opportunities for service that I can do, and they won't need to be via a faith community. Perhaps everything will clear up after the move.
I'm sure the desires on my heart are meant to prepare me for something, and perhaps the search in itself is teaching me all I need to know without ultimately leading to any particular religious affiliation. But I won't know that if I don't pursue the quest.
I added a paragraph to my previous post, while you were posting this one, but it looks like you were already thinking the same thing.
 

Karolina

Member
I'm not sure I have the hubris or desire to tell anyone what their religion should be. Still, I could offer some words.

The word that comes to me most when I read your posts is 'community' and things related thereto. The first seeming problem you're going to have with this is that communities pretty much by definition agree on most of their core principles, otherwise the community would fall apart. There are many flavours of Abrahamic religion that create many communities, each with different favoured aspects. There are some that can only seem loosely connected, such as the Sufi sect of Islam and the Wahabist sect. I would counsel you to find a Shul, Church or Mosque or whichever it may be with whom you agree on fundamentals; I mean the really broad aspects. One G-d, Friday worship, etc., whatever they may be.

And don't be afraid to disagree yet try anyway, even with perhaps one of those fundamentals. You mentioned, for example, prophets being a bit of a hindrance for you. In this case, I would advise that you try to take a different approach. Perhaps the idea of a prophet is too strange or foreign for you, but this is perhaps to miss the point: if the idea of prophets is hard, just focus on what the prophet has to say, instead. You may disagree with the person on the pew next to you that these words are 100% G-d breathed, but is that really a division? What brings you together in the first place is the fact that you likely agree with the basic core of what the prophet was trying to say. Worship one G-d, repent of your sins, give to charity, be kind to animals, whatever it is.

Religion doesn't bring people together because they agree on everything, but because they value the same core principles, and take it from there. People are always going to worship G-d in their own way, whether that's by studying what they believe are His words day in day out, or by standing in a field and yelling at Him because their holiday to see their family during a special time was prevented. Most of the people who attend these rituals are not scholars and will likely have just as divergent opinions as you. If you find beauty in Psalm 121 and that helps you connect with your Creator, then focus on that. If reading the Qur'an brings you closer to Him, do that even if you're attending a Church. There is little good in you trying to shoehorn yourself into a tiny space when you have a mind that can accommodate much more.

If I were you, I'd simply stick to what you disagree with least, what connects you to G-d most, and the people you feel most comfortable around. And remember that Holy Scriptures have been interpreted and re-interpreted for millennia and to say there is a single right opinion is ridiculous, hilarious, and limits G-d immeasurably.

You seem to like Church. Go attend a Church, be happy and enjoy your community and ritual there, then come home and have a more private chat with The Divine, whether that's in your own words, The Quran's words, Zarathustra's words or The Bab's. The ritual, the Church, the Schul, is just the beginning of your journey, not the end, have it there more to inspire you than dictate you.

I just reread your advice and want to again thank you. When I mentioned to my husband that I see religious worldviews divided into three areas (theology, morality, and practice), and that I'm unable to find a faith that I agree with on all three, he suggested the most important if the three is morality, as that shapes our character and determines who our peer group is, at least in the faith community. Even though my theology keeps pointing me here and there, I always return to my home base bc the morality I'm convinced of is there. And the practice, as you pointed out, is something I can and should customize anyway.
 

Jayhawker Soule

-- untitled --
Premium Member
... I looked into Unitarian Universalists and Liberal Quakers, but these, while originally Christian off-shoots, now espouse the whole gamut of possible beliefs, so again, I don't feel like I'm really worshipping God with others since actual belief in any gods, much less One God, are not necessary.
And yet these others are apparently eager to support you, encourage you, worship with you, and, perhaps, learn from you. I do not understand how such progressive diversity taints or demeans your worship? Could it not offer a means of manifesting such worship instead?
 

Karolina

Member
And yet these others are apparently eager to support you, encourage you, worship with you, and, perhaps, learn from you. I do not understand how such progressive diversity taints or demeans your worship? Could it not offer a means of manifesting such worship instead?

True, but whom we worship matters.
 

Jayhawker Soule

-- untitled --
Premium Member
True, but whom we worship matters.

As you wish. Still, while whom you worship matters to you, what you stand for matters far more to me if only because, when it comes to the ineffable, the who is at best an inspired allusion or informed guess.

I sometimes think that we might be better off focusing, not on the characteristics of God, but on the attributes of godliness.

In any event, I wish you luck. L'shalom.
 

Karolina

Member
I just wanted to say thank you again to everyone who weighed in on my dilemma. I have reread everyone's insights and find myself in a place where I am ready to belong to a group, loosely, without becoming enmeshed with it on every conceivable point. The pandemic quarantine has also forced me to take my spirituality more into my own hands, and I have been able to detox from the guilt-ridden approach to religion that has been my forte. I haven't figured it all out by any means, but I now understand that I need to ask different questions if I want to find answers I've already rejected as not resonating with me.
 
Have I exhausted my options? Does anyone recommend I look into Zoroastrianism?
I recommend you discover Christianity and focus on it because it will save you and change you into being stronger, more spiritual and developing potential through the Holy Spirit.
 
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