Milton Platt
Well-Known Member
I'm on the road of sincerely trying to mix christianity with other faiths. In my seeking, for example, I got close to Zeus too besides Jesus and don't want to deny this. I also embraced Durga, Odin, the Buddha and others. But I have no good education in this, ie I only know the names of the deities and some stories and that was it. And both my christian friends and the members of other religions say I can't mix Christ and other faiths. I do not want to leave Jesus because he came to me a few times and I am still so much loving him. I wish I knew what to do. Sometimes I do not like the bible because it sometimes speaks in such a language of exclusivism that I feel like there's nothing for me in it. At other times I get out on the other side and see the world-loving Yahweh and the mankind-loving Jesus and just feel happy in this faith. I hang out at tentmaker.org a lot where I learned to read the bible positively.
In the same time I lately get into the fear of death a lot, especially the death of loved ones. Masha Kaleko wrote a good poem about that, one verse reads: "your own death you only have to die, with the death of others you must live".
I also have to say that I am mentally sick. I have schizophrenia. In this illness I switch between odd manias and depressed times. It's all a bit awkward to explain but for example I have believed in telepathy and that I am a prophet and that the whole world is entering a deep new time. I've cried about the wars in Syria and in Africa. I've been so afraid of nazi history that I can't read it anymore. And sometimes I felt pushed into atheism because I prayed and nothing seems to have come from God. But atheism is such a bleak view of life really. When it all ends with death, what's the sense of love? My dad died 7 years ago and it's like he has fully disappeared from our family life. We sometimes recount the past but my 3 sisters believe my dad is gone forever now and that there can't be God and Heaven. My christian mother has some faith in the afterlife but I feel like she is just sentimental lately, she doesn't seem to really believe we're going to an afterlife when we die.
What would you do now?
Why not begin with what we actually know to be true about reality and any holy text that does not conform to that reality, simply reject?