What happens to Christians aged over twenty-two?

[pearl]

One detail I noticed was that even Christians who were intelligent enough to become undergraduates still resorted to the "Wait until you are older/until you are my age before trying to understand that" line of argument.

Theology is a lifetime quest, never finished, a lifetime of question with never a final answer to the Mystery. Maybe what is meant by 'Wait.....'.

 

[stvdv]

True, the truth shows flaws in each of us and in the beliefs and practices in our religions, including Christianity.

If I found no flaws in my Religion, I would be greatly worried

 

[sealchan]

I was a Christian when I started studying for my theology degree at the age of nineteen. By the time I graduated, at the age of twenty-two, I had lost my faith and become an agnostic. I became an atheist around the age of twenty-three.

One detail I noticed was that even Christians who were intelligent enough to become undergraduates still resorted to the "Wait until you are older/until you are my age before trying to understand that" line of argument.

Let us suppose that I had remained a Christian all these years. I am now fifty. At what stage, if any, would I have stopped hearing other Christians tell me to wait until I am older whenever I disagreed with them about what something in the Bible means, what Christian ethics may or may not involve or anything else related to Christianity?

Or should I wait until I am older before asking this question?

The time for the question is the time the question comes. Adults or elders don't always know why they believe something and so when their efforts fail to work they fall back on an often sincere appeal to their own journey and the apparent softening of hard rational answers that the young tend to demand but the older tend to de-emphasize in the face of life experience which tends to break all those hard rational understandings.

Objectively, all sincerely held beliefs are true and proven within the experience and knowledge of the experiencer/believer. It is merely the scope of experience/knowledge of the knower that confines that belief. You may have overlapping knowledge and experience but you also have a uniqueness which must be answered.

In the end your sense of personal meaning is more important than collective creed...BUT what is found, I think, by those who hold fast to their sense of personal meaning is that those truths expressed in any religion ARE true, but the pathways to the personal experience of their truth is so dependent on the individual that it makes such truths hard to transmit as direct instruction.

 

[YoursTrue]

I was a Christian when I started studying for my theology degree at the age of nineteen. By the time I graduated, at the age of twenty-two, I had lost my faith and become an agnostic. I became an atheist around the age of twenty-three.

One detail I noticed was that even Christians who were intelligent enough to become undergraduates still resorted to the "Wait until you are older/until you are my age before trying to understand that" line of argument.

Let us suppose that I had remained a Christian all these years. I am now fifty. At what stage, if any, would I have stopped hearing other Christians tell me to wait until I am older whenever I disagreed with them about what something in the Bible means, what Christian ethics may or may not involve or anything else related to Christianity?

Or should I wait until I am older before asking this question?

There are so many ways of looking at religion and God and the Bible. Before I became a Christian I was confused to the point that I had no faith and not much knowledge but couldn't 'find' God. I won't go into detail but to tell you that one day I prayed after many years of not praying and my prayer was answered, even though I did not recognize what happened at the time as the answer.

 

[YoursTrue]

The time for the question is the time the question comes. Adults or elders don't always know why they believe something and so when their efforts fail to work they fall back on an often sincere appeal to their own journey and the apparent softening of hard rational answers that the young tend to demand but the older tend to de-emphasize in the face of life experience which tends to break all those hard rational understandings.

Objectively, all sincerely held beliefs are true and proven within the experience and knowledge of the experiencer/believer. It is merely the scope of experience/knowledge of the knower that confines that belief. You may have overlapping knowledge and experience but you also have a uniqueness which must be answered.
e
In the end your sense of personal meaning is more important than collective creed...BUT what is found, I think, by those who hold fast to their sense of personal meaning is that those truths expressed in any religion ARE true, but the pathways to the personal experience of their truth is so dependent on the individual that it makes such truths hard to transmit as direct instruction.

When I was looking for God (I needed Him but couldn't find Him) I asked a preacher to help me. He told me that faith is a gift. I did not understand that, but I prayed after that for God to give me this gift. I know we can't see God and because so many bad things happen, I wanted to understand what's going on and what God was going to do about it. Anyway, yes, God gave me this gift of faith even though I didn't see that for a while. By the way, I did not join the preacher's religion but I now have faith.

 

[Brian2]

If I found no flaws in my Religion, I would be greatly worried

If you ever find no flaws in yourself you should be worried.

 

[Brian2]

Truth = Truth, hence no flaws, That is its nature
All Scriptures show flaws, Christianity not excluded !!!

It's the person Jesus who is that truth and has no flaws.

 

[stvdv]

It's the person Jesus who is that truth and has no flaws.

Yes, Jesus has no flaws. My Master also has no flaws

 

[stvdv]

If you ever find no flaws in yourself you should be worried.

Yes, that was the point I was making

 

[Brian2]

Yes, that was the point I was making

If your master thinks he has no flaws, why is he not worried about that?

 

[stvdv]

If your master thinks he has no flaws, why is he not worried about that?

I can't speak for Him, but I doubt "He thinks this".. He Knows

And it probably has to do with being a Poorna Avatar

 

[Brian2]

I can't speak for Him, but I doubt "He thinks this".. He Knows

And it probably has to do with being a Poorna Avatar

That is certainly a difference between Hinduism and Christianity.
The Bible tells us that only Jesus has come down to earth from heaven. It that way it is exclusive. All other people are just that, humans with no divinity. Iows Avatars are just people who claim divinity.
1John 1:7But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. 8If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.…

 

[stvdv]

That is certainly a difference between Hinduism and Christianity.

Yes, there seem to be differences
I have no problem with that
I focus on similarities

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

In my opinion, someone who stops being a Christian was never a Christian to start with. That person may have believed a few things Christians believe or attens a Christian church. But he or she was not a true Christian, only a part time Christian. God calls those He wants and once called, one does not change his mind.

What if God wants someone to leave Christianity? Like how God told biblical prophets to do weird things to make some kind of point?

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

Yes I guess most religions try to answer all the questions.
In Christianity many of the questions are left unanswered fully.
The idea is to trust God and what He has told us even if we do not have all the answers.

If God only knows as much as we do, why bother?

 

[Brian2]

If God only knows as much as we do, why bother?

It's not that God only knows as much as we know, it is that we know only as much as God wants to let us know at a particular time.
God knows it all and reveals it slowly.
The most important thing is to know God and Jesus and knowing the information we have about them is not what I mean.

 

[David Young]

For the first eighteen years of a person's life, any version of Christianity they are presented with is going to be fake.
Christianity for children involves pretending that Christians do not have legitimate disagreements on important matters.

Once adulthood starts, any Christian who asks a serious, critical question, because they consider it important, is told that they are not old enough to understand.

This means that Christianity is not a faith to live by but just a religion to belong to. Does it ever claim to have relevance in the life of an individual Christian? If it does, at what point in that Christian's life does it become relevant?