give christianity a second chance

wow, i can’t believe the (lack of) hits on the search term “christian” versus buddhism! it would be interesting to see the geographic and religious breakdown of users of this site. i’m wondering if there are already a good number of Christians on this site and thus “exploring” or “learning” isn’t really something they’d keep on their lists. i am a baptized, confirmed, and lapsed Catholic. no sense going over the reasons i can’t go back to that church in this forum. certainly no offense meant to any Catholics – if it is working for you that’s great. anyway, i am hoping to come to terms with my beliefs over the next year. most of my interest in Christianity is based on my desire to have a solid moral and ethical background for my children. i think church is a wonderful “third place” for them. we currently attend a fairly liberal church here in the northeast. we recently moved and are having trouble getting to our old church regularly. currently looking at options closer to home.

Reading Marcus Borg’s “The Heart of Christianity” now, we’ll see how that goes.

When I finally came to God it changed my entire life. I learned to humble myself anf grow closer to God. He led me to this book shortly after I devoted myself to Him: http://www.myutmost.org/addnl/day_index.html

I recommend any new Christian (and nonChristian) read it!

I went to CCC Rivercity (Lismore)’s 4th anniversary celebration on Sunday, purely by accident. My housemate’s family is very Christian (but good Christian, not scary Christian) and I spent the weekend with them. Of course, on weekends come church gatherings. I hadn’t even thought about it! “It’s mostly going to be heaps of singing and celebrating,” housemate’s mum said. I went along! There were quite a lot of ITEMS (eg church members playing music that had nothing to do with church). Just as the guest preacher was getting into his sermon, we decided it was time to head for home.

I don’t know whether this really counts or not.

I never completely gave up on Christianity, but two years ago, I didn’t care about it at all.

When I started looking in-depth into Christianity (especially this year), I noticed my life improving immensley. Just read some of my entries on 43T about my progress on being more compassionate, patient, or kinder. I got better at these things after I began to read the Bible and follow God’s laws. I credit Him fully for these things. With God, I am happy as I’ve never been happy before.

Chrisianity has completely changed my life around. If you have this goal on your list, please get it done. God is calling you to Him.

I suppose that this sounds like an ongoing kind of thing. However, since I completed the Alpha course, and am taking it all forward, I deem this to be complete.

I’m going to work on a new three strikes idea. If I go to three sermons that the group deems good and I still don’t feel motivated or connected or anything, I’m going to tick this off and let it be. And I’ll be happy with that, because I’m giving it a second chance, and that’s all I’m asking of myself.

I’m daily humbled by the realization that although I declared God dead a number of years ago, God didn’t return the favor. I’m daily awed by the incredibly revolutionary social justice vision of the gospels. I’m daily grateful for my elementary school nuns who planted the seeds in me that pointed me toward home. I’m daily blessed by the friends who’ve been with me as I’ve finally come back.

Well, we’re about half way through an Alpha course. I’m not sure what’ll happen in the end, though.

I went to church with my housemate last night – I believe it’s the Assembly of God church, but the one we went to is just known as BCC. There was a guest speaker last night. Some of the stuff he said was decent, but the fact that he harped on for ages about each thing ended up just frustrating me to tears. I felt like I was an extra on the set of Saved!. I’ve promised my housemate that I’ll give it a second chance, though, because it was a random guest speaker week and not a normal week. So we’ll see.

Last night my housemate and our other friend were discussing the concept of guardian angels and how they’d heard stories and even had their own experiences of feeling the presence of two big men near them when they were horribly afraid and/or alone. I’d like to think it’s real but it still just sounds like real baloney.