In a post that I read recently, the person wrote: It can be comforting to believe in the Christian God.
Personally, I tend to think that is one of the prime reasons people embrace and/or stay in Christianity. It’s comforting. They always have a “Heavenly Father” to turn to when times get tough. Even though the actual conditions of their life rarely change, they think/believe/imagine they do, and that’s the bottom line.
The thing is, ALL of us face difficult circumstances at one time or another … and spending time trying to find solutions is NOT an easy task. In fact, it can oftentimes be a grueling experience. But I believe it makes us stronger within ourselves because it gives us the tools and processes to help us if/when we are faced with similar obstacles. Moreover, it instills a level of confidence in ourselves and our abilities to face whatever comes.
However, for many, believing in themselves and their own abilities to work through a situation is just too scary. They find it much easier and more comforting to shuffle the responsibilities of decision-making and action to a “higher power.”
Yet the facts are that every one of us lives in a world of uncertainty. Our lives are full of ups and downs, with some being more stressful and troubling than others. But EACH of us has the capability to work through them and come up with a solution on our own. We just have to believe in OURSELVES, rather than some unseen and silent entity that others have convinced us exists.
It’s my belief that any individual who relies on a supernatural deity to help them get through difficult times is forfeiting their own sense of personal worth. And from my perspective, that is irresponsible at the least — and foolhardy at the most.
Moreover, it does NOT make the problem go away.
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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Nan's Notebook 
My belief too. We’re not children to be calling for daddy in times of trouble. You have to develop your own strength.
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That is precisely what most religions encourage, the idea that we are children and God is the daddy. “listen to your father, he knows what’s best for you”…
So many prayers insist on that, so many belief systems discourage independent thought.
It’s also a neat way of passing the buck to God, when you mess up. “It just wasn’t God’s will”, you sigh. “I just didn’t pray hard enough”. “He has other plans for me…”
If your plans work, God takes the credit. If they don’t, you get the blame. (or the devil does)
One encouraging note, however, religion seems to have loosened its deadly grip on a lot of people, and where it was once almost suicide to announce your lack of belief, it’s now considered an okay thing to have. Or, er, not have. Religion also turns people into narrow, mean-spirited souls, and while we may have outgrown the tar and feathers route, more than one minister and his family has been starved out of their own church because the good people disapproved…
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I won’t use those words, irresponsible or foolhardy. Likely they learned from a long line of people who were taught to trust in a being called God.
I am not saying this excuses them, but it makes them understandable.
Breaking a habit or belief that goes back generations is not easy to do. It is why I feel more people need to teach their children about self-responsibility. The more we can teach, the more teachers we can have for the next generation, and the next after them.
You were not raised in a religious household, and even though you were religious for awhile you never knew that weight of centuries of giving away one’s power.
The thing to remember is, every generation more and more people are turning away from belief. And while that is a good thing, is scares the bejeezus out of those who haven’t had that experience yet. Almost the whole of white history for 2000 plus years, people were forced to believe in a being called God. They were used to being the majority. And truth to be told, they are still the majority. But they see their numbers dwindling. They fight back harder because that is all they know how to do.
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And it isn’t just the Big Daddy! Christianity usurps familial relationships to horn its way into your life. Priests are referred to as Father. Head nuns are Mother Superiors, ordinary priests are often referred to as Brother. Why they don’t refer to the priests who sexually prey on boys as Uncle, I do not know.
All of this is to convince you you have a family in them. If you believe that, try stopping regular payments (aka tithes) and see how familial they act.
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I can understand how it would be ‘comfortable’ to believe there is a higher power, that someone is in charge of the madness here on Planet Earth, and that there is something better waiting in the wings. But it seems to me that after a certain number of years on earth, it should become obvious to every person that it just ain’t so, that nobody … at least nobody with an ounce of compassion or humanity … is in charge. And at that point, a person learns to take responsibility for his own life, rather than praying for some deity to make it all better, rather like momma used to kiss your skinned knee and “make it all better.” For me, that enlightenment came at around age 5, but understandably for some it wouldn’t happen until they reach ‘adulthood’. But sooner or later, we must all realize that we are responsible for our lives, our actions, and how we treat the planet, how we treat our fellow humans, and how we treat other species.
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I’d argue just the opposite. A belief in christianity (or most religions for that matter) isn’t comforting at all, it’s terrifying. You spend every waking moment afraid of that everything you do, everything you say, might upset this deity. And we know what happens when he gets mad, out come the floods, the plagues, the earthquakes, the boils, the rains of frogs, the genocide. Most christians will never admit, though, that they spend their entire lives terrified that they’ve violated one of the hundreds of rules that could send them to hell.
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Absolutely GF. I don’t understand the comforting feeling. The church has often more focused on the Celestial North Korea (h/t Christopher Hitchens) aspect to maintain their power
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It can be comforting to believe in the Christian God.
Of course it can. Ignorance is bliss and faith is not wanting to know the truth.
Perhaps the hardest thing when looking for answers, particularly in regard to difficult times in one’s life, is to accept the fact that sometimes there are no answers, that things simply are as they are, and, dammit, shit happens.
But if you are not willing to continue forward on the path, without a solid answer,then you’ve really no resort other than to embrace an imaginary one.
In moments of doubt I used to lie in my cot and hug my teddy-bear, apparently, and the idea still appeals to me sometimes. And why not? He was a relatively tangible fellow, after all.
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hang on to that teddy bear. He’s given you more comfort than all the prayers and mea culpas ever will.
I was raised in a reasonably strict Catholic family, with a long history of nuns and priests in it. Church every Sunday, Stations of the Cross, fasting for Lent, all of it. and oh my god the Confessional. There is nothing more anxiety laden to a 14 year old girl than telling your sins to a priest in the dark. We had to pretend we didn’t know who he was, nor he us.
But one by one the veils sort of lifted, and we discovered that priests could be quite mean, and not all nuns were happy souls.
When my dad died in his sleep, my mother called the local priest to come to the house to give him the last rites. He hemmed and hawed and asked her if he was ‘still warm’. She said, no. Oh dear, he said, that means the spirit has fled the body already. But he offered to give the last rites over the phone. There are no words for that.
I don’t miss any of it.
What I do miss, is the connectedness and the sense of community you get from large bodies of people, all pointing metaphorically in the same direction.
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Yeah, Judy. The sense of community within the church can certainly be a comfort, but it can also be a barrier to progress. It’s hard to have one and not the other, and that’s the nature of joining a club.
I suppose, these days, there’s a protocol for delivery of the last rites by text or, for a suitably generous donation, by email.
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Lol. The image that just flashed through my head, the distraught daughter holding the cellphone up to the ear of her deceased mother, and the priest at the other end, reading the last rites…
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Its’ better to depend on God even though he doesn’t answer to our selfish prayers. rather to depend on one’s strength which is also given by God because there is every chance that one can misuse his strength to change the situations which he deserve to suffer.
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So …. God has given me the strength but I’m not permitted to use it …. is that right? Just as He has give me logic and commonsense but that, likewise, is off limits?
God help me if I use my strength to reduce suffering!!
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but the vast, vast majority of humans are damned.
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Bummer.
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As a lifelong atheist, I never understood why religious people are conent to do this. But as long as they do no harm to others, and do not try to convert me to their faith, they have a right to do as they please.
Unfortunately, many of them do both of those, and fundamentalism in all its forms is the outcome of extreme belief.
Best wishes, Pete.
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“EACH of us has the capability to work through them and come up with a solution on our own”. Your self manufactured solution has created more problems in this world.
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Interestingly, I haven’t seen your “God” step in and offer any solutions to the world’s problems …
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Anantha ….. I don’t think Pete has a ‘self manufactured’ solution. He is not attempting to offer a solution at all. Religion, on the other hand, has always been about man creating God in his own image and is being continually remanufactured to suit the circumstances – the ‘solution’ is in a constant state of reinvention.
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I was always puzzled about what “in his own image” refers to…which man? which gender? which race?
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Oh, I can help you out there. Every morning when I look into the bathroom mirror I recognise the blueprint.
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White male, of course! Haven’t you seen the pictures of JC?
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This is the first question I am often asked when I divulge my no-gods conclusion. How do I find comfort? Drugs or pharms? Alcohol? Guns? Sex? Snuggling with my stuffed animal? Sleeping? Friends? Counseling (secular or faith-based)? Or prayer, “God, grant me the serenity, etc.”?
And, why only to “the Christian” God? Any god will do.
It’s the hypothesis behind the insulting “no atheists in fox holes” theory.
I think of it like two words for “everything.” A Universe is chaotic, unpredictable, and ruthless. A Cosmos, on the other hand, is organized and meaningful and has purpose. Same thing, but different feel to it.
I sometimes get criticized by other non-believers for saying that I understand why many folks literally choose to believe despite no supporting evidence. This is one reason. Mental comfort.
And when things go to hell anyway, there is always, “Thy will be done…,” and “God works in mysterious ways.” Cannot lose like that. 🙂
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Yes Bill, but don’t give up on drugs alcohol and sex. I think the jury is still out on those ones.
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Yes, Richmond. And I’ve got my Hunter S. Thompson image to protect. 🙂
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@Nan- “I haven’t seen your “God” step in and offer any solutions to the world’s problems “. The solution was already given through the representative of Christ and if you are unaware of real problems of life how will you appreciate such solutions.
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given the brutal wars, horrific oppression, endless religious tyranny, the “solution” of Christ seems to me to
have been an utter, horrible failure. Sorry if we don’t buy your just so pronouncements…
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@Richmond Road- “man creating God in his own image” is a illogical statement manufactured by less intelligent. If you people cannot able to understand God where is the question of man creating God. God cannot be created by defective limited brains. Hah!.
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your God and his temper tantrums, eternal hell, and demand that his creation follow petty “laws” seems the epitome of “defective” to
me. So why does your limited intelligence struggle to understand how we see that an imperfect god would be “imagined” (better word than created, ‘cause it doesn’t exist)?
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imagined by imperfect humans I meant to conclude.
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almost every tribe or group of humans over time has accepted the concept of a higher power to soothe, instruct, and terrify them. I suppose it was a way of keeping order among an easily angered, often dangerous group of humans. We’re not that far removed from our ancestors, no matter how many millions of years of evolution we have put between us… it takes a long time for the monkey in us to be weeded out, albeit slowly.
Anantha, we made him/her/it/them up. Think about this: if there WERE one true god, why are there so many cultures who worship so many different deities? India, China, ancient tribes in Egypt…and if there were only one god, how did he get split into so many factions?
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Ansgar the “Apostol of the North”, or more accurately the bishop of Hamburg-Bremen in the 9th century, who failed to turn the Swedes into Christianity, made an interresting observation. Though most of his work in Sweden during this age of vikings was about the struggle against the old Norse gods there, or more precisely against the priests (or godhi, if you will) of said gods, for the “souls”, faith and offerings of their adherents, there was one group of people apart from the rest, who proved impossible to convert. He cals them the “men-of-their-own-strength”. Typically viking warriors who had travelled the world, seen other cultures, heard of other gods, but were not accustomed to ritual. People who asked no favours from gods, handed no offerings and in general seemed disinterrested by supernatural claims. Who relied on themselves rather than gods, because they knew by experience themselves, kin and friends to be the ones who pull them through hard times.
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