![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
'comfort' is not the right word.
'I'm sure you get a lot of comfort from it' is not a phrase I would agree with, regards to Christianity.
I do get a lot, I know; I get a lot of blessings. I get a coherant framework for my life, there are moments of fierce and powerful joy, there is community and friendships, there's a whole number of things-to-do that become more attractive options, there's even a ton of free food.
But 'comfort' is not the word I would use, because it implies that Christianity is something that I can use to justify the things I would do anyway. Believe me, it isn't. There are much darker paths along which I would have strayed was it not for my faith.
I have been saved not only in the overall metaphysical sense of where I am going when I die, but in many small ways from many small deaths I would otherwise have found. The journey has been glorious and in places unbelievable, but rarely comfortable. My faith sustains me, it keeps my head above the water and the sharks at bay, but comfort? That's generally a warning sign.
'I'm sure you get a lot of comfort from it' is not a phrase I would agree with, regards to Christianity.
I do get a lot, I know; I get a lot of blessings. I get a coherant framework for my life, there are moments of fierce and powerful joy, there is community and friendships, there's a whole number of things-to-do that become more attractive options, there's even a ton of free food.
But 'comfort' is not the word I would use, because it implies that Christianity is something that I can use to justify the things I would do anyway. Believe me, it isn't. There are much darker paths along which I would have strayed was it not for my faith.
I have been saved not only in the overall metaphysical sense of where I am going when I die, but in many small ways from many small deaths I would otherwise have found. The journey has been glorious and in places unbelievable, but rarely comfortable. My faith sustains me, it keeps my head above the water and the sharks at bay, but comfort? That's generally a warning sign.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-12-01 12:16 am (UTC)From:I expect that there's a collection of sharpened and smoothed-off edges associated with any belief system. I expect that Christianity, "done properly" (whatever that means) is more of a challenge than a comfort, something to aim at, something to keep you sinking through despair into outright numb - 'comfortable' - apathy. I don't know. For a number of reasons I could never accept it myself. Part of me is bitter about this. Another part of me is apt to wonder on occasion whether I really did, whether I'm really doing the right thing. But whenever I indulge these sides of me too much, the other side of me, which has its own reasons, fights back, and I'm caught in the middle of myself.
Sorry, this wasn't intended as a rant. But I feel I need to say these things occasionally.