Thinking about this...StevieG wrote:I'm not trying to insult those who believe, but I would love to understand the rationale behind why you believe. I truly would.
my first beginning to believe did involve experimenting with prayer.
I was someone who just grew up with atheist assumptions. I heard people talk about a god who loved us and about Jesus dying on the cross for humankind, and thought that would be awesome if it was true, but I was atheist, so it was probably not true.
Some of the things that happened when I prayed for things, and which I received as lessons, are probably not things I endorse as "a story to bolster someone's faith," but they seemed well-fitted to my child-mind. (I guess I was in the 11-15 age range.)
There was a situation involving a car wreck and some prayers and people turning out to be doing unlikely-well-and-uninjured beyond what was reasonably expected.
That - and the associated days and the atmosphere involved - was the event that turned me to believing, "There was probably a God who loved us."
And over the next few years, I started reading the Bible and discovered it to be very unlike how I had expected it... and in a few more years, there was also Christian community to testify as well.
And while that's a digression I love, it's a digression from peter's original thread-topic.
...Except insofar as we wonder about how important -who- (or what) a person is praying to is (or who or what a person thinks they are praying to).
(That's a question I think people are coming down on both sides about.)
But still, {what *I* was going to write} --> digression.
Speaking of peter- Thanks for sharing that story.
I think it woulda been awesome to hear that guy speak.
vraith... that last line of what you'd said called to mind a couple lines out of a song from a few years back:
It's crowded in worship today
As she slips in trying to fade into the faces
The girls teasing laughter is carrying farther than they know
Farther than they know...
...A traveler is far away from home
He sheds his coat and quietly sinks into the back row
The weight of their judgmental glances
Tells him that his chances are better out on the road.