Parents were raised Roman Catholic in inner city Chicago where the Bible was rarely ever opened. Faith was nonexistent. Thankfully I was born and raised in Houston where my parents got saved via friends in our neighborhood who went to a non-denominational Bible Church (Cypress Bible Church in Houston). I always prayed the believers prayer however I do not think I was ever regenerate. Parents divorced my senior year of HS.

Had every intent to live a worldly college experience, but God had other ideas and drew me in via a random guy on our bus to fish camp. Great friends still today. Attended GBC in College Station. Breakaway had profound impacts on me.

After college, was living in Dallas area and had my first exposure to a Calvinistic approach when I went to The Village Church. After moving around some (Texas, Indiana, Colorado), getting married we had mainly been attending non-denominational churches. I served as an Elder at our church in Katy before we moved out of state.

Last couple of years, wife and I both felt compelled by some of the reformed teaching, but always from afar. Had been out of church for a couple of years due to a move and other issues but found a Reformed Baptist Church in Joshua that was drivable for us and have been going there the last year. Praying next step is membership.

Have enjoyed hearing others' experience!

"Free-will doctrine-what does it? It magnifies man into God. It declares God's purposes a nullity, since they cannot be carried out unless men are willing. It makes God's will a waiting servant to the will of man, and the whole covenant of grace dependent on human action. Denying election on the ground of injustice, it holds God to be a debtor to sinners."
-Charles Spurgeon

Going through "The Wonderful Works of God" by Herman Bavinck and currently in the chapter about The Church of Christ. This quote really stuck out and seems appropriate for this thread.

"At the present time its (church of Christ) multitudinous denominations and sects present a most lamentable spectacle of disunity."

Your quote got me thinking about a passage in the bible;

The Rejection of Jesus at Nazareth

54 He came to his hometown and began to teach the people[a] in their synagogue, so that they were astounded and said, "Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power? 55 Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? 56 And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?" 57 And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, "Prophets are not without honor except in their own country and in their own house." 58 And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief.

In that last verse, it would seem that indeed man has some participation in the message of salvation, if only he has ears to hear. How do you understand it?

Jabin said:

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A long time ago I decided that predestination and free will can both be true. Any attempt to deny that is an artificial man-made limitation placed upon God. The reason that we cannot understand it is that we are not God. The Calvinists, despite their claims to glorify God and his transcendence, seem to actually put him in a box of their own definition by their insistence on predestination. Their insistence on it is strange to me because they do so in the face of all of the Biblical passages clearly stating free will, even if those exact words are not used. An example is the oft-quoted passage "Choose this day whom you will serve." If there is no free will, that passage is meaningless and made a mockery.

I don't know, but suspect, that the answer to the antinomy is that God is outside of time. Free will vs. predestination becomes a silly distinction to a person like God who can see all of time at once, and can choose to intervene or not intervene in time at will.

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I was reading back through this thread and read this post and agree.

Thanks. I really need to let go of my tendency to want to be "right".

Well…2000 years is not a long time for development. It's just 2 days to God.

whatthehey78 said:

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Dbl post..sorry!

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Malibu said:

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I cannot with a straight face say I believe that Jesus was literally resurrected from the dead and performed miracles.

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Great of you to share. I have been in a similar place, and can empathize. Awesome of you to be open.

Quote:

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I think little b buddhism most accurately reflects my general worldview.

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I once read a book about a Catholic priest that studied buddhism in depth, even practicing. I won't spoil it for you but it is very interesting. There are some powerful sentiments in that worldview for sure!

Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian Paperback

whatthehey78 said:

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Full time care giver and unable to attend.

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God bless you in this!

ChaplainMCH said:

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whatthehey78 said:

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Full time care giver and unable to attend.

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God bless you in this!

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Amen. Care giving is Christ on Earth.

Malibu said:

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If I'm allowed to participate...

Raised in a very Christian household, Church of Christ, 4-5x a week through HS. Married a Catholic and did RCIA, and attend Catholic mass most Sundays. My actual faith in a God is more Universalist, heavily influenced by Christian ethics, but I cannot with a straight face say I believe that Jesus was literally resurrected from the dead and performed miracles. I also dont think it has to be literally true for the message and Pauls epistles to be extremely meaningful and relevan.

Most of my non-mass time spent in quiet reflection or independent study is heavily Buddhist these days, to the point I think little b buddhism most accurately reflects my general worldview.

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I have been there also. After much skepticism and searching, I came to the conclusion that Jesus is the answer.

We are all different but made in the image of God. May God bless you on your journey.

Shalom.

First time to post on this forum. I have been reading many of the posts and enjoying the discussion.

Raised at an A of G church in El Paso. Great church with some amazing people. I committed my life to Christ at an early age at a summer camp. At A&M in college, I met my future wife who was raised RCC. She never was very involved in church and when we met I had zero understanding of what the Catholic church was all about. We have raised our kids in a non-denominational church in Houston and we both feel closer in our relationship with God than ever before. Both of our kids have a strong faith.

Many of the threads in this forum are over my head in theological detail but I am learning. I think we overcomplicate things to a degree. God loves us, sent his only son Jesus to save us from sin and he is the only way to salvation and a path to God.

God is good and I am unbelievably blessed.
God bless you all.

Great post.

golfinag94 said:

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First time to post on this forum. I have been reading many of the posts and enjoying the discussion.

Raised at an A of G church in El Paso. Great church with some amazing people. I committed my life to Christ at an early age at a summer camp. At A&M in college, I met my future wife who was raised RCC. She never was very involved in church and when we met I had zero understanding of what the Catholic church was all about. We have raised our kids in a non-denominational church in Houston and we both feel closer in our relationship with God than ever before. Both of our kids have a strong faith.

Many of the threads in this forum are over my head in theological detail but I am learning. I think we overcomplicate things to a degree. God loves us, sent his only son Jesus to save us from sin and he is the only way to salvation and a path to God.

God is good and I am unbelievably blessed.
God bless you all.

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Welcome aboard! I feel the same as you in that we make this harder than it actually is. You'll learn a lot from some of these discussions and others will give you a headache! I don't post much but do enjoy reading the discussions…

Thanks for sharing. Sorry to hear about your church landscape.

Is there anywhere you can shrink your circles? For instance, live near the parish church and do parochial schooling? I've enjoyed that instead of trying to find a place my kids 'want' to go. If we move again we'll move near the church too; there are a lot of families that intentionally live close to it.

AGC said:

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Thanks for sharing. Sorry to hear about your church landscape.

Is there anywhere you can shrink your circles? For instance, live near the parish church and do parochial schooling? I've enjoyed that instead of trying to find a place my kids 'want' to go. If we move again we'll move near the church too; there are a lot of families that intentionally live close to it.

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Haha. I have no circles to shrink! I just moved to my current city about a year ago. I'm starting to build some connections in the small group Bible study that my wife and I lead, but they are very new relationships so they'll take time. "Making friends" as an adult male is extremely difficult in our culture and most churches (in my experience) don't do a very good job of fostering those relationships.

There are also no private Christian schools in our area that are affordable, so that's not an option. It is what it is. I live a life full of blessings, but I'm impatient. I have faith that the Lord's work in my areas of disillusionment will be revealed in due time.

My parents have attended, in chronological order, Southern Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, and now currently non-denom churches during their marriage. Only the move from UMC to non-denom was theology based (UMC church getting too socially liberal). The previous moves were all due to a change of location and my parents, like many protestants, viewed all protestant denominations as pretty much the same and just attended any mainline or Baptist church that was relatively close to their house and where they had friends who attended.

Most of my school age years were spent in the UMC. We went every Sunday. I never fought my parents about going to church, I always liked going. All the men I respected were conservative Christians - I wanted to be too. However, despite 18 years of every Sunday church attendance plus young life and bible studies, I never got saved. Despite the Bible verses in my social media bios and on my baseball glove, I rarely thought about God outside of 11-12am on Sunday. I lived, talked, and thought exactly like most high school/college aged boys. I would later find this a common observance from people who left mainline churches for other denoms - that the word salvation was never mentioned, the idea of how to get saved never brought up.

Summer going into senior yr of college I am an intern for a congressman. Our staff is invited to lunch by the staff of a member of a different party. Seems like a nice gesture, but it was really an interrogation - an hour of being asked gotcha questions defending our positions. I had never been put on defense like this before and didn't feel like I performed particularly well. The incident sent me home from work feeling stupid and out of place but inspired to put some effort into researching the intellectual reasons why I believed the things I did - including what I believed about Christianity.

During the process of reading my Bible (never done before) and researching about different denominations, I trusted Christ alone for my salvation and got saved. Acts 16:31 - And they said (to the question of what must I do to be saved?), "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house". The Lord has blessed me with many answered prayers and blessings since I got saved and even many more since I started making real efforts to deny the flesh and feed the Spirit. My wife and I attend and are both small group leaders at a non-denominational church. It is a Bible believing church full of strong Christians. Yes, I affirm that every word of scripture is inspired and true.

Since the OP focused on traditions/denominations I would like to add that our non-denom church is very young. The vast majority of people in it did not grow up non-denom, they came from a more traditional tradition. In fact I live in Houston and I feel like I know a good amount of people, I'm under 40, and I do not know a single person in my age group who goes to a mainline church. I have one Orthodox friend, the rest are 100% Baptist, Catholic, or Non-Denom.

TheGreatEscape said:

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We will see if anyone participates. It is ok either way.

I'd like to start a thread about sharing if we were raised by Scripture affirming parents (yes, Catholics and Orthodox count).

Are you a Christian who still affirms the authority of the Scripture and attends church?

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Yes. The Word of the Lord is inerrant and endures forever. I attend Church every Sunday, but there was about a 10-12 year period from early 2000's to mid 2010's where I didn't.

I'm a confessional Lutheran. More specifically, I'm Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod.

TheGreatEscape said:

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We will see if anyone participates. It is ok either way.

I'd like to start a thread about sharing if we were raised by Scripture affirming parents (yes, Catholics and Orthodox count).

Are you a Christian who still affirms the authority of the Scripture and attends church?

Are you a Christian who still affirms the authority of Scripture but do not attend a church right now?

Or did your parents not go to church? Maybe they were atheists or agnostics or of some other religion? Did they believe in God and the Bible and still not take you to church?

Also, feel free to share about what Christian tradition you are apart of and if you've journeyed to another tradition.

Of course, some are non-denom. And that's fine. But it's still a tradition.

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1. Raised Catholic.
2. Not a Christian and do not attend church.
3. Mom & Dad went to mass.
4. Both my sisters are Christians. Neither are Catholic. Not sure the stance on my brothers as I've they've never told me one way or another. My sisters definitely tell me they're Christian.
5. I believe there is a God gene (VMAT2 ) and I do not possess it. My sisters do. My sons do not. I believe my daughter does.

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5. I believe there is a God gene (VMAT2 ) and I do not possess it. My sisters do. My sons do not. I believe my daughter does.

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Hadn't really heard of this one. Are you referencing the idea presented by Dean Hamer? Seems like there's good reason to doubt the significance of this gene as it regards spirituality.

Rocag said:

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Quote:

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5. I believe there is a God gene (VMAT2 ) and I do not possess it. My sisters do. My sons do not. I believe my daughter does.

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Hadn't really heard of this one. Are you referencing the idea presented by Dean Hamer? Seems like there's good reason to doubt the significance of this gene as it regards spirituality.

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I don't know who that is. Studies show that identical twins raised apart have the same level of spirituality. I just have to wonder why some people exposed to religion no matter what do not believe and others do.

And I don't expect anyone who believes in God to give this any credibility.

Nice strawman you built there!

PabloSerna said:

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Nice strawman you built there!

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Where?

Apparently Hamer wrote the book that popularized that belief. I haven't read it. I'm usually suspicious when anyone says any complex behavior can be attributed to one gene. That just isn't the way things seem to work.

Enjoyed reading that background.

As someone who has spent a fair amount of time in SBC churches in my past and is now part of a Reformed Baptist Church, curious if there is any big doctrinal disagreements with where you go now and how you navigate that.

Well it seems to me that you went from talking about a "god gene" that causes belief in a god to anyone who believes in God cannot credibly argue against this proposition. So as someone who believes in God, why bother discussing?

Maybe I misunderstood?

Sea Speed said:

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I grew up being scared of being sent to hell. So much so that I thought if I died without repenting for a sin (including just thinking curse words) I'd go straight to hell. This is not healthy for children.

I pushed back pretty hard as a teen and went back and forth on religion throughout my early 20s and am now firmly in the camp of "we just can't know" so I am not religious at all. As a matter of fact there is nothing I would rather do less than go to church.

That said, I do believe there are a lot of positives of being raised in a God-fearing household, and for that reason, my kids go to catholic school and although I think it is absolutely ridiculous, I do not share my thoughts with my children and I will let them come to their own conclusions. I think raising my kids in a purely anti religious home would do worlds of harm compared to one that is at least grounded in Christian morality, but I guess we could leave the where our morals come from conversation to another thread.

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I have heard your story many times. Sad.

Gospel means Good news. Not condemnation and wrath.

PabloSerna said:

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Well it seems to me that you went from talking about a "god gene" that causes belief in a god to anyone who believes in God cannot credibly argue against this proposition. So as someone who believes in God, why bother discussing?

Maybe I misunderstood?

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It makes no sense to discuss with someone that their God only exsists because they are genetically wired to believe in it. I said my beliefs and have no interest in arguing or debating it because we are so far apart.