Transformation to joy and love - divine?
BelgarathMTH
Member Posts: 5,653
Hello, and Merry Christmas to everyone.
I have tonight followed my holiday tradition of watching at least one version of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol", and I usually watch several versions. This classic story of redemption and transformation has always touched my heart in a very powerful way.
Let me share some deeply personal background. My mother was an alcoholic and a heroin addict. Because of the substance abuse, she had a kind of Jekyll/Hide personality. I grew up never knowing if I was going to get the funny, smart, sweet, loving mother she could be, or the mean, abusive drunk who would cut me down at the slightest failure on my part to satisfy her every whim. If she was high as well as drunk, matters would be even worse.
It all made me a very messed up young man. My saving grace was my grandmother. She always kept me going to church, and she gave me a stable home after my mother went to prison for stealing money to support her heroin habit, when I was 13.
I was "saved" and baptized when I was 14. I had invited Jesus into my heart at age 7, but did not understand what I was doing, and I became even more confused when my mother freaked out and implied that I had joined a cult, or something like that. She did *not* want me to be religious, or at least, that was the impression I got.
Watching "A Christmas Carol" again, and reflecting on Scrooge's story of transformation has made me remember my own transformation as a teen. I went from being hopelessly depressed, and lashing out at everyone around me, to being a loving and concerned person, much as I had been as a small child before the crap hit the fan, so to speak. That was done in part through the church community where my grandmother took me, and where I was baptized, but that alone doesn't explain the profound transformation in my personality. I think there could have been some kind of grace at work.
As I've aged, I've had to come to a place of profound and solid skepticism. I doubt very much that God exists most of the time, because the world I see around me, and most of the people I see around me just don't provide any evidence for it. I've quite literally been driven mad before by all the conflicting ideas about God and religion that have surrounded me my whole life. I have protected myself by a wall of skepticism. I no longer believe literally in any god or religion.
But as my heart fills anew with faith and hope in the power of redemption, love and transformation that come with this season, I wonder if the divine is most to be found in those things. What makes a person transform? "What can change the nature of a man?"
Some might say "Fear of death, and in your favorite Christmas story, 'twas fear that changed Scrooge." And true, many or most versions of the story have fear as Scrooge's most powerful motivation. But some versions play that part down, and emphasize the increased insight that was gifted to Scrooge via intensified memories of his past, and information about his present that he could not have had without divine intervention.
So, to even those of us most rational and skeptical, can there be a glimmer of God or divine light through the transformative power of human compassion, including compassion for our past, flawed selves that make so much of what we are in the present?
@God , I am interested in what you might say or quote about this. Given what I know about your interpretation of divinity, I would expect something along the lines of "It is as you choose, you are free to create as you will, and I really don't care". However, I am giving you a chance here to show the best of Yourself - the side of You and the reflection of You that I See.
I have tonight followed my holiday tradition of watching at least one version of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol", and I usually watch several versions. This classic story of redemption and transformation has always touched my heart in a very powerful way.
Let me share some deeply personal background. My mother was an alcoholic and a heroin addict. Because of the substance abuse, she had a kind of Jekyll/Hide personality. I grew up never knowing if I was going to get the funny, smart, sweet, loving mother she could be, or the mean, abusive drunk who would cut me down at the slightest failure on my part to satisfy her every whim. If she was high as well as drunk, matters would be even worse.
It all made me a very messed up young man. My saving grace was my grandmother. She always kept me going to church, and she gave me a stable home after my mother went to prison for stealing money to support her heroin habit, when I was 13.
I was "saved" and baptized when I was 14. I had invited Jesus into my heart at age 7, but did not understand what I was doing, and I became even more confused when my mother freaked out and implied that I had joined a cult, or something like that. She did *not* want me to be religious, or at least, that was the impression I got.
Watching "A Christmas Carol" again, and reflecting on Scrooge's story of transformation has made me remember my own transformation as a teen. I went from being hopelessly depressed, and lashing out at everyone around me, to being a loving and concerned person, much as I had been as a small child before the crap hit the fan, so to speak. That was done in part through the church community where my grandmother took me, and where I was baptized, but that alone doesn't explain the profound transformation in my personality. I think there could have been some kind of grace at work.
As I've aged, I've had to come to a place of profound and solid skepticism. I doubt very much that God exists most of the time, because the world I see around me, and most of the people I see around me just don't provide any evidence for it. I've quite literally been driven mad before by all the conflicting ideas about God and religion that have surrounded me my whole life. I have protected myself by a wall of skepticism. I no longer believe literally in any god or religion.
But as my heart fills anew with faith and hope in the power of redemption, love and transformation that come with this season, I wonder if the divine is most to be found in those things. What makes a person transform? "What can change the nature of a man?"
Some might say "Fear of death, and in your favorite Christmas story, 'twas fear that changed Scrooge." And true, many or most versions of the story have fear as Scrooge's most powerful motivation. But some versions play that part down, and emphasize the increased insight that was gifted to Scrooge via intensified memories of his past, and information about his present that he could not have had without divine intervention.
So, to even those of us most rational and skeptical, can there be a glimmer of God or divine light through the transformative power of human compassion, including compassion for our past, flawed selves that make so much of what we are in the present?
@God , I am interested in what you might say or quote about this. Given what I know about your interpretation of divinity, I would expect something along the lines of "It is as you choose, you are free to create as you will, and I really don't care". However, I am giving you a chance here to show the best of Yourself - the side of You and the reflection of You that I See.
Post edited by BelgarathMTH on
9
Comments
You're one of the good'uns.
There's an old saying in Germany about the church: „Wenn das Geld im Kasten klingt, die Seele aus dem Fegefeuer springt.“
Which basically means that as soon as your money can be heard falling into the church money box, your soul will leap out of the purgatory and head straight to heaven. Money makes the world go around after all. Apparently even in the afterlife.
But anyhow, to each their own I guess.
What I want to ask: have you seen people near to you succumb to pain, when you to some degree persisted?
Getting over that may be hard, but I don't think any of them should like to see you poorly, be it Jesus or those others. I am quite agnostic in this. Maybe that is not a bad thing?
People fall out for ridiculous reasons, often enough, but for a child to renounce or put distance to their family - it generally takes a lot.
And even so, guilt often follows as a persistent shadow, unreasonably.
If you have managed to shed the burden, and be happy about life and happy how you are unto others and yourself - that's pretty swell.