The Pope admits that sometimes he loses faith.....is this common among Christians or others?

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  • kingblaze84
    kingblaze84 Members Posts: 14,288 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited February 2017
    The disciples' faith constantly wavered and they had Jesus right there with them, so I don't think the Pope is saying anything that profound.

    The disciples' faith wavering is not that big a shock to me because they KNEW the Jewish prophecies of what the true messiah was supposed to be, so based on Jesus appearing very human and not being the war general of the Jewish prophecies, of course they were skeptical of Jesus. Jesus claimed he would fulfill the prophecies of his people, the Jews, and obviously he didn't fulfill all of them.

    But considering some of the disciples claimed to see him rise from the dead and everything else, and the many books written about the "divinity" of Jesus, it's still interesting seeing an 80 something year old Pope publicly express doubts about his own faith. Private doubts I can understand, but such public ones seem a little odd to me, coming from a leader.
  • Kwan Dai
    Kwan Dai Members Posts: 6,929 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I don't think true believers completely lose faith. I think that our faith increases and decreases over the course of our lives. I don't believe that the increase or decrease is in the existence of ? but how we demonstrate our faith through our physical and mental actions. As, an example when your faith is at a low, you don't pray at all or the frequency in which you pray decreases. Another example would be your work in the community decreases when your faith is low.

    The opposite is when your faith is high you speak to people in a better tone, you give more, in other words you become more selfless and caring. As another poster has already said, this is not a religious thing but a people thing. In the end we are human beings and the things we experience in life will dictate how we worship. With that said, the goal for all believers is to always have our faith on high. Whether faced with adversity or good times we can always turn in prayer, and reverence to our creator.
  • luke1733
    luke1733 Members Posts: 1,490 ✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2017
    The Pope himself, a famous Christian, admitted that sometimes he doesn't even have faith in his own religion. I find that interesting as a non-religious person because I stopped being Christian at age 15 or 16 for losing faith myself. He also admitted that he re-discovers his faith after some time, but for even the Pope himself to doubt his own religion at times at his age of 80 something is stunning to me. I would understand a regular person losing faith, but the leader of a church with millions of followers?

    Is this the case of reality coming through for the Pope? For anyone who is Christian or believes in a ? , do you have moments where you doubt your ? is even real? As a secular person, I tend to believe there is something out there, but never truly sure if it is a ? or not.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/pope-admits-darkness-own-faith-204403995.html

    To answer the question. Yes. I have doubts, a lot. I also have moments where I feel certain there is a ? . Which ? is real, can be stressful too sometimes.
    One thing for Christians is a way this can be interpreted: "My ? , my ? why have you forsaken me?" In those words, some interpret it to be even Jesus/Joshua expressing being or feeling ? 's absence. So, if the son of ? can feel removed from ? 's presence (when he embodied sin) THEN how much more so are we removed from ? ?
    It's also said our sin inside us makes it hard for ? to want to look at us. To a great degree the bible tells us that we are intentionally removed or without ? (that's the definition of sin) because of our sin, our only connection (depending on your religion) is through Grace and Jesus (if a Christian) and even then we are not in full connection with ? . So, yes, it is no wonder we feel we are without ? . It is largely because WE ARE (with the exception of when his spirit is in you and you feel him).

    So yes. I believe in ? , but more so I hope in ? and have faith in ? .....if that makes sense to ya.
  • luke1733
    luke1733 Members Posts: 1,490 ✭✭✭✭
    the honesty he showing with this, esp in his position, is astounding. I cant imagine trying to live life by a certain creed and doubting that ? ...thats like doubting your existence. glad my parents aint force religion on me when I was younger.

    if you believe in morals and have a conscience then you're kinda doing the same thing when it comes to living by a certain creed. It's just you don't have a source as an entity that you believe issued the creed. Nonetheless, your creed, is followed or broken and your conscience/spirit deals with it.
  • kingblaze84
    kingblaze84 Members Posts: 14,288 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2017
    Kwan Dai wrote: »
    I don't think true believers completely lose faith. I think that our faith increases and decreases over the course of our lives. I don't believe that the increase or decrease is in the existence of ? but how we demonstrate our faith through our physical and mental actions. As, an example when your faith is at a low, you don't pray at all or the frequency in which you pray decreases. Another example would be your work in the community decreases when your faith is low.

    The opposite is when your faith is high you speak to people in a better tone, you give more, in other words you become more selfless and caring. As another poster has already said, this is not a religious thing but a people thing. In the end we are human beings and the things we experience in life will dictate how we worship. With that said, the goal for all believers is to always have our faith on high. Whether faced with adversity or good times we can always turn in prayer, and reverence to our creator.

    A lot of that makes sense, if a religious person runs through enough adversity or doesn't feel their faith is being validated in some kind of way, they might drift away from what they believe. For me, it wasn't so much adversity as it was that I didn't feel my faith in my younger days was being validated. I didn't feel that there was enough to back up my previous beliefs in Jesus being a ? or savior.

    But for those who still do believe in Christianity or whatever religion, I suppose the goal is to at least try to keep the faith high. Considering the state of the world though, I'm still surprised at people who still manage to keep their religious beliefs high.
  • kingblaze84
    kingblaze84 Members Posts: 14,288 ✭✭✭✭✭
    luke1733 wrote: »
    The Pope himself, a famous Christian, admitted that sometimes he doesn't even have faith in his own religion. I find that interesting as a non-religious person because I stopped being Christian at age 15 or 16 for losing faith myself. He also admitted that he re-discovers his faith after some time, but for even the Pope himself to doubt his own religion at times at his age of 80 something is stunning to me. I would understand a regular person losing faith, but the leader of a church with millions of followers?

    Is this the case of reality coming through for the Pope? For anyone who is Christian or believes in a ? , do you have moments where you doubt your ? is even real? As a secular person, I tend to believe there is something out there, but never truly sure if it is a ? or not.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/pope-admits-darkness-own-faith-204403995.html

    To answer the question. Yes. I have doubts, a lot. I also have moments where I feel certain there is a ? . Which ? is real, can be stressful too sometimes.
    One thing for Christians is a way this can be interpreted: "My ? , my ? why have you forsaken me?" In those words, some interpret it to be even Jesus/Joshua expressing being or feeling ? 's absence. So, if the son of ? can feel removed from ? 's presence (when he embodied sin) THEN how much more so are we removed from ? ?
    It's also said our sin inside us makes it hard for ? to want to look at us. To a great degree the bible tells us that we are intentionally removed or without ? (that's the definition of sin) because of our sin, our only connection (depending on your religion) is through Grace and Jesus (if a Christian) and even then we are not in full connection with ? . So, yes, it is no wonder we feel we are without ? . It is largely because WE ARE (with the exception of when his spirit is in you and you feel him).

    So yes. I believe in ? , but more so I hope in ? and have faith in ? .....if that makes sense to ya.

    I hear that and respect that, I can imagine it's tough to keep a faith in a ? at times, ESPECIALLY the Bible ? . CNN has a documentary now that questions if Jesus' whole story is just a hoax. So those doubts you have probably get there just by watching TV, among other areas I'm sure.

    I myself still believe there is some kind of higher power out there, and I'm still open to ideas on the kind of higher power that we have, as I do feel some kind of presence at times.
  • goldenja
    goldenja Members Posts: 6,351 ✭✭✭✭✭
    INB4 the Pope creates an instagram
  • kingblaze84
    kingblaze84 Members Posts: 14,288 ✭✭✭✭✭
    The Pope has a Twitter account, close enough. Despite that, the Catholic Church is still struggling to find priests. I wonder why.
  • faithhill
    faithhill Members Posts: 2
    Guys from fastessay were helping me with a school paper the other day. And I hate philosophy and religion as school subjects, butin their research i found a lot of interesting. Humaniyu indeed is losing faith, but in good rather than ? . I think their evil they gpt used to cover with some sort of ? 's plan, which is sick
  • kingblaze84
    kingblaze84 Members Posts: 14,288 ✭✭✭✭✭
    faithhill wrote: »
    Guys from fastessay were helping me with a school paper the other day. And I hate philosophy and religion as school subjects, butin their research i found a lot of interesting. Humaniyu indeed is losing faith, but in good rather than ? . I think their evil they gpt used to cover with some sort of ? 's plan, which is sick

    Humanity losing faith in goodness? In many parts of the world definitely......

    I'm a little confused about what you meant by ? 's plan though.
  • kingblaze84
    kingblaze84 Members Posts: 14,288 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited April 2017
    An interesting Youtube video asks a powerful question: Why do Christians disobey the rules of Jesus and the Bible so much? Jesus (who claimed to be ? ) commanded that Christians love their enemies and even sell their possessions to become closer to him. But historically, Christians are known to be extremely brutal to their enemies and often times very greedy for other peoples' resources. So it's interesting that the Pope not only doubts his own religion at times, but how often Christians seem to almost never take the teachings of their own religion seriously. The only threesomes I ever had (two) were both with Christian bi-sexual women lol, so if you have time, check out the video, it brings up some funny points.

    https://youtu.be/x-slAgzJmdU