I haven't thought about _Xenocide_ in years: when I first read the quote, out of context in your tweet, I thought it might be from _The Blue Hawk_, by Peter Dickenson, which is also an extremely interesting book about the loss of religious faith.
I am an Evangelical pastor's kid who spent over a decade moving from the positions with which I'd been raised to the final conviction--experienced in sudden, startling transition during the Easter-morning service in 2010 at the age of 29--that there was no truth to *any* of it, there was no version of Christianity worth saving, no version of truth on which to stake my belief. But I spent the last decade or so of that time knowing there would be no answer to my prayers that was not almost uselessly vague.
The last times I'd pleaded with God for evidence of his existence were as a teenager at our church's camp, an experience designed to give people the sorts of emotional experiences that they were taught to interpret as direct interaction with the supernatural. My last summer there was as a counselor, and I remember a staff Bible study where we were read to from a devotional that said: "Do you feel like you're not hearing God's voice in your life? Like he's gone silent when you need him most? Maybe you're not listening hard enough. Maybe you're not listening to that little voice that occurs to you in the midst of your day... to the thought that jumps out when you're talking to someone." And it struck me: this is how we teach people the heuristic of interpreting the normal workings of a thinking creature as avidence of a supernatural reality. Humans have rich emotional experiences with music, literature, reflection, and more: the trick of the faith in which I found myself was to put those things in a bottle and slap a label on it.
By the time I reached the point of conversion from Christianity, to be honest, I didn't really experience it like a decision. It was gone, done with: the arguments against too absurdly plain to be negotiated with. It was grieving, but it was just something that *happened*.
I had a similar experience, but in my case the silence did not endure forever. I would not presume to say why or how, but I will say your retelling is moving. I wish you the best.
I think about that same story often. For me it looks like a struggle with a false sense of duty. I am one of those lucky Christians where God has always shown up in my dark times. I don't know why for me and not for others. My greatest recommendation is to get around prophetic people that are operating in the Holy Spirit doing miracles. Find as many as you can and have them pray over you without telling them your story. Keep discernment close.
"Yes" doesn't make sense as an answer to the question "how long would I do this?", since it's not a yes or no question. I assumed you meant to say something like:
> At some point I started to ask myself: would I do this forever? If the answer was not yes, how would I know when to stop?
or
> At some point I started to ask myself: how long would I do this? If the answer was not forever, how would I know?
I see the confusion. The answer I'm referring to is the answer to the question that can be phrased as "Is Mormonism rooted in truth?" In other words: "How long would I do this? If the answer was that Mormonism was not true, how would I know?"
I haven't thought about _Xenocide_ in years: when I first read the quote, out of context in your tweet, I thought it might be from _The Blue Hawk_, by Peter Dickenson, which is also an extremely interesting book about the loss of religious faith.
I am an Evangelical pastor's kid who spent over a decade moving from the positions with which I'd been raised to the final conviction--experienced in sudden, startling transition during the Easter-morning service in 2010 at the age of 29--that there was no truth to *any* of it, there was no version of Christianity worth saving, no version of truth on which to stake my belief. But I spent the last decade or so of that time knowing there would be no answer to my prayers that was not almost uselessly vague.
The last times I'd pleaded with God for evidence of his existence were as a teenager at our church's camp, an experience designed to give people the sorts of emotional experiences that they were taught to interpret as direct interaction with the supernatural. My last summer there was as a counselor, and I remember a staff Bible study where we were read to from a devotional that said: "Do you feel like you're not hearing God's voice in your life? Like he's gone silent when you need him most? Maybe you're not listening hard enough. Maybe you're not listening to that little voice that occurs to you in the midst of your day... to the thought that jumps out when you're talking to someone." And it struck me: this is how we teach people the heuristic of interpreting the normal workings of a thinking creature as avidence of a supernatural reality. Humans have rich emotional experiences with music, literature, reflection, and more: the trick of the faith in which I found myself was to put those things in a bottle and slap a label on it.
By the time I reached the point of conversion from Christianity, to be honest, I didn't really experience it like a decision. It was gone, done with: the arguments against too absurdly plain to be negotiated with. It was grieving, but it was just something that *happened*.
I had a similar experience, but in my case the silence did not endure forever. I would not presume to say why or how, but I will say your retelling is moving. I wish you the best.
I think about that same story often. For me it looks like a struggle with a false sense of duty. I am one of those lucky Christians where God has always shown up in my dark times. I don't know why for me and not for others. My greatest recommendation is to get around prophetic people that are operating in the Holy Spirit doing miracles. Find as many as you can and have them pray over you without telling them your story. Keep discernment close.
> how long would I do this? If the answer was not yes, how would I know?
Typo here I think.
Hm, I’m not seeing any typo.
"Yes" doesn't make sense as an answer to the question "how long would I do this?", since it's not a yes or no question. I assumed you meant to say something like:
> At some point I started to ask myself: would I do this forever? If the answer was not yes, how would I know when to stop?
or
> At some point I started to ask myself: how long would I do this? If the answer was not forever, how would I know?
I see the confusion. The answer I'm referring to is the answer to the question that can be phrased as "Is Mormonism rooted in truth?" In other words: "How long would I do this? If the answer was that Mormonism was not true, how would I know?"
No typo, but certainly unclear phrasing.