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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a teenager i was an atheist but always felt like I was running after faith, or maybe atheism was temporary and God was going to get me someday, at the end of my story.

And then I realized I could wait God out in church, doing the rituals, being part of a community...fine, I'm here, come get me. I still don't really believe. I don't have the sense of a beautiful ending anymore either. But I'm waiting in God's house, trying to follow Jesus, and maybe that's the closest I'm ever going to get to faith. [/quote]

Are you saying that you'd like to believe, but you just don't? and never did? and you've gone to church all this time?[/quote]

I don't know if I'd say "just don't and never did." [b]I think American Protestants have a tendency to say belief = certainty and I have never felt certain. [/b]But I think that is a very limited idea of belief that doesn't leave room for doubt as a form of wrestling with doubt, or hope, or actual practice, which are all parts of Christian life and better appreciated in Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Is taking communion a form of faith? I think so. [/quote]

Exact opposite. Belief=faith and faith, by definition, does not equal certainty.[/quote]
DP, but I think you're both talking about different things. I was raised in an American Protestant church and there were definitely aspects of certainty to a lot of it. There was "certainty" that God existed and that the Trinity was real. It seemed to be the [i]how [/i]of those things that you had to take on faith, because understanding them was beyond the human mind. But try being a curious 10 year old who asks how we know God is there and you will be met with absolute certainty about that. Faith is even about certainty - the certainty that it all must make sense in some way beyond our comprehension, so we shouldn't question it too hard.[/quote]

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