Regardless of your experience, praying to Christ is what I did, and it worked wonders for me. I realise this point might get some negative reactions on a forum like this, but I wouldn't be true to myself if I didn't mention it when talking about how I turned my life around.
A church can also be a great place to meet easy-going people looking to make friends, if you can leave your intellectual ego at the door. Not to mention meet potential dates who aren't deeply into modern hookup culture.
I think you would have got a better reaction if you had kept it vague / respectful of other creeds. Stated like that, it is effectively proselytism - which I understand is something your creed might encourage, but most people are wont to react badly to people telling them what to believe in.
Next time, if you replace that sentence with “I concentrated on my faith rituals”, you will likely not get any bad reaction.
>Next time, if you replace that sentence with “I concentrated on my faith rituals”, you will likely not get any bad reaction.
Why should he have to deny or mask his own faith when speaking with himself?
After all it is a list he created to give to his younger self....Could you just imagine yourself going back in time and masking your own faith to your younger self, on account suggesting to yourself what faith to practice may result in a bad reaction..from yourself.
He was talking about advice he would give to his younger self.
Yeah, the Christian faith as it is popularly practiced, has a bad reputation for being pushy about their creed ... but I don't think this guy is doing that.
I'll flip it the other way. People in the West don't feel as defensive about Buddhism, or even mindfulness meditation. Almost everyone who has some initial success with mindfulness meditation methods (like vipassana) will go around trying to tell everyone how awesome life-changing it is. I went through such a period as well, wrote a bunch about it on Quora, before settling down.
I think it's great that you made your point very clear. It's your experience, your decision, and you shouldn't self-censor just so that intolerant people on the Internet won't get offended.
I think this depends on the country. In mine, young people who go to church tend to be a bit intense. But readers will know the scene in their own area.
Do you attribute the benefit to a meditative process which has been studied, or peace of mind (I suppose this overlaps), or God choosing to grant you relief by virtue of worship
When I think back on how bad it got for me at my worst points, it does seem miraculous how far I've come. When I first started praying, I was so far down I'd wound up in a mental hospital, and I made a promise to God/myself that if I ever got out of the situation I was in, that I'd become a believer (was a firm atheist growing up). 10 years later, I have a successful career and a loving family, and my difficult past seems like a different lifetime. I fully intend to stick to the promise I made back then.
That said, I also believe that it wouldn't have been possible without me taking a lot of actions and working to better my situation. In my mind, it's like God held the door open, but I had to push myself to actually step through it.
So to answer your question directly, I don't believe it would've been possible without some form of divine assistance, like if I was just talking to myself (as in meditation).
> I made a promise to God/myself that if I ever got out of the situation I was in, that I'd become a believer
I don't think Christian belief is meant to be contingent on perceived debt over wordly affairs. That said, the relationship of faith, worship and salvation arguably has debt woven into it, unless you're a Calvinist or the like, in which case, nothing you do can guarantee salvation. It seems afterlife is a pretty popular motivation to believe, but then some religions have no afterlife yet still have followers.
> I don't believe it would've been possible without some form of divine assistance
Then effectively you have a faith that it would have been impossible to pull through without divine intervention? Since you couldn't really know. Some can claim to have pulled through breakdowns without.
I feel there's a kind of vanity in the God-found-my-car-keys convictions of miraculous intervention while people, including children, can suffer in excess until their demise, prayer notwithstanding. It says: God's plan is for others to suffer, and for me to get special treatment, because I'm a meaningful cog in his plan which cannot be comprehended. That's how he prioritizes. Or alternatively: I believe those people don't suffer as much as is perceived, if they have faith (that's a popular one). Or another alternative: their mortal suffering doesn't matter, salvation is the only thing that does (which would undermine the rationale in praying for mortal relief)
I mean I totally agree with your second paragraph, however I've found that protestant "mega churches" are typically the better ones for that simply because they are FAR more open minded to different interpretations, and have a broader age group. I was catholic so it was just 50-80 year old women and men and the militant families.
For your first paragraph, you're attributing something you can't explain to another thing you can't explain. The events that occur in your life are through sheer coincidence, not by divine providence. I know this is a pointless argument because you'll never agree, but you should come to terms with the fact that at best, god is a deist god. He doesn't influence the outcome of anything. It is you who does everything.
A church can also be a great place to meet easy-going people looking to make friends, if you can leave your intellectual ego at the door. Not to mention meet potential dates who aren't deeply into modern hookup culture.