The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm a lurker, posting here because I'm struggling with a big issue of belief, faith, etc. I just needed to get this stuff out there, if anyone has any comments. I am even, truthfully, open to evangelization or proselytization -- and quite honestly, the weirder the better if you're going to offer up something. I will state that my religion of origin is Christianity, and I am doubtless formed by this. But ultimately I'm tired of this faith, I find the inter-denominational fights tiresome and useless, I have found each of the Christian sects (and I have explored more of them than most have ever even heard the name of) troublesome in certain ways, and would much rather look beyond the religion of the Nazarene if I were to adopt a new faith.
This is going to be a very stream-of consciousness diatribe, because that's what it was originally. I apologize for any uncharity towards anyone, and I ask for leniency because these issues seriously trouble me. I mean everything I write sincerely, not in a vicious or cruel way, but in an honest, open, and vulnerable way. I present them as true and necessary in the Victorian Sufi Buddha lite system, because they are true about my mental state and necessary for me to express in order to hopefully get help on that mental state. I make no warranties about their truth value relative to the world as it is, only that they fairly represent my feelings and are necessary to present in order to gain the most helpful feedback.
I'm a religious person but lately I've been losing my faith. I lost my faith in my youth but it didn't have this big of an impact on me then; after it returned and I lost it recently, it's been a big issue, a soul-rending, terrifying issue. Ultimately I've realized my problem with living without faith isn't about the supernatural but about ethics.
The big heart of my issue is moral certainty. I feel like we’re in a time of tremendous moral uncertainty and have been for at least a hundred years. I just want to be grounded in something greater than the whims of the present, to be solidly connected to something that might survive the values shift that’s going on. Something that doesn’t require me to say that everyone who lived more than 60 years ago was irredeemably evil, and that perhaps things that will someday be considered morally obligatory are not. A stance, perhaps even a tradition, that can survive the coming apocalypse. A true ark.
Something that affirms the significance of the human person above and beyond other species, something that says a human being, no matter how dull or how evil, is more significant than a dog. Something that says that a canine is not a "furbaby," and a child is much more significant than a pet.
And further, something that affirms that sexuality is real and significant and important, not something that should be wantonly thrown about or abused casually. Something that says sex with a committed partner is morally better than a one-night-stand. (I'm asking for a lot with this one.)
Something that says veganism is not morally obligatory. Some factory farming practices may be unnecessarily cruel, but I want something which says that the bare fact of raising and killing animals for meat or using them for eggs or milk is not intrinsically immoral.
Something that says that some forms of nationalism or patriotism are organic and valuable — that a positive nationalism, which values the positive and life-affirming aspects of one’s history and culture, is good and healthy and to be expected in a well-adjusted person. And conversely, that unhealthy nationalism, which seeks to oppress and trample over others in the name of one’s nation, is wrong. Something that says borders are real, but that ethnic supremacism is wrong.
Something, perhaps, if I’m optimistic, that offers a good answer to the abortion question.
There are all sorts of moral questions that are undecided in society. I want something that can give me a good answer to those questions, in continuity with people in the past who provided good answers to that question. I want to have an answer that rests on something greater than what I am accustomed to or am biased towards, and which someone who lived 500 years ago would at least find intelligible, even if they disagreed with it.
I’ve come to realize that answers to these questions is the real attraction to religion that I have. But I’m open to any reasonable answer.
"Most people seem to agree with something” is not a good enough answer for me. “Most people” have once upon a time agreed on things that “most people” today find utterly repugnant. I want something that can give me an answer based on something far greater than that. It seems as though we have no moral mooring and all of society is being drug along to accept whatever the people who currently have power in society think is right. And I think it may well have always been so.
But I want to believe in something deeper and richer than that. I want to believe that there is a greater moral purpose in life other than “follow the leaders, peasant,” or “look out for one’s own.” Because otherwise I have no grounding on which to base any of my judgments at all.
Like many, but certainly not all, who post on this forum, I am not a fan of the political persuasion commonly known as "wokeness." But if I have no grounds on which to object -- if I have no objective moral school from which to ground my rejection of this system of beliefs -- then I might as well become the wokest wokester who ever woked, as that might at least work to my benefit, or at the very least spare me the anguish of watching all of society adopt a group of beliefs I reject.
(This is perhaps a "selfawarewolves" moment, and I brace for the possibility that those who disagree with me might use this to mock or belittle me.)
Basically, I feel deeply morally uncertain and profoundly troubled. I don’t know what to believe about anything, even the things I feel strongly about. Because my feelings are not a relevant ground on which to base a moral judgment.
When Christians say to atheists, “what do you base your morality on?” I think the atheists often misinterpret the question. It’s not an attack, it’s a lament. Or at least it is to me. I wish to God I could have the moral certainty of an atheist I once met who publicly pronounced she wished Hell existed so Donald Trump could go there -- this is not a joke, this is an actual thing I once heard. This is a statement that even the most devout Christians would hesitate to make about their enemies in this day and age.
I think the old "where do you get your morals from" is interpreted as an attack because most people, even most atheists, haven’t taken the time to ponder the vacuousness of most moral judgments, even those made by political liberals about political conservatives like Trump. I think most atheists haven't pondered that the same chain of logic which leads them to reject theism would just as easily lead them to reject ethical realism. Most people believe what they've been taught, and do not question it.
I want something that is not vacuous, and I want it quickly. I don’t know how much longer I can stand feeling utterly unmoored to anything, because I feel like it's eating me alive.
So, anyway, proselytize to me, sell me your belief system. Beyond the realm of religion, I am also interested in various moral theories and would be open to hearing yours. I am uncomfortable with pure act utilitarianism, particularly because, on such a view, organic relationships between friends and family members don't weigh more than one's obligations to strangers (all pleasure and suffering being equal), but I would be interested in other forms of consequentialism that don't eschew the moral preference towards such relationships, or deontology, if that's your thing.
I'm an atheist, with a protestant background, so I am not going to be much help in suggesting a religion for you. But I will observe that it seems you want two somewhat contradictory things: (1) a faith that affirms things you already believe and does not prescribe anything you don't believe in; (2) a faith that will provide you with moral certainty about right and wrong.
Somewhat cynically, I see this taking you in the direction of most religious believers, where you embrace a religion and adapt it to your beliefs rather than the other way around. Hence liberal Christians who are certain that Jesus was woke, and conservative Christians who are certain he was not. Or in the example I mentioned in the Brandon Sanderson thread, woke liberal Western Muslims who somehow find a queer-friendly pro-feminist message in the words of Mohammad.
If I were really going to seriously embrace a religion as the Word of God (or some other source of absolute truth), it seems to me I would have to accept everything it teaches, even if it conflicts with my personal intuitions. I would be very suspicious of a religion that purports to be a source of moral certainty and absolute truth that just happens to coincide with all my own beliefs.
Really this depends on the more foundational stuff it teaches, no? For instance Christianity puts a lot more stock in what Jesus taught than what your pastor teaches, and you could well decide your pastor is wrong on some point because Jesus said otherwise.
Of course, it becomes a bit circular if you decide that "trust what Jesus taught" is itself a principle taught by the pastor, which is why I mention foundational (or hierarchical) beliefs. "Listen to Jesus" is probably a more foundational principle to the denomination than the nature of the sacrament, or whatever it is that you disagree with your pastor about.
At a certain point you do have to bite the bullet and admit that Mohammad wasn't queer-friendly, or otherwise deny your own personal intuitions, but I think doing so is less "I need to conform with the religion I have decided is true" and more "I need to resolve internal contradictions in my own beliefs." The Quran is pretty clear that homosexuality and transsexuality are bad, so once those internal contradictions are resolved, you're either left with "Mohammad was not queer-friendly" or "the Quran isn't fully correct." I don't think those people that you mentioned have even tried to resolve those contradictions--their beliefs seem (to me, on the outside) to basically just be naked status-signaling.
The issue is really that it's simply impossible for a healthy person to embrace something as absolute truth. Doubt is a good, fundamental part of human cognition, and you can't just order your brain to never doubt something just because you like it, at least while remaining mentally healthy. Even if you've decided that a given church is for you, there will still be plenty of critical thinking involved regarding how to interpret their teachings, how to prioritize them, etc. and even allowing yourself to think critically in these ways means denying that that church is 100% absolute truth.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link