Have You Heard?

Faith is just believing. Its not even hoping that something comes true...its just believing. :) Poetryman, I have faith that whatever comes will come and it will have been destined for me.:) Good read as always.

I hear people say they have a personal relationship with God and it makes me laugh. God doesn't want that, only people trying to convince themselves of God's existence would need to fool themselves with knowledge of God. Knowledge and belief are completely different things and in the case of Faith, they cannot exist together. Once you obtain knowledge of something, it no longer requires belief. You can fall from Grace and lose your faith, but you cannot disbelieve in what you know is real. That is why God never reveals himself o us. In order to gain entrance to Heaven, one must have faith. If God gave us knowledge by performing obvious miracles or showing himself to us, he would be stripping away our ability to have faith, for knowledge is the executioner of belief.
Sometimes I say I hope God does not exist because if he does I know I'm going to Hell. Of course that is a contradictory statement in a way because the reason I say I know I am going to Hell is based on my not actually believing. That lack of faith is not knowledge, it is a deduction based on the facts. I have neither faith nor knowledge of God, so as far as I know, there is no Hell for me to go to. If only my lack of knowledge could keep me out of Hell as well as it will keep me out of Heaven, but so would having knowledge keep me from Heaven. I just don't know what to believe...
JJ

Having a personal relationship with God sounds like blasphemy...but who is to say they are wrong. I am rather hoping that when I die I will get to choose my own heaven. Seems rather plausible as I have heard tales from people in near death situation...one died a few hours later.  But like Scrooge, it could have been that undigested piece of meat. Their experience, you know.

Or perhaps a metaphorical undigested piece of meat that has caused the soul some indigestion of it's own. I have often wondered what Heaven and Hell are like, if they are physical places for our souls to go or more a metaphorical state of mind, or soul, or whatever it is we have in the after-life. I really want their to be something, not just death and then nothingness. But that might be all there is. So we create a Heaven and Hell just so we can be less afraid of death. Even Hell seems like a better place than nothingness, but then that is why so many people take their sins for granted. I worry about mine. I am certain that Hell is my destiny because no matter how good of a person I am, my sins outweigh all of the positive things I've done and thought about doing. I really hope that part is wrong. To be held responsible for thoughts of sin even after choosing not to commit them just reeks of unfairness. That's the kind of thing that would make me not want to go to Heaven. I can't imagine worshipping a God that sits back and does nothing to prevent horrible things from happening to humans and then judges us for things we did not do, that we in fact rejected after thinking about them. Every time we make a choice between right and wrong, it doesn't matter? We commit a sin either way, by doing the sin or by choosing not to because we already thought it? That's not right!
Well, I am going to Hell...
JJ

heaven and hell, like the tooth fairy, are invented stories taught to children to make them fearful and too allow the man to control behaviour - I have no need for faith in a religious context. Alternatively I have my own belief system. There I go, ranting  again :-p

interesting and enjoyable read, got me thinking :-)

There's my dilemma, I've been in the middle, struggling with what I was raised to believe against what I have come to believe later in life. I am conflicted. I have friends who went in the other direction, who were anti-Christ wanna-be rock stars who would rather get high and lost in their dreams than consider praying to deities, but who are now born-again Christians. I can't believe that, and yet, it is a reality. Literally, the last people I ever thought would become B-A Christians, and here they are. The thing I can't figure out is what makes people believe. For several years one of my brothers was into a Hindu religion following a popular Guru. He was so mu into his faith he became a Yogi. He tried bringing me into it. I met the Guru and attended meditation several times, but in spite of hearing the wise words of the Guru, she never said anything to give me feelings similar to what my brother experienced or anything that made me want to accept any of that. Same thing with my BAC friends, no Heavenly epiphanies. I wrote this poem about 16 years ago and have been writing poems about faith since I started writing poetry 35 years ago. I will continue to struggle with it till I die. Then I will either die and not be enlightened or I will die and go to Hell.

Sir JJ. . .first and foremost, an excellent piece, questioning one's faith but to who or what to pledge that faith to remains the question. . .So once again I am enamored by your ink. . .

On a lighter note. . .I used to have faith in many things. . .some of it has been shattered but I'm sure with time, it'll be a part of me once again. . .Whatever you're searching for, JJ, I hope you find it. . .only you will know when it is presented to you. . .xoxo, Devlin;)

Than you for commenting and your words of wisdom Lyn!
JJ

i am a person with strong faith but i don't take that word to only have a direct connection to religion. i see you, and many people on this website as having a deep sense of faith, and this faith is in words. we can't know that what we say will have any effect on ourselves or others, and yet we feel constantly drawn to the paper out of a nearly desperate drive to communicate something from an inner world to the outer. we must employ some level of faith in this process because it implies that there is in fact something inside that needs to be expressed. some call it their message, their soul, their essence, but every artist feels it whether they can define it or not. as for heaven and hell i have a bit of a paradoxical view myself. i believe the only thing worth believing in is the physical reality i engage with on a day to day basis (which some might not call "faith" because our world physically exists to our senses, but anyone who knows even rudimentary quantum physics can attest to how volatile and fluid our seemingly concrete reality truly is). i am able to notice by contemplating and observing my Life that there is a law of attraction at place. whatever i put out into the world i attract more of into my own world. when my thoughts align with my values and intentions, that which i truly want manifests into my actual existence. if something goes out of balance and i choose not to acknowledge it or put forth effort to reach homeostasis once again, shit hits the fan. in the crudest sense i can explain what i believe in, i feel that we are all already dead and in the most liberating prison the Universe could ever conceive of. we live in a holographic world where heaven and hell are all a matter of how we choose every single day to build, destroy, re-build or transform or realities. this is the perfect form of heaven/hell in my eyes. one where every moment is a chance for redemption, and negative consequences can be felt and responded to and used as fuel for change. but if you don't have faith in our world as being one which is responsive to our manipulations, our desires and fears, then you may never try to lift yourself from a hell you have contrived, or truly appreciate the heaven you're already in. just some food for thought. thanks for the write!
-W

Wendy, thank you for one of the most interesting and intelligent responses I have ever gotten on a poem. My mind will be pondering this for some time to come. It has a ring of truth on a very deep level that I relate to in ways I am not prepared to reveal, but I fully comprehend.
JJ

FYI, I wrote this poem 16 years ago on June 6, 1999. It is one of many poems I have written over the years on the concept of religious faith. Having grown up a Catholic, it is a topic I had drilled into my head from birth, and so it is frequently in my thoughts for no particular reason. JJ

I believe if u have love, u already have Faith... U cannot see it, but u can feel it... So, there goes the saying, "God is Love, and Love is God..." You be blessed, jj...and please keep writing. Its lovely <3 it truely is.

Thank you for your comment and kind words! JJ

This is a very well written and thought out poem/essay on faith or the lack thereof. I usually read the the poem on religious views but don't comment very often mainly because I don't want to offend anyone or their views. That being said I believe questioning everything is the best way to test your faith because there will answer to some of your questions and the other ones you'll either disregard or take on faith.second hell is what you make it.think of some of the most evil people that lived on this earth. Have you done 1/100 of things they have done? Most likely not.
Faith is the power that shape our world in so many different ways.  Thanks for posting this it helped me to think about many things I have been neglecting.

Thanks for sharing

Interesting that you happened across this poem today, as I wrote it several years ago but just updated it yesterday. I have several poems questioning my faith that go back many years. Kinda comes along with the territory from growing up in a Catholic family, going to Catholic school and church, and being to smart to fall for dogma. I started questioning things at a very young age and got paddled in school for it. The list below is from chapter 5 of my book, "Seeds and Weeds"  
jj

Chapter 5: Faith: Search Within & Beyond

44: Silence of The Lamb

45: Great Unknown

46: Pass On True Freedom

47: A Question Of Faith

48: Have You Heard?

49: Distilled Belief

50: The Weight

51: Faith In What I Don’t Believe

52: Invisible Light

53: This Dream I Dreamt Last Night

54: The One On My Shoulder - Never Succumb

55: No End To The Flesh

56: Unwilling To Let Go

57: Touch

My spiritual-faith-based-poems-list...

https://deepundergroundpoetry.com/poems/63927-spiritual-faith-based-poems-list/

JJ