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- I was raised as a Christian but began having doubts shortly after I learned about Santa Clause
- God — let alone Jesus — just didn’t make sense
- But when I was 14, I had an “epiphany” (though I had no name for it at the time) — I realized that my own existence didn’t make any sense either
- Even though, I was the only thing that I knew for sure actually did exist…
- I tried to explain this back in the chapters regarding “SELF”
- Think about it — we all take our own existences for granted…
- Consequently, I also began to doubt the status of modern human wisdom — modern science seemed to be missing something important — critical even!
- I still wanted to believe in God and Jesus — and my epiphany re-opened that door for me…
- So, I kept wondering and searching
- 20 years later, a new job had me making scores of new friends — many of whom were “Born Again Christians”
- While they didn’t convince me that Jesus was who he said he was, they did convince me that being “born again” was a real — and life changing — event
- They also convinced me that all I had to do to have that life-changing experience MYSELF was to believe that Jesus was who he said he was and then “surrender” to him…
- Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to do either
- Mostly, I became convinced that their epiphany brought on an underlying, but overwhelming, sense of well-being — that despite the surface pain, all was really right with the world (and God)!
- That nothing else really mattered
- I became essentially convinced that whether they were right or not about Jesus, their beliefs made life much better for them
- Their dividends reminded me of some experiences that I had as a kid — and later, with my wife
- When I was 10, I broke a window and my Mom urged me to not tell Dad when he got home — Dad had developed a drinking problem
- But Dad was a stickler for honesty — so when he got home. I told him anyway
- He thanked me for telling him — and, all was right with the world!
- Today, I can do something similar with my wife
- It seems like I always have things to worry about, or that I just feel uncomfortable about, that I’m subconsciously reluctant to tell Lauren (my wife) about
- But once I recognize that reluctance and tell her about it, all is right with the world!
- I assume that’s the basic idea with Catholic confession
- Somewhere in there, I began reading the Bible
- I read a lot of the Old Testament, and eventually all of the New
- I also began reading a lot about the so-called prophecies of the Old Testament
- I was already biased in favor of the different forms of extra sensory perception and would have majored in parapsychology had my college allowed for it — in other words, I can’t claim to be objective about this stuff…
- So, I slowly began to think that the Jewish people were on to something important, but that the Sanhedrin was basically political, and led the Jewish people astray…
- But then, I do suspect that
- the Christian Bible is largely accurate
- There is such a thing as prophecy (“precognition”)
- Jesus really was the prophesied Jewish Messiah.
- The Jewish “Tanakh” (the Christian “Old Testament”) is a history book that slowly becomes more and more literal
- Even stories like Noah’s Arc represent actual events
- The “New Testament” is basically all literal and accurate
- And again, I do believe in “Magic” — somehow, cause and effect is not absolute…
- And, I’ve been amazed at the Bible’s apparent agreement with scientific discoveries — especially, where the stars were in 2BC…
https://what-it-s-all-about.life/the-shroud/