This comment by Scott in the concerned ministers thread,
>Now by "heat", I am referring to residual life of the soul which survived all previous stompings of the spiritual jack boots. Faint vestiges of this life at times can still be observed in the form of traces of independent thinking, or the ability to doubt the Church, etc. etc..< <br>


I found this article quite interesting. [asterisks are mine to indicate emphasis]


The Role of Doubt in the Life of the Soul
Doubt is not the enemy of faith, blind fanaticism is.

Religious leaders such as myself spend most of their waking days promoting faith. We may be wrong in overlooking the advantages of doubt. Let's think for a minute about the role of doubt in the life of the soul.

We all have moments, hours, whole days, even years when we seem to be overcome by the absence of God.

For example, did you ever suffer a serious illness and pray that God would help you, only to feel that God was not helping at all? Did you feel that the symptoms of the illness and the physical pain were becoming stronger and stronger and have no feeling whatever of the healing power of God?

Or did you ever find yourself captured by loneliness, longing to be with a particular person, hungering for friendship or simple contact with other people. Did you feel cut off from your friends and relatives, separated by miles, or by misunderstanding and find that the whole idea of a loving God seemed completely irrelevant or unreal?

Did you ever find yourself in the middle of a worship service and realize that the minister, or the hymnbook, or the Scriptures were saying something that you just couldn't believe?

When you think about it, there are moments when all of us must be counted among the unbelievers. And how does the church most often respond to our occasional lack of faith? Our nagging doubt? Well, unfortunately, the church has a way of making us feel guilty that we have these honest doubts.

*Religious leaders have 1000 different ways of making people feel bad about their unbelief. We often seem to be condemning the unbeliever; we imply that there must be something wrong with your intellect, or your character, or your lifestyle if you cannot accept the teachings of the church unreservedly.

*This is unfortunate. For when you think about it, a healthy sense of skepticism is something to be thankful for.

In the first place I must say from personal experience that unbelievers often exhibit qualities of honesty, courage and integrity which many believers lack. Often the honest agnostic can make you think harder and search deeper than you would otherwise have done.

The presence of a sincere skeptic can make a conversation about God all the more challenging and enticing. But more important than the fact that I enjoy engaging in conversations with those who are honest enough to share their doubt, there is strong biblical evidence to suggest that God appreciates a degree of skepticism in each of us.
We usually think of Jesus as a paragon of faith, but just consider how well acquainted Jesus was with doubt.

From the beginning to the end, Jesus understood the dimensions of doubt. Not a day had passed following his baptism and the beginning of his public ministry before he wandered off into the desert to wrestle with the temptations of the devil. We underestimate the significance of this story if we think that Jesus easily or casually overcame temptation. The battle with Satan was actually a battle with the demonic forces of his own personality.

And when he had finished struggling with his own temptation, Jesus immediately returned to his native land to challenge the highest religious authorities of his time. Though we see him in hindsight as a man of faith, those who were responsible for keeping the faith in those days saw Jesus as a rebellious upstart who would replace their cherished traditions with his own radical ideas. In their eyes Jesus was the world's most dangerous heretic; for he dared to doubt their particular version of the faith. And that is why his disciples were often accused of being atheists; they dared to challenge many a faith of that day.

And then at the end of his life, as he made his sacrifice upon the cross, Jesus himself was swept up in his own sense of God's absence. Faced by his own suffering and pain, he cried out: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

There is no more moving moment in the Bible that this, when the very Son of God is caught up in the deep darkness of doubt. And notice whom Jesus said were the most blessed of God's creatures. Rather than taking the side of those who are unquestioning in their faith, Jesus said: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied."

*Jesus did not identify with the smug representatives of a later day moral majority, but was more often found with those on the margins of faith.

*I'm not saying that we should all become self-proclaimed atheists, but it is crucial that we see doubt is not the enemy of faith. Doubt is not the opposite of faith. The opposite of faith is mindless fanaticism. A mindless, uncritical acceptance of religious authority is the real enemy of faith.

Today it is clear our way of life is threatened not by the skeptics but by the true believers who insist that they have the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And woe to anyone who chooses a different path. Doubt is not the opposite of faith, it is faith's constant friend and helper.

In the first place the unbelievers among us help by keeping our faith honest. Those who are aware of God's absence keep us from making too many easy promises and help us avoid pious platitudes. Every religious community needs an honest skeptic or two. Otherwise its members may fall victim of smug self-righteousness or pie in the sky idealism.

The church needs the unbeliever to keep it honest.

And we all need the unbeliever within ourselves. It is our skepticism that keeps us growing and learning, reaching beyond our present horizons. Just as scientists can never be content with knowledge inherited from a previous age, neither can the true pilgrims of the spirit rest easy with tradition. We've got to test every tradition and measure every belief against the hard evidence of our experience here today.

If I were an insurance salesman promising to sell you a policy that would cost you less, pay out more, and at the same time increase the value of your investment more rapidly than the stock market, you'd have every right to doubt my word. If I were a used car salesman offering you a real cream puff with low mileage at a price far below it's blue book value, you'd have a duty and a responsibility to check out my representations. Why is it then, when we come to church, we often leave on the shelf at home those same qualities of skepticism and native intelligence that serve us so well in every other realm of our lives?

*I believe that God would rather have us wrestle with our doubts and face our fears directly rather than say the Apostles Creed by rote 100 times every day. God would rather have us follow Jesus into the wilderness of the real world than stay within the sanctuary of an established faith.

*Therefore do not let your doubt hide under a bushel, rather let it shine. Let your lack of faith come forward so that you, and others, can grapple with it, learn from it, and by God's grace, let it lead towards faith which is deeper, richer and stronger than before.


The website: http://www.godweb.org/doubt.htm

GM, have you ever thought about how often guilt is used in the Holdeman church? My husband and I were talking about it today and it is one of the major things to get over when you leave...because it is SO ingrained and instilled from little on up. To feel guilty for anything that is 10 degrees off from church doctrine...anything you do that is somewhat different or not "mainstream"...so many, many little things that can just be differences in personalities and then you feel guilty..and then you get to wade through all that guilt and try to get it into proper perspective and move on and it can take awhile unless you just quit caring completely. There is so much insecurity and lack of self esteem and self confidence in the church (in a weird way) because anything resembling that must be pride and we feel guilty...Is it any wonder we feel messed up for a year or years after we come out of it?

Yes, I have thought about it many times, Cupcake. Some good thoughts there. You could say that guilt is the code word, because everything is judged, then if you don't measure up, you feel guilty. With all the judging, it's all too often taking the place of the work of the Spirit.

To add to that, my son and I were talking today(he has never been a member but he is open minded and has good critical thinking skills)and we were discussing - How do we know that what we were taught is truth? Wasn't that intended to be more of an individual matter than a collective(denominational) matter? (we didn't reach any conclusions)

Here's your answer. It's always an individual matter. Even if you leave it to the denomination to decide, who chose your denomination....you did. The answer you get depends on the denomination you chose so ultimately, it is always an individual matter, that is of course, unless you only stay with the denomination you were raised with and never exerted any decision in the matter, but who would believe in something like that?

Guilt is a clue one hasn't done their homework yet {not the homework of a church or belief} but the personal accountable homework that faces guilt and beliefs. If there's guilt yet, there's unfinished business between a person and their guilt

In more sobering terms, guilt still believes what makes it feel guilty. To any contemplating person, this should throw up a red flag. To "quit caring completely" is dangerous, cheating, dishonest, a lie to oneself, because the ghost of their guilt has not been given up yet. This is more sicker yet, because now there is not the honest check of guilt towards its belief. But to show how crazy it gets and how sly belief is, it teaches guilt is the first sin. NO, NO, NO! guilt is your redemption.

In short, personal Homework gets rid of the both the guilt and the belief that causes the guilt.

Brent

I might add that ridicule and rebellion towards a belief has the same outcome as not caring towards it does.

Ridicule and rebellion are good things to hide guilt with. This should put the fear in anyone that cares.

O, and by the way, fear is another honest check.

Brent

BrentU, good thoughts there..they make astonishing sense to me for probably the first time.

Brent, I don't know if I quite follow your logic there although I can understand some of what you are saying but, I think we are talking about a different kind of guilt here. Like the men would feel guilty for wearing brown shoes or belt to church, the girls would(should?) feel guilty for wearing sandals to the girls' preparatory class, you know, things like that. Things that a person should not have to feel guilty about. If we wouldn't have grown up Holdeman those things would be totally insignificant and would not be characterized as sin or pride or whatever. We can wear those things any day of the week and it's perfectly fine but no,no, not on Sunday.

Your quote - [guilt still believes what makes it feel guilty.] would prove that point. We know that anyone that leaves a 'cult' usually has to be de-programed because they are feeling too guilty for leaving what they have been taught.

As far as your second post, I think you are referring to using logic and/or critical thinking. In fact, Jesus taught and encouraged critical thinking. He often challenged those around him with questions that required critical thinking. Jesus was concerned that his followers learn how to think about a variety of issues. If he had only cared about sharing facts He would have taught much differently. Critical thinking, problem solving, and real life applications were His goals.

GM,

I'm not talking about a different guilt. There are dress codes and protocols for attire in every institution with authority in the world, and these things even filter down to restaurant and private clubs. If the Holdemans don't like brown shoes and belts, that's their business. But our business is to not be kidded that these small things of shoes and belts can make people feel real guilt. You act like some things have no power of guilt in them.

Listen GM concerning sandals and bare feet. Do you know feet are a sexual fetish for some people. I don't suppose the people that walked the hill country of Jesus' land would count much for this fetish with their dirty, grimy, cakey cracked feet, but who's to say. Anyway the young ivory flesh of porcelain angelic feet with toenails paint a bright orange, are pretty, don't you say?

My point is, I suppose the Holdemans would let you get by with hill country feet and sandals where there wasn't a dress code.

GM, don't talk to me about so called "Critical thinking" "skills" until you begin to acknowledge the facts and lines of this world that are suppose to be your schoolmaster in taking you to a higher and spiritual understanding.

Brent