What are some books that will make me believe in God and the Church...

What are some books that will make me believe in God and the Church? I feel a great emptiness inside and don't know how to deal with it

Attached: pieta.jpg (799x800, 89K)

Other urls found in this thread:

archive.org/stream/Garrigou-LagrangeEnglish/God_ His Existence and His Nature (vol. 1) - Garrigou-Lagrange, Reginald, O.P_#page/n5/mode/2up
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

The Bible?

Go to a church.

Not one of those suburban neo-christian rock churches where people are clapping their hands--go to the one down the street that is quaint and takes in maybe 10 or 20.

Accept Christ as he accepts you.

Religion won't fill your emptiness, it will just bring you greater anxiety. There are so many divisions and theological disagreements even within Christianity that you could study them for years and arrive nowhere. Trust me, I did.

What did you do after you left religion? How do you deal with your angst and existential despair?

If you feel empty inside you aren't going to fucking fix that believing in superstition, at best you could trick yourself into forgetting. Ignoring problems only makes them harder.

I don't think you need a book. I think you need a life or possibly a therapist.

Become life affirming

go to a SSPX church

read that too
archive.org/stream/Garrigou-LagrangeEnglish/God_ His Existence and His Nature (vol. 1) - Garrigou-Lagrange, Reginald, O.P_#page/n5/mode/2up

Start with the Greeks.

I went back to non-religious philosophy, focused on social and economic shit to give me a different perspective. I wouldn't call myself well-adjusted, I'm mildly depressed most of the time and lack motivation. But honestly, Catholicism worked for like a year while I could fool myself I actually believed it. It's like an infatuation, it passess with time and then you're crashing hard. I simply couldn't swallow the doctrine, and I'm the kind of guy who applied to a Jesuit university and studied Aquinas during that phase, I was determined to figure shit out.

Don't go looking for false consolation. Read religious works, have an open mind, yearn for truth and try to understand, but don't con yourself. Don't exploit your own vulnerability. I believe that is what Jesus would have called seed sown on bad soil.

But I have a life. I go to a good university. There are a number of people who call me their friend. My family cares about me. I have a life most would consider a "good life". I just don't feel like this life is fulfilling at all, but I feel bad complaining because I recognize the fact that most people would consider my life "good" and that I wouldn't want to trade places with most people in this world.

I'm not very well-read, but I'm sure other people who have thought about this more deeply than I have have written about this feeling. So just give me some book suggestions and don't patronize me by suggesting I have no life.

Is that Nietzsche?

Interesting. I think I'd probably end up like you. Perhaps trying to become religious would just be an act of self-deception.

Contact a local Catholic Parish and ask if you can schedule a meeting with a priest. I feel like the best and simplest thing you could do right now is talk with a man who wants to help :)

don't lost your time in christianity.
Read the left hand of darkness (1969, Ursula K. Le Guin) and go taoist.

The problem with reading/learning about religion is that the more you read/learn the less you'll believe.

This.

psyche

Mere Christianity builds up a minimum of Christian belief(including sexual ethics) which leaves room for most of the major churches. Start there.

I'm going to tell you this right now user, the personal God of the Abrahamic faiths does not exist, what does exist is a horrid mental parasite that leeches the good nature out of healthy empathetic people and encourages irrational hatred of others for no justifiable reason. Traditional morals have some merit, the whole of Christian teachings cannot be accepted by anyone with a conscience. The god of the OT and NT is not the creator of our universe, and I've seen no evidence that in death we will pass on to his Kingdom. Save yourself the trouble, if you really want theism study neo-platonism and vedanta but the elim materialists will attack you endlessly and cast doubt into your soul. Be extremely careful with what you invest time into spiritually, there's an unbelievably awful price to pay when it turns out to be bullshit

>implying Christianity is incompatible with the Daodejing and Zhuangzi

it is completely incompatible with the Daodejing

Well I'm Catholic and find the Daodejing to be almost identical to much of Catholic spirituality, e.g. the writings of St. John of the Cross.

Give examples of incompatibility.

Whether you can bring yourself to believe in God or not, the community of a church could help you with your feelings of emptiness. Having a support network is a great way to lift some weight off your shoulders. And supporting others is a great way to give your life purpose.

This only happens when your religion is based on very shoddy intellectual foundations or when you have a gullible and unstable mind that too readily accepts contrary opinions.

>This only happens when your religion is based on very shoddy intellectual foundations
always ;)

>Well I'm Catholic and find the Daodejing to be almost identical to much of Catholic spirituality
yes, most Christians try to call other faiths devilry and then coopt what they can to convert people this is why Catholics worship statues and living humans instead of their god
>Give examples of incompatibility
The Dao is not a personal God, no one has ever heard a prayer or prayed to the Dao, Wei Wu Wei has absolutely nothing to do with turn the other cheek, good and evil being born from one another and basically void and nothing interesting to a Sage is not compatible with Christianity, skillful forgetfulness is never at any point advocated for by Christ, prayer is never at all demanded or spoken of in Daoism, there is no apocalyptic undertone or messiah, the Self is literally void and empty in daoism hence its ability to be formless, the Daodejing is a manual for advisors to Kings and Emperors, the Bible is a book condemning Earthly authorities as bastions of evil, going so far as to prophecy the fall of Rome and all the worldly powers convering on the Israelites to be smited by God or made to submit, the Daodejing doesn't advocate this. The Daoist sage is essentially an anarcho-monarchist who advocates extreme simplicity, ruling from afar, not meddling, not bragging, only fighting when its necessary, no strong emotions. Christianity explicitly calls for holy war in multiple passages of the bible and condemns homosexuals, gays, jews, pagans and magicians.

The Daoist ancients were basically unspooked pagans who saw the world as a straw dog (sacrificial nothing) and saw the people as straw dogs as well. The Daoist sage talks about not fearing what others fear, including good and evil, and not heeding social norms while the Christian bible explicitly exalts good, condemns evil, fears evil, and encourages conformist behavior from top-bottom and even says Christians should blindly follow their leaders while privately only worshiping god. There's endless more, like Zhuangzi admiring and praising a thief, like Zhuangzi implying that consciousness is ephemeral but also transcendent and immanent all at once, the Dao is just a sign that points towards the underlying thing, God has a name which is why the tetragrammaton was created, his name is Lord, Yahweh, Elohim, El, the most high, Yeshua etc, the Dao has nothing like this.

No one knows where the Dao comes from or where it goes, God comes from Heaven and ends on Earth in New Jerusalem when the eschaton is imanentized. The Dao is mysterious and intangible, form emerges from void and disintegrates back into it, that is its process. God is explicitly pure spirit, so he is ineffable but still vaguely tangible, he produces void and matter and souls and is clearly Lording over them. The Dao does not Lord itself over anything. I mean you really have to be a shallow fucking perrenialist dork to think that's even remotely similar.

Jesus Christ not a single recommendation yet. Try some later novels by Graham Greene, in particular "the power & the glory"

Jordan Peterson's Maps of Meaning

that's because God is dead you fucking twit

I believe dostoevsky was an atheist turned christian. He wrote crime and punishment but i wouldnt recommend that one. Ive started the brothers karamazov and id say so far its amazing and has a lot to say about christianity atheism and moral ethics. Id also reccomend jordan petersons 12 rules for life. Great easy read that has some amazing references to look into.

>umm like i read this like neechy quote and he like umm proved that god is dead

Fall in love with a girl who loves Jesus.
Simple

God is dead, religious congregations have shrunk massively in all western nations, people can share information about religious faiths and their cult nonsense easily now. no one who has access to wikipedia articles on skepticism or has been raised in a secular home is going to go back to bible bashing you dumb fucking faggot
>insulting Nietzsche
scared cattle creature, late nihilist LARPing bugman

Seriously, I recommend Buddhism over Christianity to fill the void. Meditation guarantees you spiritual experiences, which is much more fulfilling than any spiritual or philosophical idea.

it guarantees you hallucinations and self-hypnosis

>it guarantees you hallucinations and self-hypnosis
Nope. It allows you access to the raw sensory input that makes up your experience. Allowing you to see the extent to which we weave this data into narratives that aren't objectively true.

All of these aspects of Daoism you mention can be reconciled with Christianity to varying degrees.

>The Dao is not a personal God

No, but nowhere in the Daodejing or the Zhuangzi is there an assertion that the transcendent Way or Dao is not personal, but in fact there are hints that it might be. For example, Section II of Zhuangzi:

>But I do not know what makes them the way they are. It would seem as though they have some True Master, and yet I find no trace of him. He can act - that is certain. Yet I cannot see his form. He has identity but no form. [...] It would seem as though there must be some True Lord among them. But whether I succeed in discovering his identity or not, it neither adds to nor detracts from his Truth.

Ultimately, it does not matter that the Dao is not seen as personal. You can approach God in various ways. One is through this metaphysical or mystical path where God is revealed as the transcendent Source and Sustainer of all things, and from this light He is not seen as personal but as an impersonal Essence. The Form of the Good in Platonism is also impersonal, but that did not prevent the Church Fathers from reconciling it with Christian teaching.

>no one has ever heard a prayer or prayed to the Dao

The Zhuangzi speaks of prayer approvingly in a few places, and even criticises those who condemn the use of prayer. Sure prayer may not be addressed to the Dao as such, just as prayer is not addressed to the Form of the Good as such; but it is not difficult to reconcile the Dao with the Christian teaching of the One God to whom all prayer is ultimately addressed.


>good and evil being born from one another and basically void and nothing interesting to a Sage

In Daoism there is clearly a distinction between Follower of the Way, the Man of Virtue, the Perfect Man, etc., and the petty or wicked man. When the texts criticise "good and evil" they are usually criticising mere human perception of good and evil, mere social conventions, trying to impose one's taboos on others, etc. Christ also criticises the pharisees for such narrow-minded thinking. The Bible begins with the Fall of Man, which comes when Adam desires the "knowledge of good and evil". Though Christianity certainly acknowledges the distinction between good and evil, it condemns judgementalism and the condemnation of others.

>skillful forgetfulness is never at any point advocated for by Christ

Therefore I say to you, be not solicitous for your life, what you shall eat, nor for your body, what you shall put on. Is not the life more than the meat: and the body more than the raiment?

Behold the birds of the air, for they neither sow, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns: and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not you of much more value than they? And which of you by taking thought, can add to his stature by one cubit? And for raiment why are you solicitous? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they labour not, neither do they spin. But I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these. And if the grass of the field, which is today, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, God doth so clothe: how much more you, O ye of little faith?

Be not solicitous therefore, saying, What shall we eat: or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the heathens seek. For your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you. Be not therefore solicitous for tomorrow; for the morrow will be solicitous for itself. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.

-

Now it came to pass as they went, that he entered into a certain town: and a certain woman named Martha, received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sitting also at the Lord's feet, heard his word. But Martha was busy about much serving. Who stood and said: Lord, hast thou no care that my sister hath left me alone to serve? speak to her therefore, that she help me.

And the Lord answering, said to her: Martha, Martha, thou art careful, and art troubled about many things: But one thing is necessary. Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her.

-

And another of his disciples said to him: Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said to him: Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead. And when he entered into the boat, his disciples followed him: And behold a great tempest arose in the sea, so that the boat was covered with waves, but he was asleep. And they came to him, and awaked him, saying: Lord, save us, we perish.

And Jesus saith to them: Why are you fearful, O ye of little faith? Then rising up he commanded the winds, and the sea, and there came a great calm.

>prayer is never at all demanded or spoken of in Daoism

Yao was seeing the sights at Hua when the border guard of Hua said, "Aha - a sage! I beg to offer up prayers for the sage. They will bring the sage long life!"

Yao said, "No, thanks."

"They will bring the sage riches!"

Yao said, "No, thanks."

"They will bring the sage many sons!"

Yao said, "No, thanks."

"Long life, riches, many sons - these are what all men desire!" said the border guard. "How is it that you alone do not desire them?"

Yao said, "Many sons mean many fears. Riches mean many troubles. Long life means many shames. These three are of no use in nourishing Virtue - therefore I decline them."

The border guard said, "At first I took you for a sage. Now I see you are a mere gentleman. When Heaven gives birth to the ten thousand people, it is certain to have jobs to assign them. If you have many sons and their jobs are assigned them, what is there to fear? If you share your riches with other men, what troubles will you have? The true sage is a quail at rest, a little fledgling at its meal, a bird in flight who leaves no trail behind. When the world has the Way, he joins in the chorus with all other things. When the world is without the Way, he nurses his Virtue and retires in leisure. And after a thousand years, should he weary of the world, he will leave it and ascend to the immortals, riding on those white clouds all the way up to the village of God. The three worries you have cited never touch him, his body is forever free of peril. How can he suffer any shame?"

The border guard turned and left. Yao followed him, saying, "Please - I would like to ask you . . ."

"Go away!" said the border guard.

>there is no apocalyptic undertone or messiah

Not explicitly no. But there are a few places that sound like it, that hint at it:

"Hence, only he who is willing to give his body for the sake of the world is fit to be entrusted with the world.
Only he who can do it with love is worthy of being the steward of the world."

". . . Confucius and you are both dreaming! And when I say you are dreaming, I am dreaming, too. Words like these will be labeled the Supreme Swindle. Yet, after ten thousand generations, a great sage may appear who will know their meaning, and it will still be as though he appeared with astonishing speed."

Besides, it does not matter that there is no apocalypse or messiah in Daoism, any more than there not being one in Platonism or in Biology. It does not mean Daoism, Platonism, or Biology is incompatible with Christianity.

>the Self is literally void and empty in daoism hence its ability to be formless

Emptiness plays a key role in traditional Christian spirituality.

>he Daodejing is a manual for advisors to Kings and Emperors, the Bible is a book condemning Earthly authorities as bastions of evil, going so far as to prophecy the fall of Rome and all the worldly powers convering on the Israelites to be smited by God or made to submit, the Daodejing doesn't advocate this.

The Bible does not condemn earthly authority wholesale. In fact, it commands obedience to earthly authority insofar as it is legitimate. The Bible does offer advice to rulers:

"Wisdom is better than strength, and a wise man is better than a strong man. Hear therefore, ye kings, and understand: learn, ye that are judges of the ends of the earth. Give ear, you that rule the people, and that please yourselves in multitudes of nations: For power is given you by the Lord, and strength by the most High, who will examine your works, and search out your thoughts: Because being ministers of his kingdom, you have not judged rightly, nor kept the law of justice, nor walked according to the will of God . . .

The Zhuangzi is strongly critical of the rulers that the Chinese traditionally considered the most enlightened, e.g the Yellow Emperor. It also comments on the bad consequences of their poor government.

>The Daoist sage is essentially an anarcho-monarchist who advocates extreme simplicity, ruling from afar, not meddling, not bragging, only fighting when its necessary, no strong emotions. Christianity explicitly calls for holy war in multiple passages of the bible and condemns homosexuals, gays, jews, pagans and magicians.

The aim at the same ideal but from different angles. If you read the Book of Judges, you will see that the early Israelite society was anarchist, and the early Christian community The Daodejing and Zhuangzi deal with the ideal form of government when men live according to their inborn nature; the Old Testament with its laws and punishments is about correcting men who have strayed from their inborn nature, but the New Testament acknowledges that such laws and punishments are ineffective in bringing about a restoration of humanity to their true state of union with God.

>The Daoist ancients were basically unspooked pagans who saw the world as a straw dog (sacrificial nothing) and saw the people as straw dogs as well.

Christianity also sees the world as nothingness in one sense, and in another sense it sees it as God's beautiful creation. The Daodejing says:

"The world is a sacred vessel, which must not be tampered with or grabbed after.
To tamper with it is to spoil it, and to grasp it is to lose it."

>The Daoist sage talks about not fearing what others fear, including good and evil, and not heeding social norms while the Christian bible explicitly exalts good, condemns evil, fears evil, and encourages conformist behavior from top-bottom and even says Christians should blindly follow their leaders while privately only worshiping god.

Christ flouted social norms and so did the early Christians in refusing to worship the Roman Emperor - they faced execution rather than conformity. So you are simply wrong about this.

>There's endless more, like Zhuangzi admiring and praising a thief,

It doesn't praise him. It says that the thief is closer to the Way than the hypocritical "sage", and Christ says the same thing in saying that tax collectors and prostitutes are closer to the kingdom of heaven than the hypocritical pharisees.

>like Zhuangzi implying that consciousness is ephemeral but also transcendent and immanent all at once, the Dao is just a sign that points towards the underlying thing, God has a name which is why the tetragrammaton was created, his name is Lord, Yahweh, Elohim, El, the most high, Yeshua etc, the Dao has nothing like this.

Christian theology also acknowledges these realities. The Name of God is also ineffable, and we understand that the "names" we give him are only approximations, signs that "point towards the underlying thing."

>No one knows where the Dao comes from or where it goes, God comes from Heaven and ends on Earth in New Jerusalem when the eschaton is imanentized.

"The Spirit breatheth where he will; and thou hearest his voice, but thou knowest not whence he cometh, and whither he goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit."

>I mean you really have to be a shallow fucking perrenialist dork to think that's even remotely similar.

I'm not a perennialist. I don't think that Daoism and Christianity are essentially the same. But I think that Daoism contains truth which are also contained in Christianity, even if expressed in a different way. Of course there are parts of Christianity which Daoism takes no notice of, because Christianity is a divine revelation given at a certain point in history to certain people, so only some are aware of it; whereas Daoism is speaking exclusively of the universal Way which all men can approach in whatever stage of history. The fact that Laozi or Zhuangzi were not aware that the Way would be made flesh in Christ a few hundred years after they were born, does not mean that their Way is incompatible with Christ - in fact, they are ultimately identical. Christ is the Way, and if Laozi was around Galilee the time Christ was preaching, he himself would have acknowledged it:

What another has taught let me repeat:
"A man of violence will come to a violent end."
Whoever said this can be my teacher and my father.

Some possibilities:
1- you stop being a crybaby
2- you learn to accept life and all that it entails a la Nietzsche
3-stoicism, you realize that "death does not concern us"
4-you become an ironic gnostic like Harold Bloom
5-you read Deleuze and become a metaschizoid rhizome
6-you put yourself against hardship after hardship

There ya go OP.

The truths in this book has been an immense comfort to me throughout my entire life. It supports and clarifies the Bible (and given how many sects Christianity has produced, I think we can all agree some points needed clarification), providing new insight and understanding as to how Jesus can help us to be more happy, more fulfilled, people.

It's not that long, but it's certainly worth reading at least once. It's more of a coherent narrative than the Bible, fewer Psalms and rules for sacrifices, more stories about prophets and peoples determined to follow God, delivered in beautiful KJV-esqe prose.

2 Nephi 2:27: Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.

Attached: book_of_mormon.jpg (1000x1000, 99K)

What a horrible idea. The church turns more people off than it's worth.

Fuck off protestant
You need to go to church to receive the body and blood of Christ, and to be with your fellow believers as Matthew 18:20 discusses

I'm agnostic. If I wanted to roleplay, I'd go to /a/

St. Augustine’s Confessions. Oxford Annotated Study Bible.

Well if you could have bothered to hold to any fundamentals of the theology, maybe it would have worked better for you.

Supernal Triad, Deity above all essence, knowledge and goodness; Guide of Christians to Divine Wisdom; direct our path to the ultimate summit of your mystical knowledge, most incomprehensible, most luminous and most exalted, where the pure, absolute and immutable mysteries of theology are veiled in the dazzling obscurity of the secret Silence, outshining all brilliance with the intensity of their Darkness, and surcharging our blinded intellects with the utterly impalpable and invisible fairness of glories surpassing all beauty.

Let this be my prayer; but do, dear Timothy, in the diligent exercise of mystical contemplation, leave behind the senses and the operations of the intellect, and all things sensible and intellectual, and all things in the world of being and nonbeing, that you may arise by unknowing towards the union, as far as is attainable, with it that transcends all being and all knowledge.(1) For by the unceasing and absolute renunciation of yourself and of all things you may be borne on high, through pure and entire self-abnegation, into the superessential Radiance of the Divine Darkness.

How exactly did it turn out to be bullshit?

There are so many gods and religions OP,as a start you can read the holy books.Quran is actually one and not changed through the ages,and reading it is not a muslim thing-because most of the muslims don't read it.