Is it impossible to lose religious faith?

"For Christ's sake, get your faith back, if you say you had it. Perhaps it's a matter of you never having it. As they say, you can't lose what you never had."

This was posted on another thread earlier today. It's an often-used theist refrain - a kind of discursive rip cord - that has cropped up in many discussions over the years as a go-to response to my experiential knowledge of being a Christian and, consequently, my insight into the nature and effect of faith.

Is genuine Christian faith really something that is impossible to lose? Is not having it - having had it before - proof that one did not have it before?

It seems like a rhetorical gimmick to me that seeks to fend off or sidestep discussion about faith.

@fmf said
"For Christ's sake, get your faith back, if you say you had it. Perhaps it's a matter of you never having it. As they say, you can't lose what you never had."

This was posted on another thread earlier today. It's an often-used theist refrain - a kind of discursive rip cord - that has cropped up in many discussions over the years as a go-to response to my experiential knowledge ...[text shortened]...
It seems like a rhetorical gimmick to me that seeks to fend off or sidestep discussion about faith.

This thread is worthy of a bump, for my name's sake, since no one thought it worthy of a comment after you created this unworthy-of-a-comment thread. Therefore I'm going to make it worth your while, your royal worthiness. But you could have at least named who posted the comment, for which you deemed worthy of having a thread of its own. I'm going to assume you did not create it for sarcastic use, against me. But if you did, read no further.

Without sidestepping it, I'm stepping directly onto the field. Allow us, you and I, to sow a field of faith. But first we must prepare the proper soil for receiving the seeds of faith, and then watch them grow, or wilt. You will be the soil receiving the seed. And after having plowed the soil, I will do the sowing using my own seeds.

Why the soil? You claim to have been a man of faith at one time, but are not now, since you say that you wised up, and deemed the faith you had acquired unworthy of your newfound "intellectualism." I need your undivided attention for a faithful discussion. Were you not an intellectual when you received and accepted the seed of faith?

Does it sound as if I have correctly generalized a very brief summary of the history of your split from the faithful days, and for which you currently do not have the same faith you once had? In other words, as the everyday street folk would say, "you freaked out, and then split."

In the beginning I had asked you, if I recall correctly, what drove the faith away from your possession? And I think you said, you came to realize that the faith you claimed to have was not worthy of you any longer, because you somehow, awakened as if from a nightmare, coming to the realization that it was more of a cult than a religion? Well, it was something to that effect, as I recall.

When you had the faith, did you buy into the "everything in the bible is literal, kind of faith?" Or did you independently cherry-pick from the Bible that which you were able to distinguish, at that time when you were less of an intellectual then when you threw out all that you had, faithfully, previously picked? What a rotten shame, you must have realized, in throwing away all those juicy Bing cherries you had spent so much time in picking. How much, time-wise, did you spend for being a Christian?

This is just getting to know the plow we are going to use in the experiment, if you would be so kind as to not sidestep the basic questioning above. In other words, please give me some details of the faith you had, so that we can properly identify it. And then see if this once-faith of yours went truant, since you do openly and clearly say, many times, that you lost the faith, since you no longer have it in your possession. It got away from you, somehow, once upon a time.

As far as the argument I'm ready to make, is that I will attempt to assert that faith can be both, impossible and possible to lose. And you will be the guinea pig, by using you as my example to experiment with, and then when we have finished, come to a fair and acceptable conclusion. After all, it's you that I have to convince, right?

To be sure that I have selected the right guinea pig, please tell me what do you maintain, for the record. Faith is impossible to lose once we gain it? Or that it is possible to lose the faith we acquire?

This is not my best plowing, for sure. But it should be enough for the bump you're getting.

Now tell me what you really want? To debate/discourse on the lost and found of faith possession? Then prove to me that you were not a fake Christian, to begin with, and truly had what it takes. Give me some good examples of the kind of faith you claimed to have had, seriously. No sidestepping! Go directly to the confessional booth, and confess your "sin" of eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge....how many apples, when, why, and who is responsible for your departure from faith?

@pettytalk said
This thread is worthy of a bump, for my name's sake, since no one thought it worthy of a comment after you created this unworthy-of-a-comment thread. Therefore I'm going to make it worth your while, your royal worthiness. But you could have at least named who posted the comment, for which you deemed worthy of having a thread of its own. I'm going to assume you did not crea ...[text shortened]... it of knowledge....how many apples, when, why, and who is responsible for your departure from faith?

Brevity is the essence of clarity and the soul of wit.

Good job, fmf as a reward appears you got 7 red thumbs and counting. 🙂

Have a Wonder Day and a better tomorrow. 🙂

-VR

@divegeester said
Brevity is the essence of clarity and the soul of wit.

You are the type of soul who does not understand a simple NO. For someone claiming to be diver, you surely cannot fathom even the shallow waters we can all walk in just up to our ankles.

Friends, Romans. countrymen of RHP, lend me your ears, I come not to praise divegeester, but to bury him in the shallow waters of the beach.

@pettytalk said
You are the type of soul who does not understand a simple NO. For someone claiming to be diver, you surely cannot fathom even the shallow waters we can all walk in just up to our ankles.

A clever use of fathom sir.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
A clever use of fathom sir.

Sometimes I need a professional diver to help me fathom my own shallow thoughts. There isn't an ocean deep enough for my really deep thoughts. Although your compliments go very deep, way down to my very soul.

Were we not discussing, privately, to be brief about it? Do you, like our very own Suzianne, suspect we have foreign ears leaning against our walls, listening?

@pettytalk said
You are the type of soul who does not understand a simple NO. For someone claiming to be diver, you surely cannot fathom even the shallow waters we can all walk in just up to our ankles.

Friends, Romans. countrymen of RHP, lend me your ears, I come not to praise divegeester, but to bury him in the shallow waters of the beach.

What are you on about now?

@divegeester said
What are you on about now?

I can briefly walk on the water you dive in.

@pettytalk said
I can briefly walk on the water you dive in.

Try to make sense.

Shallow waters are noisy; deep waters are silent.

Anon

@pettytalk said
You claim to have been a man of faith at one time, but are not now, since you say that you wised up, and deemed the faith you had acquired unworthy of your newfound "intellectualism."

No. I have made no claim like this.

@pettytalk said
I think you said, you came to realize that the faith you claimed to have was not worthy of you any longer, because you somehow, awakened as if from a nightmare, coming to the realization that it was more of a cult than a religion? Well, it was something to that effect, as I recall.

"Not worthy" of me? "A nightmare"? "A cult"?

No. I have never said anything remotely like this.

@pettytalk said
How much, time-wise, did you spend for being a Christian?

I would say: all the time. It permeated every aspect of my life.

@divegeester said
Try to make sense.

Try to be sensible. In other words, tenable, or logical, or rational. You just don't get it!

You don't even have any common sense with which to perceive the sense I have already made. I sense that you are here without any sense at all, other than trying to seem to be making sense yourself. You are clueless about your own sense of existence.

In summary, you are in dire need of remedial sense training. Go back inside your mother's womb, and repeat everything from the point you first stuck your head out of your mother's birthing canal, provided you were not a breach baby, bottom first. In that case, start from when you first stuck your rear out into this world of the senses.

I have nothing better to do today, and here I am, trying to make sense for you.