Serious Query Regarding Jesus

[mediamogul]

This is an excellent point about deconversion and reconversion. I have known a couple of people who bounced back and forth between "atheism" and belief in god. I put atheism in quotations to describe them because they were in reality people who believed in the existence of god but were simply mad at the god they believed in. I put myself into the group of believing that god does not exist and being bound by that understanding. For instance when i tried to believe in Christianity I was unable because I could not force myself to believe in god and particularly in the Christian system. It was simply not a "live option" for me as William James so astutely put it. People who are at the highest risk of reconversion are people who believe in god and are simply "angry with" or not at peace with that belief. C.S. Lewis claimed that he was an atheist at one point in his life and said that he didn't believe in god but was very mad at god for not existing. I remember thinking two things: 1) that's silly because if you genuinely didn't believe in god's existence how could you be angry with something that didn't exist? 2) of course this guy became a Christian again thinking this way, he always had one foot in the door.

I apologise but I overlooked your post until now.

Good point I think.

I think a large part of this, and your C.S.Lewis example illustrates it, is that people misinterpret the human condition as being 'god'. We human beings do get a lot of mixed feelings and these are often misinterpreted.

In your example, it seems to me he was actually angry with himself, which is where god was in the first place.

Wifey says she feels god is a part of her. I told her that I believe that wonderful feeling she thinks is god is actually her. It's her who's wonderful and she should stop letting god take the credit. (I didn't put it quite that bluntly...)

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First, OP specifically stated that some of them may have been deceived. So, yes, they certainly did believe for that Jesus was who he claimed to be, when in fact he wasn't.

Second, soldiers, freedom fighters etc die for a cause all the time. These are just 12 men whom Jesus might have chosen because they were willing to give up their lives for what they thought was greater good. If only they knew.

Yeah I think you know what I'm getting at.

The person im talking about was actually mad at his father and had every right to be. I think it was an extension of that relationship but the essential point remains that he was angry at something beside this externalised idea of "god".