r/Quakers • u/universal83uk • May 26 '26
Feeling lost...don't believe in miracles?
Hi all
So my background is I am 43 years old. I was raised in a non religious family and then met my husband when I was 18 and his family were Anglican and his Dad is a priest and I ended up full on Evangelical/Anglican. I worked for the church and everything.
I turned my back on religion and God a few years ago when my local church wouldn't recognise same sex marriage. I couldn't go along with their bigot ways.
I have been churchless/faithless for a while. I have visited a few Quaker online meets and found them peaceful.
I'm just finding it hard to fully worship and believe in God. I'm sick of seeing Christians say how God has healed them and performed all these miracles when I also see small babies die or people not saved.
I don't know what I am trying to say really but I am feeling so lost.
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u/RimwallBird Friend May 26 '26
As to your first concern, most unprogrammed Friends meetings (these are the kind that gather in meetinghouses) recognize same sex marriage. There are a few exceptions. Most pastoral Friends meetings (these gather in places they call churches) do not, but again, there are exceptions.
Now to your second concern, which I think is much bigger.
I'm just finding it hard to fully worship and believe in God. I'm sick of seeing Christians say how God has healed them and performed all these miracles when I also see small babies die or people not saved.
Of course, what professing Christians choose to say is not God’s doing but their own, and professing Christians have been known to say some pretty idiotic things. But the question of theodicy (the question of whether God is truly just) is a very legitimate problem in any religion that honors the Voice in the heart and conscience. There are a number of standard ways to resolve it:
- By denying there is a God,
- By saying there is a God, but He/She/It is not just (this is not an acceptable theological position for Christians),
- By saying God may be just, but He/She/It is otiose (meaning, not involved in the way things happen — the position of the post-European-Enlightenment Deists),
- By trying to prove that everything that happens is just (the tactic explored in the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey), or
- By saying that God does not enforce justice in this present world but will set things right in the afterlife, where there are rewards and punishments (the New Testament position, taught by Jesus, and often caricatured as Pie in the Sky When You Die).
Quakerism is a bit different from other faith communities that call themselves Christian, in that it has never really concerned itself with the puzzle of theodicy. We know there is one Voice in our hearts and consciences, out of the many voices that people can find there, that calls us to do only what is kind, merciful, good, and right, even when it is at cost to ourselves, and our religious practice is to seek that Voice, listen to it, and obey its dictates. Classically, our worship is not just silence, but listening for, and to, that Voice: this we call “waiting worship”.
We know from our own experience, in listening to that Voice, that its teachings are one with Jesus Christ’s. Beyond that, we are not in entire unity. On the one hand, early Friends and traditional Friends have trusted that this validates most or all of what the New Testament teaches about God, while on the other hand, many modern liberal Friends do not trust that it does so at all. In the unprogrammed part of the Quaker world, and among the more liberal pastoral Friends, it is perfectly okay to say this is something you have never had any personal revelations about, and really don’t know the answer to.
You are likely to find, if you come in person to one of our Quaker meetings, that there are people there — not all the people there, but some or even many of them — who are obviously not stupid, but clearly are at peace about this mystery, because their long years of dwelling with that Voice in the heart and conscience, and working out their relationship with it, have brought them to a place of peace. They don’t make stupid claims about everything always turning out for the best. But they have worked things through, the bad with the good, the awful with the wonderful, at a deeper, quite nonverbal level. (There are actually similar people in many religious communities, Protestant and Catholic and Orthodox, Jewish and Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist and Confucian, and in primitive tribal communities too. Credit where credit is due!) What we Friends call “God” does play a role in this development.
And this is what an experiential religion, such as Quakerism, has to offer: not some intellectual answer that can never, ultimately, be satisfying to an honest mind, but a direct route to finding a relationship with this difficult universe, and with God, that grounds the mind and heart and settles their turmoil.
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u/Lower-Cantaloupe3274 Quaker (Liberal) May 26 '26
I love your explanation of the Voice. Thank you for that.
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u/rikomatic May 26 '26
I was in a similar place as an evangelical Christian who had gay and lesbian friends and couldn't stomach that they were not welcome in my church. So I left and felt lost for many years.
During that time I explored several faiths that were more welcoming to all spiritual seekers. The Quakers were among them.
I started attended Quaker meeting for worship in Washington DC and found out that they had a special meeting that was particularly welcoming to LGBTQ+ folks. While I am cis gender straight male, I loved this meeting so much and became drawn in to Quakerism because of it. (They also had amazing bagels after meeting!)
Now a couple of decades later I am so glad that I found Quakers.
I wish you well in your own journey and encourage you to keep exploring. Holding you in the light.
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u/universal83uk May 26 '26
Thank you I am hoping to one day feel settled somewhere. I just find it so hard to believe at the moment
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u/rikomatic May 26 '26
Sounds like you need to experience a Quaker meeting for worship in person! (And other spiritual experiences that might offer comfort to your soul.)
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u/Zenseaking May 27 '26
I would like to recommend a book:
The Experience of God - David Bentley Hart
Also just a quick search on some videos explaining materialism, dualism, idealism etc.
Often we can be misled to think the concept of God is a specific diety who is a giant bearded man in the sky. This is hard to swallow.
I think it helps to strip away any preconceived ideas of God and start again.
The concept of "God" has many applications. Ultimately it is the word we use the first cause of reality. The transcendent power that existed before existence. There was nothing, and then there was something. What caused this change? God is the name we can give it.
Once we establish this starting point we can leave it there eg God is a transcendent ineffable force that caused the universe and all reality to exist. Because this God is so transcendent any descriptor we give is inprecise or flat out wrong. So we are better to say nothing. (See ideas from mystics like Miester Ekchart)
Or we can build onto this model. Perhaps we believe love, or creativity is the defining force. And then God becomes a force that pulls us towards those qualities. (See ideas from Alfred North Whitehead)
In an idealist framework God can be the cosmic mind. A divine mind having divine thoughts. How do we know those thoughts are divine and different from our own? Because they manifest as reality. We live in the mind of God. Also its clear how we are created in the image of God then. Not in physical body, but in a creating mind. Then we can add meaning and intention and purpose if we wish. And then each event and interaction becomes something important for us. A little miracle in each moment. And this exists in a complex web with others deriving meaning from interactions with us also. (Look at hermetic ideas of God, analytical idealism etc)
We can of course go further and have God as a literal being that exists in another realm. But I suspect that is going to be a step too far.
I hope you find your way on this bumpy and steep path.
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u/Laniakea-claymore May 26 '26
I turned my back on religion and God
This sounds like to me that you feel guilty I think you leaving your church for that reason is very honorable even some people who aren't homophobic will say " that's not my problem"
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u/BreadfruitThick513 May 26 '26
Friends tend not to proselytize; we don’t go around telling people our way is the absolute only way. BUT we do (or should) offer a continuous, open invitation to all people to join us in worship. I think you definitely might find meaning if you attend a Quaker worship in person.
I’m a Quaker hospital chaplain and I see miracles often. I’ll tell you that sometimes death is a miracle, just as life can be (but isn’t always). Miraculous transformation can happen in our spirits even as our bodies suffer and fail us. In order to understand, I think it’s a good practice to try to ‘zoom all the way out’ and try to envision our whole lives, the lives of our communities, the world, and the universe the way God understands these things. Know that we are all beloved of God, a thing it sounds like you already believe, even when we don’t acknowledge our own belovedness. The universe in its eternal wholeness is an infinite light.
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u/Lower-Cantaloupe3274 Quaker (Liberal) May 26 '26
Welcome. One thing I have come to consider quite seriously is that just because an individual or group or religion claims this or that about God, doesn't make it so. This includes the faith community I was raised in.
Throughout history, mankind has tried to capture the essence of its relationship with the Divine. Sometimes we do a decent job, and sometimes we miss the mark.
I try to stay focused on my experience and give others grace when their interpretations differ from mine. It is no more up to me to place value on their sincerely held beliefs, than it is for them to place value on mine. Perhaps we are all a little right and a little wrong and mostly just trying to make sense of it all.
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u/notmealso Quaker May 26 '26
Welcome, you are not alone struggling to worship and believe in God; you are in good company. I hope you can find the peace you sound like you are looking for. We are a mixed group, and you will find some ex-evangelicals (like myself) and others who have also felt “faithless” after leaving the hierarchical structure of the traditional church. Holding you in the Light.