Your thoughts on prayer

Sometime I wonder : can faith be taught?  Not religion or its different dogma, but actually teaching how to be a man or a woman of faith.

We know that faith is a act of will but, like any of our acts of will, it must have its reasons. How can a painful loss make one turn his back to God, but get another closer to him?   And what is it that gets someone to see Nature's perfection as the evidence of God's existence and another to see the same imperfection as tangible evidence as well of his non existence ?

We all obviously choose according to our own experience, character and knowledge but I often wonder whether faith is something that either we have got or we don't, or can that helped ?

John, be patient in case some answer to my questions was in the file you just liked; I'm posting before listening to it only because 30 mins of audio english conversation may be good 1 hour to me:). 

Cathy & Diana:

I agree 100% that introspection can help us sort out our problems. Quiet thought in quiet places - even meditation (which I have tried).

I'm sure that prayer can be like that. But that kind of prayer has nothing to do with a belief in God. 

Maria - your English is wonderful. I have a little French (I can buy stuff in shops!) but no Italian at all. The English are dreadful at learning other languages.

It's certainly possible to teach people to have Faith, Maria.

Millions (no, billions) of people are taught to have Faith, almost from the moment they are born.

I think that's a dreadful thing - I think Faith is a very poor substitute for Reason.

But I know most people disagree with me.

Sue, I don't think there are many people who have no concept of a God (or of Gods)

Here's a list of various Gods people have believed in throughout the ages.

http://listofgods.blogspot.com/.

Because of the way human beings operate, belief in some kind of deity appears to be natural to us. Were you thinking of any people in particular who have found faith even though they had no concept of God?

John, John, John!  LOL!  Whatever am I going to do with you?

Here's where our impasse is, John.  And the answer to the question is, yes, God exists.  I can't prove it, but I choose to believe it.  You can't prove that God doesn't exist, but that's what you choose to believe.

As for the amount of time I spend praying, I think Cathy phrased it quite eloquently, and that's what the concept of prayer changing you comes in. 

Hi Maria:  Frankly I don't know the answer to your question - if faith can be taught.  There are lots of people who were taught faith from a young age as John stated, who have fallen away.  And others who are diehard atheists, who, for whatever reason, found faith.  I think you stated it quite well, about choice.  Some questions just seem to defy answers, most of all this topic. 

Why do you suppose this is, John?

As for why people have faith, maybe you should read something from the Christian apologists, John, like CS Lewis' Mere Christianity.  Or the Confessions of St. Augustine.  In that one, he says, "God has willed that our struggle should be with prayers rather than with our own strength."  I believe that to be the beginning of hope, not hope for an afterlife, or "Where will I go when I die?" but hope for today, for tomorrow, for this life. 

As Ruth has stated; I can't prove there is a god, but it seems to me that the very fact that I can form the question, "Does God exist?" is a sort of proof that he must exist. Perhaps we search BECAUSE God exist and created us to long for him even as he longs to be known by us. Yet in His love He doesn't force us to know Him but remains in obscurity, because, certainly, if we knew Him in all His majesty we could not help but fall down and worship. He wants to be loved as we want to be loved, not because we can coerce it, but because the object of our affections wants to give it, and gives it freely.

An excerpt from "The Hound of Heaven"

Now of that long pursuit,
Comes at hand the bruit.
That Voice is round me like a bursting Sea:
And is thy Earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest me.
Strange, piteous, futile thing;
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of Naught (He said).
And human love needs human meriting ---
How hast thou merited,
Of all Man's clotted clay, the dingiest clot.
Alack! Thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art.
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save me, save only me?
All which I took from thee, I did'st but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in my arms.
All which thy childs mistake fancies as lost,
I have stored for thee at Home.
Rise, clasp my hand, and come.
Halts by me that Footfall.
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
Ah, Fondest, Blindest, Weakest,
I am He whom thou seekest.
Thou dravest Love from thee who dravest Me.

Francis Thompson