I'm glad to know you're giving this some serious thought. It really isn't something you can figure out quickly. In fact, it's something you will (hopefully) spend your entire life figuring out.
While you're reading religious stuff, I would strongly recommend Mere Christianity. It's probably the best general book on Christianity I've read… the only part that wasn't excellent was the 6 (or so) short chapters Lewis spends trying to explain the Trinity (obviously based on the Creeds). It would have made so much more sense for him (with his acceptance of theosis, etc.) to adopt a different interpretation of the Trinity.
At any rate, C.S. Lewis was an Atheist who eventually converted to Christianity and joined the Anglican Church. It is entertaining to read about his "memories" of these experiences.
One of my personal favourites: "You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalene, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England." (from Surprised by Joy)
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chiming
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Date: 2005-08-29 10:39 pm (UTC)From:While you're reading religious stuff, I would strongly recommend Mere Christianity. It's probably the best general book on Christianity I've read… the only part that wasn't excellent was the 6 (or so) short chapters Lewis spends trying to explain the Trinity (obviously based on the Creeds). It would have made so much more sense for him (with his acceptance of theosis, etc.) to adopt a different interpretation of the Trinity.
At any rate, C.S. Lewis was an Atheist who eventually converted to Christianity and joined the Anglican Church. It is entertaining to read about his "memories" of these experiences.
One of my personal favourites:
"You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalene, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England."
(from Surprised by Joy)