Agree. Not a religious person myself, but there are times in life when there are no answers, nothing that anyone can do, when fate is completely outside anyone's control.

When everything else fails, you have left only your strength of will against reason. And spirituality may be the only thing to give you that strength.

for me personally - the multiple times in my life when i have been in the process of putting someone in the ground - this kind of comment was right at the top of the list of the least helpful things people said.

Appropriate for some people, irrelevant or worse for others. I know you mean well and don’t intend to harsh on you, but I think your statement could much better have started “this is where religion might offer some solace”.

Every person has to make a different journey, and no tool is appropriate to everyone.

I am not religious. Never mentioned religion. Only faith and the deep pool of human experiences shared by all people. The fact that you cannot separate the two, is a problem for you and you alone to resolve. Think outside your parameters and you might find new knowledge and growth

I agree, I just need to recalibrate my perspective. There are certainly those that have gone through this and worse, and faith has helped them and their loved ones.

Christian faith would have you believe it is God's will that you perish at His time of choosing. He also loves you.

My girls were raised Christian and I and my wife practiced and professed that faith our entire relationship. I haven't given up on the faith but I am so profoundly disappointed in the modern church that I need to go back to the root of it all and see how much it still resonates.

It sounds like you are disappointed in what people who are in the modern church, publicly speaking that you have access to, are saying. There will obviously be an availability bias on how we each perceive the "modern church".

If you don't believe in what the Bible says, then disregard everything below.

Try reading the Bible. As a whole. And if you have, do it again. Don't let individual versus taken out of context influence major decisions. Know who wrote each chapter (if we know that), who they were writing to, and why they wrote that chapter to put everything in context. I found I was reading too fast and missing major parts. Also translation makes a big deal - some words just don't translate properly - and a good Bible will have footnotes to explain the original word. There are lots of plans out there.

Then, I think, you will realize that what those in the modern church you are referencing are saying should disappoint all of us... and it's not in alignment with the Bible and Jesus' teachings, and you can see where they don't align. Not all churches are that way. Anyways go to the source (if you haven't already).

You nailed it. Exactly my plan.

Have you been to a Unitarian Church? They tend to do away with a lot of the politics and dogma and stick to the core and have better camaraderie than any other church I've been to. I'm an agnostic, but I'm always up for hanging out with cool, chill people. I mean if you're actually a believer and such it might be cool. Bahai meetings were the only other one I've been to that rivaled. They're the polar opposite of the BS laden evangelical movement trying to bring in politics and money to everything.

No but i've heard good things. May give that a try. Thank you.

> back to the root of it all

https://www.amazon.com/More-Than-Carpenter-Josh-McDowell/dp/...

https://www.amazon.com/Mere-Christianity-C-S-Lewis/dp/006065...

Yes! Gnostic revival! Make it happen!!

I'm not sure how to interpret what you have written but assuming good faith - there are things and states worse than death, particularly when analyzed from the point of view of the individual. It is widely considered humane to terminate the life of a suffering animal when no hope of recovery is possible. Such a thing could even be considered an act of love. Depending on a deeper analysis of free will and religion it is feasible that a God is both capable of controlling your death and simultaneously loving you. I'm not a serious believer so I will leave the free will discussion and points of doctrine to others.

Regardless of what you, downvoter, believes -

thinking on something outside yourself is helpful, even empirically. You might not agree with the specific flavour, but even something as bare and nonspiritual as Seneca can help.

Having a mental structure either exogenously adopted or of one's own construction to apply rationality to temporarily irrational losses seemingly is a very good thing for ones mental well-being. I've found great comfort in Epictetus and in the Bible although I follow neither dogmatically.