McCulloch wrote:twobitsmedia wrote:I guess i never paid any attention to where your ID says "former christian." As a former christian, what was the Holy Spirit to you?
I think that there are two questions here.
What was the Holy Spirit to you when you were considered to be a Christian?
What is the Holy Spirit to you now that you a no longer a Christian?
When I was a Christian, I considered the Holy Spirit as my source of inspiration, for lack of a better word. When I needed get up and go, or just felt lousy, I went to the Holy Spirit. It truly felt as if God was around me, with me, and within me.
I looked to the HS as my conscience. If I thought or did something wrong, the HS would "let me know" I was doing something right or wrong. I guess you can say that heard God speak to me in many ways. At the time, I felt comforted by it, and was not "weirded out" by it at all.
I looked to the HS as the method that God worked in me and through me.
I never spoke in tongues, although not for the lack of trying. Many in the church I attended (charismatic southern baptist offshoot) did, and often were "slain in the spirit". Personally, at the time, I thought it quite creepy and strange, but I reasoned that I just hadn't gotten to that point yet, etc.
I had believed then, as I do now, that those who spoke in tongues often were simply either faking it for bragging rights, or had truly convinced themselves that they could do it, real or imagined. But I tolerated it, and never thought much of it.
As an atheist, I now believe that the feelings that the "Holy Spirit" invoked in me were simply psychosomatic symptoms of my reliance of my fundamentalist beliefs.
I realized through self-introspection that the HS was, for all intents and purposes, a figment of my imagination in relation to my chosen beliefs and worldview at the time. I had essentially allowed myself to be brainwashed with those beliefs, without realizing (or even wanting to) whether they were real or not.
And thankfully, I do not hear voices in my head any longer, either :phew: