Divine By T. M. Luhrmann: A Spiritual Analysis

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Ironically, the most memorable encounter I've had with religion is when I started to question my faith and God's existence. I will probably have more of a Christian approach to issues this class discusses, but I will be respectful of others theologies.
I have never lived in a world where God doesn’t exist. Every Sunday since I was a kid my mother brought me to a protestant church. Naturally, as every child raised in an Chritsian home, I accepted God as truth. My spirituality is very similar to the revolutionized American spirituality in T. M. Luhrmann's book when God talks back as "...a more intimate, personal, and supernaturally present divine" (Luhrmann 12). Similarly, as described in Luhrmann's book, God too was like a best friend. Whenever …show more content…

Until I reached my late teens did I begin to consider the possibility that there was no supreme being that was saving me a greater purpose in life. Before, I never questioned God's existence as a child because he was truth, and to question his existence would to be question reality as well. During this period of my prayers began to become as described in Luhrmann's book " 'empty', 'cold', 'mechanical', 'dry', 'dead' " (Luhrmann 281). It felt as if one day I woke up and God had disappeared from my life. Where did my best friend go? Then that's wheen I started considering that maybe there was no higher entity in the sky that would comfort me. In order to remedy my doubts, I began to study apologetic arguments. Apologetics is "objective reasons and evidence that Christianity is true (it corresponds to reality)" ("What is Christian apologetics", 2014). This method of explaining faith helped me see God in a more logical and material sense than as some supernatural being in the sky, which ultimately restored my faith. Luhrmann points out that "there will be times when God will lift the sense of His presence from our lives...