{"id":4,"date":"2009-03-03T21:54:11","date_gmt":"2009-03-03T21:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/03\/have-i-told-you-yet-that-im-not-sure-if-im-a-christian.html"},"modified":"2009-03-03T21:54:11","modified_gmt":"2009-03-03T21:54:11","slug":"have-i-told-you-yet-that-im-not-sure-if-im-a-christian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/03\/have-i-told-you-yet-that-im-not-sure-if-im-a-christian.html","title":{"rendered":"Have I Told You Yet That I&#8217;m Not Sure if I&#8217;m a Christian?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--StartFragment--><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span>&#8220;Have I told you yet that I&#8217;m not sure if I&#8217;m a Christian?&#8221;<br \/>\nwrites Andrea in the comments on my post about <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/03\/my-first-lentthanks-to-twitter-and-the-monks.html\">my first Lent<\/a><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: arial\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: 'Lucida Grande'\">. &#8220;I<br \/>\nvacillate and ponder and struggle every day with my spirituality.&#8221; Sharing that<br \/>\nshe is a convert to Catholicism who attends mass regularly she continues, &#8220;I<br \/>\nchange my beliefs like my underwear. I told the priest that I would be the<br \/>\nworst Catholic he ever had and I didn&#8217;t lie. I took an online test &#8211; perhaps on<br \/>\nBeliefnet &#8211; and Catholicism came it at 23rd for me. 23rd! I know you&#8217;re hoping<br \/>\nfor this to be an open &#8216;safe&#8217; sanctuary for people to exchange their spiritual<br \/>\nmusings so I&#8217;ll check in daily and spread the word not THE WORD because I don&#8217;t<br \/>\nknow where I stand on that yet&#8230;&#8221;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span>A few hours later Julya chimed in&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span>&#8220;I, more so than Andrea, am so far from &#8216;mainstream faith&#8217;,<br \/>\nbut Sociology does suggest that a culture needs something like a family and<br \/>\nsomething like a religion,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Its a nice sentiment to view your<br \/>\nsuggestion of locking arms and wandering together. Thanks for being inclusive<br \/>\nto those who are not necessarily reformed, or born again. People who hold<br \/>\nbeliefs differing from yours. That&#8217;s dialogue. As for the topic at hand-Lent. I<br \/>\nhave to say I never understood just giving something up. What&#8217;s the point? Why<br \/>\nnot take it to the next level-which makes more of an impact upon humanity-and give<br \/>\nit to someone who needs it, never had it, or could use it!&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span>Then Gigi wrote, &#8220;I was raised in the church, my mother made<br \/>\nus go every Sunday. I am not sure when I stopped going (maybe 14 yrs old) but I<br \/>\ndo remember how important it was for me to find a church when we decided to<br \/>\nhave a child. I have never participated in Lent. I could say it&#8217;s because I<br \/>\nnever finish what I start, I could say it&#8217;s something that I don&#8217;t understand.<br \/>\nInstead I&#8217;ll admit the truth. I struggle everyday with being a child of God.<br \/>\nNot because I don&#8217;t believe, because I do. It&#8217;s because I don&#8217;t always feel<br \/>\nworthy and I also feel like I would be doing it for all the wrong reasons.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span>These are my kind of people asking my kinds of questions!<span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><span>We&#8217;ll unpack more about Lent as we move toward Holy Week, but<br \/>\nthese fantastic comments (and many more in response to my first two posts) left<br \/>\nme thinking that we should spend some more time getting to know each other and<br \/>\nwhere we&#8217;re coming from in terms of our relationship with God, religion, the<br \/>\nchurch. So tell me &#8211; what&#8217;s your story?\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--EndFragment--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Have I told you yet that I&#8217;m not sure if I&#8217;m a Christian?&#8221; writes Andrea in the comments on my post about my first Lent. &#8220;I vacillate and ponder and struggle every day with my spirituality.&#8221; Sharing that she is a convert to Catholicism who attends mass regularly she continues, &#8220;I change my beliefs like&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Have I Told You Yet That I&#039;m Not Sure if I&#039;m a Christian? - Flirting with Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/03\/have-i-told-you-yet-that-im-not-sure-if-im-a-christian.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Have I Told You Yet That I&#039;m Not Sure if I&#039;m a Christian? - Flirting with Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;Have I told you yet that I&#8217;m not sure if I&#8217;m a Christian?&#8221; writes Andrea in the comments on my post about my first Lent. &#8220;I vacillate and ponder and struggle every day with my spirituality.&#8221; Sharing that she is a convert to Catholicism who attends mass regularly she continues, &#8220;I change my beliefs like&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/03\/have-i-told-you-yet-that-im-not-sure-if-im-a-christian.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Flirting with Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-03-03T21:54:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Joan Ball\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Have I Told You Yet That I'm Not Sure if I'm a Christian? - Flirting with Faith","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/03\/have-i-told-you-yet-that-im-not-sure-if-im-a-christian.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Have I Told You Yet That I'm Not Sure if I'm a Christian? - Flirting with Faith","og_description":"&#8220;Have I told you yet that I&#8217;m not sure if I&#8217;m a Christian?&#8221; writes Andrea in the comments on my post about my first Lent. &#8220;I vacillate and ponder and struggle every day with my spirituality.&#8221; Sharing that she is a convert to Catholicism who attends mass regularly she continues, &#8220;I change my beliefs like&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/03\/have-i-told-you-yet-that-im-not-sure-if-im-a-christian.html","og_site_name":"Flirting with Faith","article_published_time":"2009-03-03T21:54:11+00:00","author":"Joan Ball","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/03\/have-i-told-you-yet-that-im-not-sure-if-im-a-christian.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/03\/have-i-told-you-yet-that-im-not-sure-if-im-a-christian.html","name":"Have I Told You Yet That I'm Not Sure if I'm a Christian? 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