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Comment by elwell | Hacker News Reader

What does it mean when you say "Jesus saved me"? This is an earnest question, not instigative.

You're asking me to summarize years of reflection and several near-death experiences into an internet message board comment, but I'll try to scrape the surface.

In short, I had lost all faith in the "official narrative" of creation/existence/whatever as taught in schools/society/etc. that I had grown up believing (growing up I'd have called myself atheist, then agnostic). You might call this an anti-science view, but I'd counter it is more scientific to reject a theory when it does not match observations than to keep it just because it's "the standard". Anyways, this put me on a path of not knowing anything to believe, which is to say any seemingly small flashback/thought/whatever could shatter whatever worldview I had been temporarily existing in and send me into a seizure.

This continued for some time until I began to be touched by what christians would call the Holy Spirit, which guided me towards preachers of the Gospels (aka "The Word", aka "Jesus Christ" (see John 1)). I began to see the innate truth presented by The Word, as I saw how my lived experiences were consistently in agreement with it. For one, I embraced prayer and observed the Father respond to it.

Basically, I built up a new worldview around The Word (Jesus Christ) and it has been unshakable, in stark contrast to all the attempts I had made to do the same without Jesus (Matthew 7:24-27 summarizes this well).

Sounds to me like you're still hallucinating.

Get behind me, hellweaver! For it is written: Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them.

(For those following along, this is a cute and fun example of Scripture being used to rebuke attempts to shake the foundation. The forces that be typically aren't so overt.)

Please don't take HN threads further into religious flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Could you explain what about my comment you consider to be a "flamewar"? As far as I was aware we were simply acting out the Parable of the Sower as an example of my prior narrative.

It was responding to a religious battle comment with a religious battle comment. We don't want that here.

Please don't take HN threads further into religious flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Can you expound your experience(s) with the Holy Spirit? What does/did it feel like? Was it auditory or a feeling, or was it a series of life experiences? Was the communication one-way or two-way? Were you ever wrong in attributing something to the Holy Spirit, and you found out later?

A general feeling of guidance to do a certain thing, followed by a full-body feeling of euphoria when doing that thing. Sometimes accompanied by "coincidental" positive interactions surrounding that thing.

Ephesians 5:18 instructs us to "not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit". And it is indeed accurate that the feeling is a higher high than wine or weed will take you. I suppose molly or heroin might be superior but I have no experience with those. And there's something psychologically nice about feeling good because you are doing the God-ordained right-thing, versus simply hijacking chemical receptors. And the Holy Spirit has no "come-down", which is nice.

> A general feeling of guidance to do a certain thing, followed by a full-body feeling of euphoria when doing that thing.

Do you have Scriptural support for that? It seems like the Holy Spirit often communicated with words (e.g., "the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.”"), unless you think that is simply the way it is recorded

Sure: Luke 4, Hebrews 9, Acts 20, and John 14 all are very relatable, and 2 Peter 1 touches on my experience as well.

(In addition to the more verbal guidance you mention.)

Many people who struggle with things like mental health, addiction, and general life dysfunction find religion grounding. Religions answer questions about ethics, foundational reality, and other aspects of life that are riddled with ambiguity.

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