Finally! Whew.
I had no idea how this had weighed on me all these years. Cognitive dissonance doesn't usually red flag itself in your subconscious. It is like a strange pain you get used to and ignore. Then one day you take an Advil and realize that you feel GREAT! You weren't even aware you had been carrying this pain around until it is gone.
Hallelujah! Beethoven you have given me a song to sing.
Several people have explained the Trinity doctrine lately in comparison to the doctrine I had grown up with. And I don't know if the Seventh-day Adventist church taught me wrong or I just wrongly understood their doctrines. But I have always thought deep down that Christians were really polytheists and wouldn't admit it.
When my husband and I had decided to be missionaries to Egypt, (right before 9-11 and the state department discouraged us from going) I was trying to figure this subject out. This is a huge issue with both Jews and Muslims. They consider Christians polytheists and I needed to know how to explain it so it made sense. Well, I couldn't. It didn't make sense. We were polytheists and just trying to excuse it.
BUT NO MORE!! I'm not saying I totally understand how God can be three in one. I am not there yet. I have, however, stepped up into a place where I CAN see the Catholic Dogma of the Trinity and understand it so much better than I ever did in my former religion. Wish there was a way I could express it in written words. God is one, expressed in three forms--all the same substance. I had always seen them as three separate beings, not truly united in one, but like three family members who thought alike.
No, that was not right. The Trinity is more Spirit than form, symbolized in the Cherubim angels. Not fully represented by the unity of man and woman physically in marriage, but their spiritual union. Yes, hard to explain and I am doing a terrible job.
I think repeating the Nicene Creed has also helped. "Begotten, not made", one in substance, "True God from True God".... these words are making an impact and I love it.
Now God has taken the cognitive dissonance away and I feel as light as air. I feel like I just became a real Christian. But that is not new to me at all. Each day I awake and grab my rosary and pray the Divine Chaplet of Mercy and say the Nicene Creed, I feel like a new Christian.
Man, I LOVE being Catholic.
(Lady Dragon, I think you were one of those people who was discussing the Trinity that helped me. Thanks!)
