Offering Prayers!!
Long time lurker here on wso for many years. Joined in college and now browse regularly as a part of the industry. This forum has provided me with significant insight and encouragement over the years, and I hope this is a small way I can give back. If you’re turned off by this, please just disregard.
I joined an IB coverage group straight out of undergrad. While it provided me with good skills and a jump start to my career, it was one of the darkest, most depressing, most isolating and most disorienting periods of my life. I know many of us experienced this our first few years, but I found it absolutely brutal. I begin praying consistently throughout the day just to get through. Fast forward and I’m now several years into a role within the industry that I find far more engaging and has a great WLB. I’ve found an incredible church and Christian community in the City, and I’m learning daily what it means to walk in faith and the importance of prayer.
So this is my small effort to give back to this community. To pray and contend for those of you who feel too stressed, burnout and exhausted to lift up much more than whisper.
Send me a PM with any info you’d like to share and how I can be praying for you (it’d be my joy!).Completely confidential.
"To pray is to accept that we are, and always will be, wholly dependent on God for everything." - Tim Keller
Thanks for sharing. Hope you find peace in your heart
Likewise!
Nice intentions but treating prayers as some kind of currency that accumulates to bargain with God with is just catholic superstition with zero scriptural or logical basis.
Ecclesia semper reformanda est
God views the intent of your heart. This from an outside view is not that - no man can judge another's heart/soul. This isn't penance; it seems to be love.
Another idiot that thinks he understands a religion based on a single history class that he took in undergrad with 2 lectures on crusades and political corruption of the Catholic Church.
No one with an actual understanding of Catholic teaching would honestly say that they believe prayers are a currency to find favor with God.
Catholics pray for their dead ancestors to speed them along in purgatory (zero scriptural basis), which is probably the most egregious example quid-pro-quo favors as currency. https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/keeping-up-with-loved-ones-in-purgatory
Dude, why are you trying to clown a guy who is trying to pray for this community? I don’t get it? Literally every denomination of Christianity would support this.
Am I catholic? No, but as a Protestant, this is a great thing to do.
Just submit to Rome, brother. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.
Did you work at Jefferies by any chance...?
I did not but know a few folks.
Can you pray that UBS gets to Top #10 in the league tables?
Hahaha
Thank you for your faith and example! Christ is king!
How do fervent Christians like you reconcile that awful child abuse scandal and the fact the pope and cardinals covered it up and helped the abusers keep doing it?
I know every religion has bad actors, but this one scandal alway stuck with me.
Did it sour you at all on organized religion or Christianity in general?
Wait until you learn about the prevelance of pedophilia in judaism...
Not OP but will give my unsolicited POV
100% agree that those scandals are horrific and abhorrent and should never be allowed. The damage that the church has done to others has been horrific.
That being said, I don’t think that’s a reason to NOT follow Christianity, at least for myself.
This is a quote from John Mark Comer who I think puts it quite well: “All living in God's good, free world. Some under God's life-giving authority, others in flat-out rebellion. To clarify, it's not that God's will is weak— on an even playing field with all the other wills. As if we, God, and Satan are all equal players in a game for the world. It's that in the universe God has chosen to actualize, love is the highest value, and love demands a choice, and a choice demands freedom. So God has chosen to limit his overwhelming capacity to override any
"will" stacked against him, in order to create space for real, genuine freedom for his creatures, human and nonhuman. And evil is the by-product of that freedom that God built into the fabric of the universe. Put simply, God is incredibly good, but the world is a terrifyingly free, dangerous, beautiful place.”
What he’s getting at here is that in order for there to be love in the world and for us to have the choice to follow Christ, we have to have freedom. By definition, freedom and choice allows people to accept or reject, to do right or wrong. So, I don’t believe God sees this kind of abuse in the church and is like “eh, I’m fine with this.” I think he’s heavily grieved. I also think he’ll severely punish them in this life or the next because he’s perfectly just
I sort of understand your point. And I’m not coming at this topic from the view of an atheist or a religion hater. I do pray to my religion, and certain things have happened to me where I do believe in some type of spirituality, and I do acknowledge that some religious truly are good people.
However, the acts of depravity that we bear witness too does make me really question wtf is going on if there is an all powerful God.
The reason I chose the Christian priest scandal was because the OP is Christian. I know other relations have their own abhorrent scandals.
And the main quirk of the priest scandal I remember reading was the fact the pope and the highest cardinals at the Vatican participated in the cover up and enabled more abuse. And the pope is apparently infallible and a direct vessel from God. So it’s really hard to reconcile the fact the pope speaks for God and helped get kids abused. I mean I don’t know how anyone can swallow that particular lie.
To me, perhaps god is more of an observer or someone trying to guide us, but not all powerful. Or maybe there is a spirit world of our loved ones looking over us. But there’s just too much evil in the world for me to easily believe there is an omnipresent and all powerful being that allows it to happen.
Maybe if there truly is an eternal judgement land, then this makes sense. But that’s a big if, right?
I know trump is a flashpoint on this forum, given most users are either white or male or rich or conservative, or all of the above. But to someone like me, as detestable as the left is, I truly dislike Trump and his cronies. So to someone like me, how can god allow someone like this to rise to the presidency and never answer for any of his sketchy acts? Or how does the rich kid never serve time for vehicular manslaughter? Or how does the gang banger keep eluding justice?
The final doubt for me is how every single major and minor organized religion seems to have been created or at least created pockets of secrecy for child and women abusers to operate in secrecy. It’s like many people are drawn to religions because of the protections in place to hide their nefarious abuse actions.
As someone else mentioned, Judaism also has its child abuse allegations. Imagine an offshoot religion like Jehova Witnesses. I mean just doing a cursory glance at their beliefs and rules, any rationale person would immediately realize it appears to be set up to allow people to abuse others with zero repercussions.
I guess my rambling point is that, in recent history, each major and minor religion has had so many scandals, truly evil scandals, perpetrated by extremely high ranking officials, that it’s really hard sometimes to believe these organizations and beliefs are truly good to follow and believe in.
PM me. Would love to chat. Big Tim Keller fan.
Sent!
Hi, can you PM me? I'd love to chat and ask a few questions. Thanks!
So, you sincerely believe that a God (where did it come from?) created our Universe 13.8 billion years ago with 100 sextillion (1 followed by 21 zeros) planets in it just for us humans on planet Earth whose history started only 300k years ago? Why do you think God did it? And why do you think God can read our thoughts and cares about them?
It's baffling that people with intelligence to get in IB believe in fairy tales and waste their very limited time on scams (church).
Feel like you’re disproving your own point here. If the universe is this complex and God did not create this universe which is literally not humanly capable of comprehending, what did? Had it always existed? How can something come from nothing - that defies the very laws of science
I am not at all disproving my point.
There is a physical process that causes Big Bang(s). It just exists like all other laws of physics. If it's so difficult for you to imagine that laws of physics can just exist, why is it somehow easier for you to believe that there is someone who always existed that just creates laws of physics and starts Big Bangs?
And you can call this physical process God, but it's just a physical process. It is certainly not happening for the sake of creating us, humans on planet Earth, because we are very insignificant. We are just a by product of Big Bang causing existence of 100 sextillion of planets. When there are that many planets, on some of them there will be forms of life. We are most certainly not the only form of life in the Universe. But the Universe's history is so long that forms of life start and die off during different timelines. And the size of the Universe is so large that we can't reach 99.9999999999% of it. So you may have an illusion that humans on planet Earth are unique, cause you haven't seen any other life forms, but we are nothing special.
Yeah, right, because everyone who is atheist is atheist because they’re so intelligent that they see beyond the fairy tales of religion and all believers just have their heads in the sand. Give me a break.
There has to be an uncaused causer. There has to be an initial contingency on which all other events occurred. There has to be something that is the basis for our reality.
no, definitely not everyone. some people probably just take it as a truth and don't really understand it.
well, some believers may believe it in for other reasons. like it makes them feel better knowing that they are special and the Universe was made all for them. there are a bunch of reasons even smart people choose intentionally to believe in irrational things.
That uncaused causer is just a physical process. I laid out my thought about it above. Take a look and let me know what you think.
The belief that everything must have a cause reflects the poverty of our imagination.
If everything has a cause, what caused God? And if something must be a first cause, why could it not have been the Big Bang or some other singularity as yet unknown?
Invoking a personal God (something that requires a much bigger explanation) doesn’t solve the age-old question. Per Occams’s Razor, it’s not the simplest explanation and it’s not a necessary hypothesis. Might as well just say “David did it” - no evidence for that claim either, and it doesn’t say much about who David is.
The Cosmological argument for the existence of God is actually one of the weakest, as any philosophy student quickly discovers.
This is the saddest underpinning of a lot of atheist arguments. It is the idea that it is irrational for you to be loved by God who created you and that no one can love like that so it must not be true. It has nothing to do with science but is all about your personal feeling that you can't possibly be loved that much.
But I think that if you look deep in your soul and your own potential to live life as a saint, there is plenty of reason for God to care. And those things exist deep down in your soul for the very reason that you were created in His image. Believe it or not, you are loved that much. Why? Who knows for sure....maybe parents get a glimpse of the same irrational love for their kids and it is a very real thing no matter how little sense it might make.
You intentionally ignored everything I mentioned. I'll repeat myself. You are one of animal species on one of 100 sextillion planets and your species didn't exist for 99.9999999% of the time that Universe existed. But you keep insisting that all that was done just for you? Are you so arrogant that you'll ignore any common sense? And on top of that, you also think that God has the same image as you? Do you mean it literally? Like God looks like a man? I hope you just mean that everything in the universe is made of the same material - atoms - so everything has the same "image" (under a microscope a human, and a pile of dirt, and a star are all just atoms).
And you intentionally ignored my questions that are intended to help you think about your beliefs deeper: Where did God come from? Where is he/she/it now? Why create the whole universe with 100 sextilion planets existing for 13.8 billion years just for one animal species on one planet that only existed for 300k years - can't just create Earth by itself with humans on it straight away? What's the point of creating us?
Guy starts a post with good intentions - minding your own business is free. Simply not responding if this topic wasn't your thing was an option.
Well, I like good discussions. And I believe WSO has the most intelligent group of people from all online sites I've used. And religion is one of my favorite topics to chat about. So I figured I'll stir up a discussion.
I’m a huge Tim Keller fan. PM me if you have a minute - would love to chat.
THANK YOU
Very encouraging post. would love to chat, if you'd pm me
Sent!
Any suggestions how to find community as a Christian working in IB in NYC? I am moving up in July and would love to get plugged in!
Not many Christians left but still a few people that think Narnia is a real thing if you're looking for other guilable ass-wads
Hey there - shoot me a PM!
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