Your situation opens the question of how we build community without faith. Institutions are founded on common bonds, as for example the Christian creed. It often happens that people disagree with something and as a result sever all contact with the object of their disagreement. It is an illustration of the increasing atomisation of our society, as people interact through technology rather than in person, and so lose the familiar links that result from informal friendship. Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone dissects this problem of the collapse of social capital quite well.Penelope wrote:How do you cope with despair without some kind of faith??? This is nothing to do with this forum.....but.....I had stopped going to our local parish church..... Because I stopped going...some one whom I loved...died and I didn't know about it....so I never went to his funeral.....and I 'so' wish I had. I hasten to add that I loved his wife too...... In our local Parish Magazine - the Bishop has written:-I am feeling a bit devastated......so forgive me. Love and gratitude....from PenWithout transcendent reference for our lives, it is easy to slip into seeing life as a terminal disease with a 100 per cent mortality rate. Saying this is hardly likely to cause anyone to believe in God. Belief arises in more subtle, less controllable ways, as we are opened up to God's gentle call, which always is the call of love, and therefore doesn't compel or force us to believe. Believing in God is a form of falling in love, of discovering that we are loved, have been loved, and will be loved for all eternity. But love needs belief.
I think you touch a nerve regarding despair,. There is something very bleak and lonely about faithless life. It often gets discussed as the problem of nihilism, the loss of all transcendent values in modern culture. Without faith we have to create our own values rather than respond to something eternal, running the risk that our personal assumptions will not be well grounded in any absolute reality. Of course the problem is that the things that are claimed to be absolute values by the church are often wrong. The trouble is how to retain the social capital of the church while entering a dialogue about how it can update its doctrines without falling apart as an institution.
I personally do not think that people can live without faith. I don't mean this in the sense of believing things that are not true, but in the sense of believing things for which they do not have compelling evidence, such as our sense of trust in cultural continuity. Most important, for both atheist and theist, is the idea that there is a bigger purpose and meaning for life than we can articulate and prove, that we are wrapped in an enigma, to paraphrase Churchill.
Sorry for mentioning Heidegger again, but his situation seems to me to epitomise your problem. He said we live in an age where the Gods have fled. The implication in his existential philosophy was that resolute anticipation of death was the only freedom. I know that is a bit jargonish, but it illustrates his very bleak outlook, where everyone is exposed as lacking any divine support. He later amended this to call for a rekindling of the presence of the Gods, but remained in thrall to nihilism in that he never achieved any faith himself.
Jesus' saying in the Gospel of John 'I am the true vine' is one that illustrates to me the meaning of true faith. It suggests we need a connection to a cosmic reality (God), and without this organic link we find ourselves abandoned to a bleak despair.
I am remembering the laughter......
