Religious stuff
I’ve usually learned my lesson to stop getting embroiled in these things but…
I’m a Christian, and it had never really mattered before - UNTIL I met a guy at university who was so vociferous about his anti-religousness that I often felt he was trying to convert those poor lost souls who were at the crossroads of faith. I always felt so vulnerable to his attacks, especially when I myself didn’t know much about the Bible, or how to critically structure a logical argument (I still don’t really; I’m just not able to think my ideas out that clearly). At times he would drive me to tears, after which he would raise his hands and say, ’Eh? What did I say?
All his friends were the same - well, perhaps to a less vicious extent - and so everytime I ever wanted to mention something regarding Christianity on his, or one of his friends’ blogs, it became a battlefield, and in the end I’d run into hiding.
It was after that that I actually began to store a growing resentment towards those damn bible bashing (literally) atheists, who generally seem to have taken over the role of the stereotypical annoying Mormonistic door-to-door salesman who will repeatedly approach you even when you’re not asking for it. Instead of spreading the Word, they’d be spreading arrogance and rude hatefulness towards other religions amongst their members, and diseasing those Christians with less willpower and eloquence with a sense of inferiority. All this in a cleverly worded way! It was the new version of religious bullying and hierarchising, where they spoke the King’s English and threw stones at you with the strength of their discourse structure, a much more subtle and seemingly moral method where the offender could raise their hands and go, ’What? What did I say? and most readers would be none the wiser.
So with this deep-seated resentment, any subsequent discussions I’ve had discussing Christianity and the Bible with this guy’s friends - often foolishly instigated by me - have resulted in my being the first to get defensive and throwing the first punch in my rudeness. It’s not nice, and sometimes I feel I’m taking my anger out against that uni guy on his friends.
Most recently one guy made a post about reading a comment in a blog which had told of a past incident of an organisation or something giving away free Bibles, where people had spammed the site with fake overseas addresses’ and names so as to bankrupt the organisation. Apparently the person behind the bible-giving is a poor role-model for “real” Christians (and humans in general), and “real” Christians would, I don’t know, want to bankrupt him anyway. This man might be too extremist, and you and I might disagree with his teachings, but I know I would never stop someone distributing Bibles on the basis of his interpretation of it, no matter how dangerous and/or ‘wrong’ he might be. Unless he wrote his own version of it and is distributing that, anyone who gets a copy of the Bible might be changed in a significant way, and that’s the beauty of Christianity - it’s about a personal, spiritual relationship with God, not about the relationship with the guy who gives you the Bible and preaches the message. If you’re going to be brainwashed by a guy, you’re following his teachings rather than God’s. There are always going to be false prophets who teach incorrectly, either out of ignorance, out of their own falling out with God, or out of their own arrogance and belief in their superiority over God; it doesn't mean that a person cannot develop a real relationship with God just because they are being taught by a false prophet. If they’re brainwashing people in a dangerous manner, then they must be stopped. If they’re brainwashing people in a dangerous manner and also offering free Bibles on the side, I think it’s the former that needs to be ‘bankrupted’ rather than the latter.
Anyway, this is not what I responded with in my reply. Instead I encouraged him to read the Bible in order to critically fault it, rather than have the message filtered through other people’s voices *cough*RichardDawkins*cough*. In actual fact, my reply really had nothing much to do with the post itself. I did not want to say something like ‘DUDE BELIEVE IN GOD HE IS TOTALLY REAL READ THE BIBLE YAH YOU’RE LAME AND MEAN!’, because, well, that’s easily dismissive, and I’m not in the position to convert any of these people really. But I figure that if you want to take up atheism, which is the rejection of supernatural events as an explanation of the universe apparently, and you want to denounce Biblical teachings in order to do so, then it really would make sense to apply yourself to the Bible to figure out what exactly you’re denouncing, straight from the horse’s mouth. Apparently this suggestion is bizarre and is rather illogical. *sigh* Perhaps I phrased it badly at his Livejournal.
Anyway, I really shouldn’t involve myself in these things in the first place.
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Too many replies!
I’m a Christian, and it had never really mattered before - UNTIL I met a guy at university who was so vociferous about his anti-religousness that I often felt he was trying to convert those poor lost souls who were at the crossroads of faith. I always felt so vulnerable to his attacks, especially when I myself didn’t know much about the Bible, or how to critically structure a logical argument (I still don’t really; I’m just not able to think my ideas out that clearly). At times he would drive me to tears, after which he would raise his hands and say, ’Eh? What did I say?
All his friends were the same - well, perhaps to a less vicious extent - and so everytime I ever wanted to mention something regarding Christianity on his, or one of his friends’ blogs, it became a battlefield, and in the end I’d run into hiding.
It was after that that I actually began to store a growing resentment towards those damn bible bashing (literally) atheists, who generally seem to have taken over the role of the stereotypical annoying Mormonistic door-to-door salesman who will repeatedly approach you even when you’re not asking for it. Instead of spreading the Word, they’d be spreading arrogance and rude hatefulness towards other religions amongst their members, and diseasing those Christians with less willpower and eloquence with a sense of inferiority. All this in a cleverly worded way! It was the new version of religious bullying and hierarchising, where they spoke the King’s English and threw stones at you with the strength of their discourse structure, a much more subtle and seemingly moral method where the offender could raise their hands and go, ’What? What did I say? and most readers would be none the wiser.
So with this deep-seated resentment, any subsequent discussions I’ve had discussing Christianity and the Bible with this guy’s friends - often foolishly instigated by me - have resulted in my being the first to get defensive and throwing the first punch in my rudeness. It’s not nice, and sometimes I feel I’m taking my anger out against that uni guy on his friends.
Most recently one guy made a post about reading a comment in a blog which had told of a past incident of an organisation or something giving away free Bibles, where people had spammed the site with fake overseas addresses’ and names so as to bankrupt the organisation. Apparently the person behind the bible-giving is a poor role-model for “real” Christians (and humans in general), and “real” Christians would, I don’t know, want to bankrupt him anyway. This man might be too extremist, and you and I might disagree with his teachings, but I know I would never stop someone distributing Bibles on the basis of his interpretation of it, no matter how dangerous and/or ‘wrong’ he might be. Unless he wrote his own version of it and is distributing that, anyone who gets a copy of the Bible might be changed in a significant way, and that’s the beauty of Christianity - it’s about a personal, spiritual relationship with God, not about the relationship with the guy who gives you the Bible and preaches the message. If you’re going to be brainwashed by a guy, you’re following his teachings rather than God’s. There are always going to be false prophets who teach incorrectly, either out of ignorance, out of their own falling out with God, or out of their own arrogance and belief in their superiority over God; it doesn't mean that a person cannot develop a real relationship with God just because they are being taught by a false prophet. If they’re brainwashing people in a dangerous manner, then they must be stopped. If they’re brainwashing people in a dangerous manner and also offering free Bibles on the side, I think it’s the former that needs to be ‘bankrupted’ rather than the latter.
Anyway, this is not what I responded with in my reply. Instead I encouraged him to read the Bible in order to critically fault it, rather than have the message filtered through other people’s voices *cough*RichardDawkins*cough*. In actual fact, my reply really had nothing much to do with the post itself. I did not want to say something like ‘DUDE BELIEVE IN GOD HE IS TOTALLY REAL READ THE BIBLE YAH YOU’RE LAME AND MEAN!’, because, well, that’s easily dismissive, and I’m not in the position to convert any of these people really. But I figure that if you want to take up atheism, which is the rejection of supernatural events as an explanation of the universe apparently, and you want to denounce Biblical teachings in order to do so, then it really would make sense to apply yourself to the Bible to figure out what exactly you’re denouncing, straight from the horse’s mouth. Apparently this suggestion is bizarre and is rather illogical. *sigh* Perhaps I phrased it badly at his Livejournal.
Anyway, I really shouldn’t involve myself in these things in the first place.
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Too many replies!