First an apology. I don't post a ton on here, but am a Christian and I lurk a lot. I am constantly embarassed and disheartened by the lack of Grace and typical bad attitude that is demonstrated by the Christian posters on here. While it truly is impossible even when giving 100% effort to be a great representative of Christ, hardly a Christian on here even seems like they are trying in regards to the way they respond to you all.

If I could I would sit down with every one of you, buy you a beer or two, a round of babies to eat, and start over fresh. But I cant. So this apology is all you get.

So my question for you all is how would you characterize the good experiences you have had with Christians. What was it about the conversation with them that stood out and what about their nature stood out? Basically if you ever left a conversation w a Christian not thinking they were scum, why?

Thanks

Well, I don't think most Christians are scum. I was raised Christian and my parents are Christian but still mostly good people. I actually recently had a good debate with my Dad recently about it, we didn't really get anywhere but we managed to see each others' views better without insulting or upsetting each other, which was nice.

In regards to the less enjoyable interactions, I think there's a weird sense of entitlement from Christians sometimes. They think they're special because they're saved, God loves them and they "know" something other people don't. In theory they should be humble, but it's hard in practice when their religion is basically constantly telling them that everyone is a horrible person, but they're "better" because God forgives them and at least they're trying to do what they think God wants, unlike those other horrible people. People that believe in a literal hell on some level have to rationalize it by thinking we somehow deserve it, which is not very conducive to a "loving attitude."

There also seems to be a prevalent belief that morality comes from God, and that without God everyone will naturally just sin their faces off. My Mom actually asked me once if I was "running away from God" because I wanted to be able to do "whatever I wanted." I recently donated an old car of mine to a local charity, but didn't really mention it to anyone because, that's not why I did it. But my parents started grilling me about what I did with my old car, so I finally told them and they were AMAZED. They couldn't stop gushing about what a nice good thing I did. It was like they literally couldn't understand it. That's a mentality I find really annoying, and kind of creepy about Christians.

There's a lot of negative things that Christians are taught about "the world" (ie, anyone who's not in their specific in-group) that's naturally divisive, and I agree that it's a problem. I know biblically you probably feel that Christians have a responsibility to live in such a way as to be "a light in the world," and that that might kind of be where you're going with this? But really the "best" Christian interactions I could say are the ones that just acted like regular, nice people, and not judgers, preachers, or nutcases. The idea that Christians should be so much "better" that everyone should be able to tell just by watching them, just feels to me like more "no one has any reason to be good (and you're actually terrible) without God" rhetoric. But I agree your religion would probably have a more compelling case if that was actually the case.


But seriously though man, when's my round of babies get here?

I don't mind Christians who think they are Christians but who don't really practice it or anything, but will just say yeah believe in god, er brought up christian yeah im a Christian, fine. Its the ones who are, what i consider to be delusional I don't like, but that goes for any person from any religion.

Sorry didn't answer your question.

I had a philosophy teacher who described himself as an Christian existentialist. He still is the person I admire the most to this day. And I'm an anti-existentialist atheist, so everything really is possible.

In film school we made a short with Jesus as the main character. The director, the producer and I were on the bus leaving College one day during preproduction, and we were discussing the film. A man in I guess his mid-fifties overheard and sat down beside us. He started telling us how he'd been involved in organised crime, he'd gone to prison and well, you guessed it. He had overheard us mentioning Pilate (we were considering him as a character) and we ended up having a very interesting, if slightly scary, conversation about Pilate's culpability in the crucifixion. If only for the sheer weirdness of it, that's probably the most enjoyable one I can think of.

I generally don't continue conservations I'm not enjoying, so can't really help you there.

I've met all kind of Christians. Some are really bad people some are very good.

I think your OP is written from a position of ignorance OP. You don't spend enough time on here and/or have a long enough posting history to be critiquing other posters.

You also neglected to notice that spreading the Gospel always has a prophetic aspect to it and people always get offended when faced with the unvarnished truth of the Word and like to stone prophets.

The illusion is that Christians are all sweetness and light all the time. God has always directed his prophets to tell the unvarnished truth even to the point of risking death. The Gospel is a difficult message to deliver and almost impossible in this medium of political agitation that is constantly occurring on 2+2. Why do you think Jonah turned tail and ran?

Are you the new Christian? Ready to not tell the unvarnished truth?

Because the unvarnished truth is the only thing that ever saved anyone.

hahaha.. YEAH, Sure! That is the real reason why people get offended... TRUTH burns our EYES and EARS!!

btw. It was your GOD who asked to stone false prophets.. so don't be mad that people are doing crazy stuff because they are following dumb laws...
"If a man still prophesies, his parents, father and mother, shall say to him, "You shall not live, because you have spoken a lie in the name of the Lord." When he prophesies, his parents, father and mother, shall thrust him through." (Zechariah 13:3 NAB)

It literally says in the bible that some people get offended when hearing the Word.

You can google the passage on biblegateway.

Prophets didn't get thrown down wells, sawn in half and stoned because their messages were welcomed. It takes meekness to welcome the Word of God and if you've been taught to be a mocker good luck at raising the meekness and the stillness the bible is trying to teach you to attain spiritual revelation.

I don't care what your bible says.. That is not the real reason why people get offended.

They get offended because its easier to get offended than to change their ways.

Their pride always prompts them to get offended in conjunction with their other sins. All customized to the individual of course so its hard to name the culprit: which is human nature.

You can read the NT. Christ is always escaping out of men's hands until his time has come.

It even says he knows what is in men and it is the capacity to get offended at the Word of God which is a glaring sign of the sin nature in man.

It is not reasonable to get offended when someone tells you they have the Word of God.

A reasonable man always listens. But the truth is, the fix isn't easy. That's why a lot of people trying to convert you give you the varnished truth. They want to convert you. But why convert somebody if they can't stand the full length of true conversion? That's worse than not converting someone.

You are missing the point... it is not truth until you can prove it is.. So they do have a reason to be offended when some idiot starts preaching in the middle of their morning commute to work and spitting out quotes from the bible... That is being very inconsiderate of other people.

I'd say its not the christian in them that can make them disagreeable, nor the atheist etc.. If the person is a dick they'll be a dick christian or atheist. All it enables is, as someone has said, condecension/maybe a pride in being saved and "special."
But generally the only times you can tell if someone a Christian is if they bring it up in chat. There aren't character traits, offense etc..
Sometimes if your arguing they might get angry etc.. but they'll be that kind of person outside of it.
Saying that, I always find it more enjoyable discussing bits of the bible/morality/ etc. where whilst their views might be tied in with their faith, at the end of the day, they won't see you as attacking their faith if you disagree; as opposed to Christian v non-Christian which can lead to all the bad feeling

No...The truth is self fulfilling. If you receive the incorruptible seed of God's Word with gladness then heed his word you are set on an inevitable course towards eternal life. Not necessarily an easy course but on an inevitable one because God is leading you through the course. Read the 23rd Psalm...then realize there are multiple hills and valleys he is leading you across.

Most of the valleys are the sin nature of man.

It's the sinfulness of human nature that makes our hearts hard enough to reject God's seed and try to plow our own course. That's why we examine ourselves. To learn the art of softening the hardness of our hearts.

Mockery is a sign the devil has plowed a harsher seed in your heart and only you alone can uproot him though God will grant you assistance along each step of the way. You can never take a shortcut. You always have to deal with yourself and your own sinful ways first. That's how you score a victory on the devil.

Read the book of James: "the power of life and death is in the tongue".

Ace, there are plenty of times I've had conversations with people of many faiths that were good talks. Anyone who can sit down and rationally lay out why they think and feel the way they do, not resort to name-calling, threats and attempts to convert when talking about religion, it makes for a good experience. In terms of posters on this site, you have Bunny.

On the absolute opposite side, you have Splenda, one of the most vile people I have ever had the displeasure of having a converstaion with. Getting just a glimpse into her mind would probably drive me out of mine with revulsion.

holy ****, I forgot I was talking to a wall...

Interesting OP. Regarding the Christians on here, I suspect the nature of many responses is directly related to the accumulation of negative posts by many atheists over several years. In any case, there is room for improvement on both (all?) sides - except of course for Bunny.

As for conversations with Christians, I don't have a lot of time for people I think are scum, but I don't recall too many conversations with Christians that left me feeling that way. The few exceptions involve people with some influence (priests or similar) who seemed to relish using their Christian positions to attack and belittle various people or groups, or who took utterly hypocritical positions. In those cases, the other Christians in the conversation had a similar reaction to mine, so my opinion of the person did not depend on their Christianity.

Lots of things make for a good conversation. I can be entertained, or learn something new about myself or the other person, or simply something new, or gain a new perspective and on and on. Most people that I interact with are Christians, and most conversations are positive, but what is really striking about conversations with them related to Christianity is the enormous range of theistic views they hold. I doubt that there are two that share the same views across the board. And for the most part, those differences have no consequences for them. Still, I value the opportunity to learn about what they believe and why, and to reflect on how that may affect my beliefs and reasoning.

You also asked about their nature. My impression is that there is no fundamental difference between a Christian and a non-Christian or an atheist. You can find scum in all camps. And while perhaps my impression simply reflects my scum-avoidance nature, I continue to take issue with the view that people are by nature evil. My experience has been, with exceptions of course, that people are good-hearted, regardless of their theistic view.

About the most curious example of a converastion (if you can call it that) is with a guy I worked with many years ago. He was a young guy in a tech support role when laptops were first becoming readily available - say 20 years or so ago. He had a Bible on his desk, but didn't really talk about it. Then one day, he told me at lunch that he had a book in his office that proved that everything in the Bible was true, and everything about science was wrong. About the only response I could manage was "Realllly" as I hoped he would not pursue the topic. But perhaps I should have shared my first thought - if everything about science is wrong, then how on Earth did we figure out how to build laptop computers?

So God is biased towards those who blindly follow him more than those who search for reason? If its Satan planting the seed, my choice is irrelevant. if its up to me, God created me; i believe in reason, God knew this, knew i'd never love him etc., God created me to be damned. As opposed to you who he created knowing you'd be converted.
Jeez thanks god, your real good to me.

Well I am, too.

Mockery is of the devil. Its a form of sarcasm and sarcasm always has the aim of injuring the targeted person.

"Sarcasm in Relationships" by P. Valerie Dauphin: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/communication/valerie.htm

This forum is one big shortcut away from God.

I would always give God the benefit of the doubt in any situation until he supplies me with the answer in his Word.

I never decide against him. I've always known inductively that relative to God I'm a nobody...like Abraham and Job say "I am but dust and ashes"...

God was never meant to be anthropomorphized downwardly. That's the devil in man's nature prompting the downward interpretation and debasing of God's nature. But what do you expect? He's trying to break off one of God's kingdom's, the Earth, from the rest of God's Kingdom and rule it.

The devil rules a lot of people unconsciously then makes a joke of himself consciously through the media so people will not take notice of his acts of sabotaging individuals.

where do you get this analysis of Satan? Why can't God the all powerful defeat Satan? Or at least get him out of us? Does that not screw up God's plan? Does than not make God not all poweful/ not let us have free will?

Also you ignored the other point. God created you knowing you would believe. God created me knowing i would not. God created me. Therefore God created me knowing I would be damned. God created something he "loves" to be condemned. How is this a loving act?
If he choses who is created; why not only create those who will freely choose him?
You need not have non-believers to have believers

If that is to be true; then why did God chose to create it?
What does "of the devil" even mean?
And mockery between friends can be good; me and my friends enjoy it to laugh etc.. Also it can cause distraction from other awful things. There was a How I Met Your Mother when it happened recently. Marshall's dad died, and Marshall's mum wasn't eating or functioning. So Lily started mocking, being a bitch etc.. and it god Marshall's mum back to her normal self and let her escape the grief

As I said before, You never reply to me straight to the point, instead you love to come out with quotations of the bible, links to biased online articles, talk nonsense and overall disregard everything I question you about.

God did beat Satan at the Cross.

But he may have chosen repeated washings of us to work out our sin nature which is a stain on his image while leaving our souls intact.

The Flood was a big washing but it didn't completely knock out the sin nature in Man. Cain's descendants the Kenites survived the Flood and are merged with other groups now but even a Kenite can repent.

This is soooooooo dumb... I mean seriously Splendour.. DO yo use your brain? HOw old are you?

"Devil rules a lot of people unconsciously"? wtf? and GOD allows it? why? let me guess.. FREE WILL.. aha.. that explains everything.. Why does GOD allow evil beings to take control of people's minds? This whole subject of DEVIL vs GOD is so freaking dumb.. It just makes no fing sense unless you believe in dumb scary bedtime stories or you accept an existence of an evil GOD who does not give a crap about Evil beings doing bad things to his loving creation(and how in the hell we are his loving creation when he allows more powerful beings from us to mess around with us, either by controlling our minds or some other weird ways, that is not loving)...