John Shore (a Christian) wrote up his list of the Top 10 Ways Christians Tend to Fail:
- Too much money
- Too confident that God thinks we’re all that and a leather-bound gift Bible.
- Too quick to believe that we know what God really means by what he says in the Bible.
- Too action-oriented.
- Too invasive of others generally.
- Too invasive of others personally.
- Too quick to abandon logic.
- Too fixated on gays and lesbians.
- Too insular.
- Too quick to condemn fellow Christians.
The explanations don’t all satisfy me.
#8, about being fixated on gays and lesbians, doesn’t condemn the Christian practice of shunning or mistreating homosexuals. He just asks them to lay low for a little bit. (And then? Will they resume their gay-bashing ways?)
Also, for #10, I disagree with Shore. It would be better if “liberal” Christians did rebuke the fundamentalists. Change is only going to come from within. Why would you want to link yourself with the fundamentalists? You’d be implicitly endorsing the anti-Science, anti-homosexual, anti-woman, anti-freedom, anti-everything beliefs they have. I would think moderate Christians would want to sever those ties, not build them up.
There are some rebukes, though, of Christians who evangelize to you:
… what we seem to too often lose sight of is how impossible it is to talk someone who isn’t a Christian into being one. I think maybe we should spend more time “just” living as Christians, and letting God worry about the non-Christians. I’m pretty sure he can handle that job. He saved me, and that phenomenon sure didn’t have anything to do with anyone ever telling me I should become a Christian. Trust me on this: I was saved in spite of Christians trying to save me, not because of them.
This one (#7) was my favorite:
I think when talking to others about our faith, we Christians too often resort to a language and line of reasoning that leaves good ol’ fashion logic sitting on the ground behind us, waving a sad good-bye. “It’s true because the Bible says it’s true” can’t mean anything to a non-Christian, because (hurt though it does to admit it, I know) it’s such a manifestly illogical assertion. ”It’s true because the Bible says it’s true” is no more a reason for anything actually (as in objectively) being true than was your parents’ old, infinitely frustrating ”Because I said so!” As a logical argument, “It’s true because someone with a vested interest in it being true says it’s true” is Beyond Useless. Why in our dealings with non-Christians we so often fail to grasp that is a total mystery to me.
Check out the full list here.
[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]
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