I have recently tried to explain to my atheist friend how amazing my conversion from atheism to belief has been. He says that the belief in God is irrational. I could lecture him all day about how totally rational it is, but I really don’t have that time, and I’m guessing he wouldn’t be open minded enough to listen. However, my friend also has some issues with Christians in general. He says they’re very judgmental and hypocritical. He went on and on about how they’re anti gay, against women’s rights, act like they’re perfect, condemn others etc…How do I approach these statements delicately?
Tell him he’s being an unobservant idiot who only focuses on the people in the public eye who support his personal perceptions, rather on than on the reality of the situation.
That’s about as delicate as you can get imo.
#1: Being against homosexual acts is not anti-gay. If we were anti-gay., we’d call for gay people to be rounded up and killed in the streets. In reality, we have much more respect for gay people thank homosexual advocates, because we recognize that a person is defined by far, far more than their petty sexual hungers. In using terms like “anti-gay,” or “pro-gay,” a person is reducing homosexuals to their sexual desires, and ignoring everything else that goes into a human being. Society would like us to think that we are the sum total of our sexual appetites, but we are far, far more than that; A person’s sexual appetite should not be the defining feature by which they are recognized.
#2: Is your friend so ignorant of history as to not recognize that the church was a major player in the true woman’s right’s movement (not the counterfeit movement of today that reduces a woman to a sexual object to be toyed with, or a person devoid of the traits gifted to their gender by God). Again, the Catholic Church has far, far more respect for woman than your friend thinks… and probably more than your friend does, because we recognize the inherent beauty of the woman, the gift that is the ability to produce life; and the wonder of a companion soul to the man whom she chooses to gift with her love. When your friend complains about us being anti-woman, he’s either referencing our desire to keep women from murdering their children, or our inability to ordinate women. The former is in keeping with natural law, common sense, and every moral code known to man (though shalt not murder!); the latter is a limitation on the priesthood instituted by Christ, and completely beyond our capacity to change.
#3: If your friend has met a Catholic, or Christian in general, who says / acts like they’re perfect, then they are not living out the truth of their faith. And inherent quality of our faith is that we recognize our imperfection, and turn to God for the strength to overcome it.
#4: Same thing with condemning people; a Christian who condemns others is not living according to the Word of God.
In all reality, there is probably nothing you can say that will reach your friend. I have a few friends who believe similarly and, while I’ve managed to get them to acknowledge that the Catholic Church is different, and better, than the other Christian denominations, they still hold a great deal of disdain for Christianity in general. The sad fact is that nothing short of God will ever reach these people and change their minds; and they are too often too far down the black hole that is disbelief to listen to Him. All you can really do is pray for your friend, continue discussing the Truth when he asks, and just live a good Catholic life; these are your best tools for conversion.
but even so, I’d rather have hypocrisy than secular, left-wing moral equivalence.
This says it best for me.
