L
Laurence_of_PA
Guest
After two continuous weeks of being on staff at a summer Boy Scout camp, it’s great to be back – albeit for this brief time – so that I can address perhaps the most pressing theological issue of our time.
Having been renewing, reading about, and learning how to defend my Catholic faith these last three-or-so months, I’ve practically been loaded with Apologetical Ammo, ready to discuss all matters of religion with anyone on any terms at any times. Not that I’ve been instigating or provoking such encounters, but that I’ve been prepared to make reasonable sense of the Catholic faith in the highly-likely event that a “religious” person from *my *area starts ridiculing, attacking, or misrepresenting the Church.
Maybe I didn’t notice it too keenly in the past, but on camp staff this year, I noticed how (regardless of religious background or where they go to worship) at least half the staff I’ve gotten into deep conversations with are relativists at heart. Here (as well as at school) it isn’t O.K. to simply have mutual respect for other faiths while disagreeing with them. You have to acknowledge that *everyone *can be right each in their own special way, or you keep your mouth shut!!! To engage in any real religious discussion is to be “childish” and “narrow-minded”.
So far, the “philosophical” conversation I keep hearing on camp staff and which I indiscriminately HATE the most is the:
“Yeah! Maybe we *are *in one big mass hallucination, or maybe Jesus *was *just a good ol’ guy, or maybe the Church is just power-hungry, or maybe everyone should just decide which religion is right for them. Man, are we deep! Too bad not everyone is as philosophical and thoughtful as we are!”
In one such type of conversation, we were supposedly talking casually about science-fiction and Stargate SG1, yet repeatedly jabs were taken at the Church in this “friendly, casual, open discussion” of ours. However, every time I tried to correct these unsettling errors about the Church’s stance on evolution, biblical interpretation, the life of Jesus Christ, and absolute truth, I was simply ignored in favor of more “deep” conversation.
Where I work, people are so open-minded they’re close-minded. Along with the many “Christians” we have here, there is even a polytheist who has his own little religion based on the “my-religion-is-so-broad-and-all-encompassing-it-swallows-all-others”-prototype. With relativism on the rise, whenever I try to apply reason and practical apologetics to a religious discussion, I’m immediately beaten down with “If you born into a Muslim or Jewish family you’d think differently. Wouldn’t you!” To this I mention how being born into a family that thinks the world is flat wouldn’t justify that absurdity, to which I’m given “Religion and God are nothing like science. We can never prove anything about him at all, so we can rightfully believe whatever we want and that would be just fine.”
These people I should mention really *are * great people to work and do stuff with, but not following the relativistic dogma and actually *taking *a stand makes me be percieved as a narrow-minded racist (though only in such discussions). What do you suggest?:banghead:
Having been renewing, reading about, and learning how to defend my Catholic faith these last three-or-so months, I’ve practically been loaded with Apologetical Ammo, ready to discuss all matters of religion with anyone on any terms at any times. Not that I’ve been instigating or provoking such encounters, but that I’ve been prepared to make reasonable sense of the Catholic faith in the highly-likely event that a “religious” person from *my *area starts ridiculing, attacking, or misrepresenting the Church.
Maybe I didn’t notice it too keenly in the past, but on camp staff this year, I noticed how (regardless of religious background or where they go to worship) at least half the staff I’ve gotten into deep conversations with are relativists at heart. Here (as well as at school) it isn’t O.K. to simply have mutual respect for other faiths while disagreeing with them. You have to acknowledge that *everyone *can be right each in their own special way, or you keep your mouth shut!!! To engage in any real religious discussion is to be “childish” and “narrow-minded”.
So far, the “philosophical” conversation I keep hearing on camp staff and which I indiscriminately HATE the most is the:
“Yeah! Maybe we *are *in one big mass hallucination, or maybe Jesus *was *just a good ol’ guy, or maybe the Church is just power-hungry, or maybe everyone should just decide which religion is right for them. Man, are we deep! Too bad not everyone is as philosophical and thoughtful as we are!”
In one such type of conversation, we were supposedly talking casually about science-fiction and Stargate SG1, yet repeatedly jabs were taken at the Church in this “friendly, casual, open discussion” of ours. However, every time I tried to correct these unsettling errors about the Church’s stance on evolution, biblical interpretation, the life of Jesus Christ, and absolute truth, I was simply ignored in favor of more “deep” conversation.
Where I work, people are so open-minded they’re close-minded. Along with the many “Christians” we have here, there is even a polytheist who has his own little religion based on the “my-religion-is-so-broad-and-all-encompassing-it-swallows-all-others”-prototype. With relativism on the rise, whenever I try to apply reason and practical apologetics to a religious discussion, I’m immediately beaten down with “If you born into a Muslim or Jewish family you’d think differently. Wouldn’t you!” To this I mention how being born into a family that thinks the world is flat wouldn’t justify that absurdity, to which I’m given “Religion and God are nothing like science. We can never prove anything about him at all, so we can rightfully believe whatever we want and that would be just fine.”
These people I should mention really *are * great people to work and do stuff with, but not following the relativistic dogma and actually *taking *a stand makes me be percieved as a narrow-minded racist (though only in such discussions). What do you suggest?:banghead:
).
