What Do You Think? Comments on a Famous Quote...

[Singinbeauty]

Brennan Manning:

The single greatest cause of atheism in the world today, is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. This, is what an unbelieving world, simply finds, unbelievable.

Agree / Disagree? Is this getting worse in today’s world?

In light of a few threads that have popped up on the Non-Catholic board I thought it would be good to discuss this between christians and non-christians alike…

 

[mark_a]

Agree / Disagree? Is this getting worse in today’s world?

In light of a few threads that have popped up on the Non-Catholic board I thought it would be good to discuss this between christians and non-christians alike…

I don’t if we are causing atheism, but I believe we Christians who don’t practice what we preach are the leading cause of people turning their backs on Christianity for Islam.

 

[fbl9]

Agree / Disagree? Is this getting worse in today’s world?

In light of a few threads that have popped up on the Non-Catholic board I thought it would be good to discuss this between christians and non-christians alike…

i won’t say i agrtee but i can sympathize somewhat with people who turn against christainity because of the behavior of us.i may be no angel but i at least i do try to act like one.it is all to easy to give up and say well God must not want me bc He let fall into sin(when it really is my own fault for doing so)the osas doctrine leads one to think this…as for this getting worse i think it is a numbers thing there are more people but the percentage may be the same.

 

[notself]

There are people who say that they believe in God but are not part of any church because of the hypocrisy of the religious leaders as well as the laypeople.

I think these people may actually move in and out of organized religion rather than stay as “spiritual but not religious”. It is these people who are easily converted by believers who live their beliefs.

It is much more difficult to re-convert people who have left a religion because they no longer believe in the tenets and practices of that religion. This change in belief has usually come through serious thought and conviction. It takes serious conversations and significant time spent by the believer in explaining the beliefs of a religion before the non believer will be convinced.

The Evangelical Christian Churches are targeting the first category and are quite successful in gaining new adherents. My nephew and his wife are Catholic but the parish they belong to does not have programs specifically designed for young adults. They still go to Mass every Sunday but spend a couple of nights a week at an evangelical church meeting people their age. My sister is concerned about this. There isn’t much she can do because they live a thousand miles away. She spend time talking kindly to them and encouraging them to talk to the pastor about starting a program for Catholic young couples. I hope they listen to her and she succeeds in influencing them.

This has been posted before on other threads but it is still an interesting study on religion in America. It speaks about the number of Catholics who have left the Church to join Evangelical churches.

religions.pewforum.org/reports

 

[Mirdath]

He has a very good point, but misses the mark. First off, atheists aren’t just non-Christians, they’re non-Jews, non-Hindus, non-Asatruar, etcetera etcetera etcetera. So if we take the rest of the quote as true, it’s just as much the fault of other religions as it is of Christianity.

But that’s really just a nitpick. The central problem with Manning’s statement is that he seems to take a shaky correlation – Christians not practicing what they preach, and the rising numbers of atheists, both of which are perfectly true – and says it’s a causal relationship. Unless there’s more to what he said explaining how a causes b, there’s no reason to believe it.

I would, however, say that many Christians’ inconsistency between word and action (among other problems) does a great job keeping people turned off it or from taking it seriously as a consistent, beautiful work of faith that is worthy of some regard in its own right even from those who are, for one reason or another, unable to accept it.

Christians behaving badly can reflect poorly on Christianity, yes, but I don’t think that’s doing much to actively send people headlong into unbelief.

 

[strngrnrth]

Christians give more to charity, help their families more and try to live more honestly. There are just a few areas where I know we fall far short of the standard we know we must try to keep: Christians consume porn at the same rate as others, tip worse :tsktsk: and sometimes have alienated offspring. The Bible warns us about these things. We should really sharpen up in these areas. Of course, that applies to the USA. I don’t know about the rest of the world. I do know a majority of Christians world wide live under repression and/or persecution for their faith. This is in addition to the hardships of life in relatively poor lands. They get very little press coverage. So do the majority of first-world Christians, who are kind, honest and often very intelligent, but get bad press. What we have is a PR problem, and we have it because we are letting it happen.
Other religions have their own PR issues. I can’t speak for them. Where I live, Buddhists and New Agers are so revered by the press that many people actually don’t know anything bad has ever been done in the name of those and related belief systems.
Atheism didn’t start when Christains suddenly stopped being perfect. It grew whenever a society became extremely prosperous and individualistic. I think the cause is people wanting to be their own gods. When our dependence on God is undeniable, that impulse has to wait. But when many people are sure they never needed anyone and that they can do anything, atheism becomes stylish. In ancient Rome, the emperors said they were gods. Most people just didn’t care enough to challenge them and die for it, but Jews and Christians did, because we have a God who is Truth and will not tolerate lies and false gods. Today, many Americans and Europeans e.g. are living in the dream world of a pagan Roman emperor, imagining themselves able to create a universe and invent right and wrong.

 

[ALLFORHIM]

Agree / Disagree? Is this getting worse in today’s world?

In light of a few threads that have popped up on the Non-Catholic board I thought it would be good to discuss this between christians and non-christians alike…

We could definitely be a stumbling block. Here is a quote from a teen on another forum

Mom, here’s what I see folks do, They take their life and pour the Bible through it and the things that their life sifts out that line up the way they want they keep, the rest they discard. … I asked her where she was going with this thought…she then said…well mom …God is the same today, yesterday, and forever wouldn’t it make more sense to pour your life through the Bible and let it sift out the things that the Bible lines up with and keep those things and get rid of the stuff that doesnt line up? Seems like a reliable standard never changes and I change all the time.

I think this is exactly what people do pick and choose

 

[cheddarsox]

It’s not what turned me off of god.

The fact that “God” didn’t do or behave as Christianity claimed, in my own life, is what gave me doubts.

I expect people to say one thing, and do another, but I expected “God”, who was described as “perfect” to not play that game.

It was “God” not playing back, and Christians “excuses” for his odd behavior that really got me scratching my head.

Theology really seems like nothing more than someone’s reasoning why “God” doesn’t mesh with what we experience, like human excuses for the Divine.

 

[kalt]

Agree / Disagree? Is this getting worse in today’s world?

In light of a few threads that have popped up on the Non-Catholic board I thought it would be good to discuss this between christians and non-christians alike…

Antagonistic an accusatory posts turn people away.

If someone is turned off by your tone, nothing you say matters.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Agree / Disagree? Is this getting worse in today’s world?

In light of a few threads that have popped up on the Non-Catholic board I thought it would be good to discuss this between christians and non-christians alike…

**The reservations I have about agreeing with that, are that: **​

• **the ghastliness of Christians is not quite the whole story - we are all sinners, even if we are anti-Christian; so one has to allow for the reality of sin as a reason for rejection of Christ. **
• **Christian faith is extremely cruel in some ways: to paraphrase C.S. Lewis, it’s like being skinned alive slowly without anaesthetic. **
• God’s grace relativises wickedness - that is, it becomes irrelevant who sins how; what signifies is that all are under the judgement of God, because all are sinners. Pointing to the sins of Christians as a reason for refusing Christ’s Will is a poor excuse, because it is form of self-righteousness: "I give thee thanks, O God, that I am not like those Christians over there…"
• **The Bible puts people off. **
• **It’s human nature not to like having our weaknesses shown up - Jesus did that simply by being Jesus, so He had to be killed. People hate the light - they do not love it: that’s a flattering lie that boosts man’s egotism. So the Church, even were it utterly faultless, would be hated bitterly. **
  **Sin is the problem here; & as an indictment of human sin, Romans 1-3 is unparallelled. **