...Not just Christians, like everyone seems to want to think.
Here is an example: Just today, a few co-workers and I were gathered around on break and talking. One co-worker (A) was saying how her brother broke up with his girlfriend, and how she was glad because she didn't think that the girlfriend was good enough for him (gossiping and judging). Meanwhile, she's the first person to complain about people who gossip and calls these types of people trashy, AND also complains about why people have to be so judgemental all the time.
Example #2: Another co-worker chimed in (B) and asked co-worker (A) if her brother was single, in a kidding manner. Co-worker A said her brother was a straight-up "ho" so she (co-worker B) wouldn't want to get hooked up with her brother.
Example #3: Co-worker B said, "sounds like my brother. If it weren't for the fact that he was my brother, I wouldn't associate with him, because he's so loose." Meanwhile, this same person is the very one who makes comments about darn near every one of our male customers, saying things like, "I could tap that," or "i could make him go straight," or "Once he tries me, he'll drop her" (promoting adultery), etc.
Neither one of these people are Christians, but yet they claim that ALL CHRISTIANS are hypocrites.
I'll admit, I'm no perfect angel, either. Shoot - how do you think I could tell you all of the above, without having overheard it? I was part of the gossiping, so that makes me just as much at fault. I definitely have my flaws. But, you see, every HUMAN BEING does. I think the problem is that Christians are automatically placed in a "YOU-MUST-ALWAYS-DO-RIGHT-OR-YOU-GO-TO-HELL-FOR-NOT-BEING-A- TRUE-CHRISTIAN" category, which is UNFAIR, and UNTRUE. This is because the outsiders looking in don't understand - it's not their fault.
Just because some one says they are Christian, it doesn't mean they're automatically a perfect little angel. We're still going to sin. We're stll going to slip up. We're still going to make mistakes. It's part of our humanity. The only difference between a Christian and a non-Christian is that Christians realize (and believe and have faith) in Jesus Christ as their Lord & Savior, who died to pay for their sins, so that they could live in Heaven with God when they die. PLEASE NOTE: this does not mean that this belief gives us the right to do whatever we want, and sin anyway because God's got our backs... NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!
What it simply means is that since we believe this, we should try our BEST to do right, but should we slip up, we know we can turn to God, and repent, and ask forgiveness through our Lord & Savior, Jesus Christ, and pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and move on, trying hard not to do (whatever it was we did that was wrong) again. For some Christians, there are what's called 'strongholds,' meaning that there is a certain sin that is hard to break, no matter how hard they've prayed, no matter how hard they've tried. For instance, cussing. Hard habit to break, agreed? Well, a Christian knows he or she shouldn't, and therefore should try not to, but at the same time, it isn't going to happen over night. This alone makes it frustrating for a Christian but it can get EVEN MORE frustrating when a Christian, trying hard in his or her relationship with God to break the habit of cussing, slips up and says a cuss word in a "moment," and is overheard, and is automatically labeled as a hypocrite by non-believers - even by their own bretheren!!! Especially if that Christian is trying to witness to other on-believers. Not only is their wtiness ruined (or so it would seem), but they are labeled by the non-believers and the non-believers try to steer the other non-believer away from the Christian trying to witness to them by saying things like, "well if so-n-so were a REAL Christian, they wouldn't have said that word." However, what non-believers don't realize is that THIS IS WHY JESUS DIED FOR ALL MANKIND - because we CAN NOT POSSIBLY go through a whole entire day without breaking the ten commandments. Jesus mades a way for us to repent when we do wrong and turn away from those things we do wrong, through His death and resurrection.
Now the other problem is those who say they are Christians, but don't even TRY to turn their lives around. They've never truly repented and therefore, aren't really a TRUE Christian. It's THESE PEOPLE that have given Christians, as a whole, a bad rap.
Another thing that irks me is when non-believers say, "Christians are so intolerant!" My response is, "HUH?!" We've been persecuted for being Christians, we're called Jesus Freaks, God and prayer time has been taken from public schools, and is now trying to be taken from the court rooms, and yet *WE* are the intolerant ones??! Give me a break, man... Just give me a break!
I invite the readers of this blog to visit my web site: http://www.thejesushotline.com
Take the "How Good Are You?" QUIZ. Find out how "good" you really are. You'll be surprised...
Posted by cas33 on 2008-04-12 21:46:53 | Rating: | Views: 189
I don't like the way Christianity is used to promote stupidity. For example, abstinence before marriage in schools. This has been proved ineffective and yet schools are still exposing their kids to the risk of STD's and pregnancies by refusing to teach them sex ed and instead going with the 'christian' option of wagging a finger in a kid's face and saying, "Not until your married." Why not just admit what is really the motive for this? Not Christianity but more like not letting the local fat white old republicans be made uncomfortable by thought of 'kids having sex'. After all, these are the people making donations to the schools. Hence the principals don't want to piss them off. I doubt religion has much to do with the whole equation. People seem to hide behind it to justify bad behaviour occasionally.
Christianity is not an entirely bad thing, when it used to promote helping the homeless etc. That is why I do not hate all Christians, because some of them use their faith for good and not evil (as in the stupid bastards behind the abstinence only policy.)
So in conclusion although I generally don't have a lot of respect for religious people as I believe in science, I would not necessarily abuse someone just because of their religion- I am not that ignorant/inflammatory, it's equatable with racism as a snap judgement about an entire group of people. Rather I assess what their 'belief' is being used for, and if it's being used to promote murder/rape/stupidity I would judge them as being a hypocrite, and I would be sorry that religion gave them arsenal to do that. But, in all fairness, I guess they could say a piece of broccoli talked to them instead of god and told them to shoot their whole family. People who misuse religion give it a bad rep- I think a distinction needs to be made between people who actually like their religion and those who just want to abuse it- those are the crazy/anti social people who should be judged as being such according to themselves, not purely what they believe in. Religion didn't make them do it, it just gave them a convinient excuse. I feel sorry for religious people who get shit because of the crazy asseholes who abuse it like that.
Wow this is getting really long. I must be bored. Cya.
By the way the religious hot link really makes you seem like one of those wierdly obsessed Christians, and I think you are trying not give off that vibe? Sans that link I actually think you were pretty sane for a Christian. (I calls em like I sees em.)
Or maybe you have fellow Christian friends here. *Backs away slowly...
Many people do not understand the true meaning of 'hypocrite'. They only use it against a person who has embraced a religion, such as Christians. But anyone, whether or not he/she is a Christian or athiest, whose actions belie what he/she believes in, intentionally, is a hypocrite.
When a Christian makes certain mistakes contrary to Christ's teachings and out of spontaneus outburst or forgetting that one should not have committed such mistakes, he/she should not be branded as a hypocrite. We all make mistakes, and we often realised it later. But if these so-called 'mistakes' become part and parcel of our character than we should ponder whether we have earned the 'hypocrite' branding.
I, too, are fed-up with people who thinks Christians are hypocrites or obsessive, unless the Christians themselves are really that.
But I'm really more sick of people who confessed that they are Christians but at the same time can say, with conviction, that school exams are more important that their children's Catechism classes - when their school exams are towards the year-end!
I feel for you..
CynicalSweetheart - I call things like I see them too, and it would seem that you've had a bad experience where Christianity is concerned. I am sorry that you have, if that is the case; however, that doesn't mean that you have to go around assuming all "religious" people are insane zealots. You say you disrespect religious folk because you believe in science; however, science has proven the Bible to be factual MANY MANY times. A very good friend of mine has a PhD in Quantum Physics - he's a physicist, so he's obviously very "into" science - and even he agrees that science has proven the Bible to be factual. There are things in the Bible that have been written for centuries, and gone ignored because it's in the Bible, yet science claims they just discovered it, when it was right there under their noses the whole time, in the Bible.
No, not ALL Christians use their faith to hide behind alterior motives, and this is exactly what I'm complaining about in my blog - people "assuming" things about Christians, without any understanding. Those particular people who do such things in the guise of Christianity are in fact FALSE Christians. No doubt about it. This doesn't mean that ALL Christians do that, and I wish people would stop thinking that way about us! I also wish people would stop assuming that they're smarter because they believe in science, and that we're somehow unintelligent because we believe and have faith in things we can not see.
If I seem like a weirdly obssessed Christian to you, then so be it. I do not care what one person thinks of me. I know I am a very intelligent person, and that link was included so that people like you - who dislike Christians or "religious" people - can visit it and HOPEFULLY gain a better understanding of what we believe, and why, and be willing to change your negative views about us as a whole - *IF* you're willing to be open-minded enough to visit it. But let me set the record straight: there is a BIG difference between being "religious," and being a Christian. I won't even try to explain that because it would be like a physicist explaining the "optical orientation in self assembled quantum dots" to a horticulturist - the horticulturist isn't familiar with quantum dots - they're familiar with plants and flowers, and have no interest in quantum dots.
I don't have any friends on here - I am new to this site. I'm not here to collect a bunch of friends in some poularity contest - I'm here to write blogs and hopefully receive feedback.
Dear Cas33, This is a great blog expressing what being a Christian is all about. My husband is a Physicist and a believing Christian and Creationist. The laws of Physics are more consistent with creation than evolution. But the trouble is, when you admit there may be a Creator, then there comes the question of being accountable to Him. But the beauty of it all is that the God who created the universe sees me - and knew all about me - and about Cya before we wer born. He has a loving plan for your life Cya, I pray you will discover it.
Charlotte
FYI: So you know I wasn't telling a fib... At the time I wrote my response to CynicalSweetheart, I did not have freinds on here. Since then, I have aqcuired one or two.
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