Mike wrote last week about how outsiders to Christianity view the efforts of Christians in spreading their message. There is one really important thing to say about spreading the message that I want to share: Don’t. You can’t make people listen, you can’t convert anyone, you can’t create a need. Don’t bother trying.
I’m not even talking about the Christian idea of “You can’t bring someone to Christ, only Christ can do that” because that’s just an excuse to make the Christian feel better at not converting people. I’m talking about the effort of attempting to convert someone. The same goes for attempts by atheists to convert theists of any kind away from their faiths.
”If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the French author and aviator.
The point is that people won’t convert, they won’t decide to change, not unless or until they feel a need to. They won’t feel a need to change unless they meet circumstances where their existing beliefs fail them. That’s why so many people convert and are saved when they are at their lowest point or reject religion when it fails to help them.
If you want to make religion appealing, or if we want to make atheism appealing, then we shouldn’t tell people how good it is or how bad the other side is. Instead we should foster a desire to explore all sides of the issue and allow people to choose for themselves. They should be able to weigh up the pros and cons by being exposed to the benefits and limitations of religion and it’s opposite. We share our point of view then, not as an attempt to convert, but as a way of understanding how our shared humanity deals with life.
Posted in A Cacophony of Posts, Jason | 5 Comments »I have four children. I remember when they were all still babies before they started school but when they were old enough to just enjoy life and play. These little, walking, talking, cute engines of learning. They’d pick up everything, every fact, every facet of a topic. They learn behaviour that works, kindness was reciprocated, meanness led to rejection.
I’d take them to the playground, the park, the shops, a walk, anywhere, they’d meet other kids and POW. They’d have a new friend. Just like that, laughing, playing, running, giggling little friends. Friends. There was never any pressure to act in a certain way, to conform or to rebel. I’d look at these lovely little balls of energy making friends and I’d feel jealous. All around the playground you could see parents, aunts, grandparents, all sitting about in their own groups or alone, not talking. Me too.
When was the last time you just met someone and decided that you could be friends with them? Without any worries. No concern that the person you’d just met might be some kind of freak, that they might have problems to load on you, that they might judge you, want to sleep with you, think that you were crazy, anything.
When was the last time that you met someone and they were just a friend?
I’d looked at my kids, running around and enjoying the company of their new friends, and realised that there is nothing left for them to learn about human beings other than how terribly disappointing they can and will be.
Right now, in the eyes of every single two year old in the world, everyone they meet is equal. They don’t judge that someone is less than they are because of race or religion. They don’t care if you are male or female. If you’re gay or straight it mean nothing to them, nothing at all. They don’t care if someone with a learning disability or physical disability can’t keep up, they just play a different game.
To a two year old everyone is equally good. All they have left to learn is that they are not. They will learn that people will judge you and that it is OK to judge other people. They learn that there is a hierarchy to living, that people are not equal because they aren’t treated equally. They will learn that the things that they are bad at should be hidden so as not to cause embarrassment and the things that they are good at should be kept equally quiet so that they don’t invite jealousy.
They’ll learn that those things about themselves that are different and cannot be changed like their skin colour, the fact that they suffer from dyslexia or myopia, their gender or religion, any of these sort of things will mark them as separate. They will stay away from what is different and form into groups of those who are similar. Not because it’s right but because it’s easy. Step by step they learn that differences set them apart and so they must conform.
Challenging this is really difficult. How do you reverse the trend? How do you open yourself up again to just making friends with people? Christians seem to have the sincere belief that this state is reached only in heaven. For me, that’s just giving up on the idea as possible during the normal span of living. How do we change our attitude so that we can accept others for what they are?
Posted in A Cacophony of Posts, Jason | 8 Comments »
This anecdote might spur some thought on the “to fight or not to fight” debate.
I was visited at the weekend by a Jehovah’s Witness, a pleasant lady called Sue. I’ve had lots of encounters with JWs and similar (I’m sure we all have). It made me feel clever to cut through their foundationless beliefs with my twin swords of rationalism and scientific evidence. It also achieved nothing. Away they would go leaving me with the obligatory copy of Watchtower that I would never read.
I thought I might try something different with Sue so I invited her into my home after telling her that I am an atheist. At first, she came on strong with the Jesus/Bible stuff. I gave her unbridled airspace, just acknowledging what she was saying without offering comment on it.
After about 20 minutes on the soapbox, she said, “I get a lot of rejection and I expected the same from you as a non-believer. Yet all you’ve done is listen to me. You’ve been courteous and friendly and I’m not used to that.”
Posted in A Cacophony of Posts, Jason | 4 Comments »Read the rest of this news item »