Where we have failed

Yesterday I spent the night listening to a secular humanist talk about life, his reasoning for not believing in God, and his disdain for anything "holy" and for anyone that would even use that word. Yep, I went to the atheist meeting again. I enjoy it. It's refreshing to know how much pain the churches in the world has caused. Very odd phrase? Confused? Well I think it's humbling to see how these people have been hurt by their upbringing and how their churches failed them. I say this because most of them were raised Christian. But they were turned off from it. Why? They claim logic and reasoning but as much as I'd like to think they did that, it was emotion and pain that they ran from. They just connect pain to God and don't want either to exist for themselves. At least, that's what I think but I'm just some punk kid after all. But yeah, it's refreshing to be humbled by just how bad some churches are. Why? Because we can improve. This doesn't have to be a common story. Now I can clearly see how the small sins we make in our daily lives can hurt others.

That was a big thing one of them brought up when I was talking to him. It went something like this: "I just don't think even Christians believe in their religion. Just think if you truly believed that there was this all powerful god that loved you as you were and all He asks of you is to pursue Him throughout your life for eternal bliss, what wouldn't you do for Him? If I actually believed something like that I would put everything I had into following God. But I don't and none of my Christian friends follow Him like that. Why? I can only imagine it's because they don't actually believe it or at least not enough to change themselves."

I really liked that. If I didn't know he was an atheist, he may have passed for a preacher bringing up our lack of conviction for God. It's a valid rebuke. I've been working on that but naturally I still sin. Which is basically what he was talking about, if we actually believe then sin is illogical but we do sin so we don't believe. I may have oversimplified his point there but basically the biggest problem he seems to think Christians have are that they are human and alas make mistakes. It's true, at times I put things and people before God. But to have a one track mind about anything seems outlandish to me. But either way, I liked that he said that because it just shows that Christians are being judged and we are not passing the standards of the world.

Now, that doesn't mean ALL Christians aren't pursuing God with a fiery passion. But most aren't. Yes, we too are broken. We bleed. Sometimes we will withdraw from the world if we think it'll reduce pain. To me a big part of being Christian is to become what he thinks I already should be. To slowly remove that which does not matter from my life, this is my purgatory.

There seems to be reoccurring themes at those meetings that I wasn't expecting. I'm going to have to think them out, possibly pray on it. That's suppose to be good...though honestly I don't feel like I get much from it at times. Some days are good, others not so much. But I guess it's the same with anyone I communicate with. Anyway the themes seems to be: 1) hypocrisy (which surprises me since that's what they disliked about Christians...), 2) bitterness, and 3) intellectual pride. Like I said, I'll have to think more about these so maybe I'll go into more details about it later. I don't know.