Are Christians Judgmental?

[mackie]

[s]underworlddreams wrote on 23:27, 27th Mar 2004:
I'm just gonna put my tuppen'orth forward...

I recently (well, in the last month or so) had an interesting conversation with a young Christian lady in halls in which we, without really meaning to, ended up talking about Paganism. Her reaction to Paganism in general was extremely close-minded (I forget exact phrases, but the general opinion was one of disapproval of the beliefs and teachings of this wide-ranging group of religions) and I found myself almost smirking, realising that (despite my pendent and one of my rings being pentacles) she didn't realise who exactly she was talking to.

I took my time to find out what her opinions were of Pagans, and then asked why she held them. And it turned out that she didn't even know anything about Paganism - didn't even know any Pagans or what they actually did. In an effort to simply educate, I explained what the general beliefs are of pagan religions, and what it was that some pagans do. And then explained that I consider myself to be Pagan (not any particular version of paganism, much in the same way as someone can consider themselves Christian without having a specific denomination - they just want people to know that they believe what the Bible says about God and Jesus and so forth.)

I've never seen anyone try so hard to get out of a conversation.

I've had many experiences of varying similarity to this. In some cases, people are very much open to hearing what I believe, and also what other Pagans in general believe. What I find particularly irritating are those that use such conversations to try and convince me that Christianity is right; if I had it in me to be a Christian, I would be one by now. Such arguments go along the lines of;

Me: "...and so most Pagans believe that God, or a divine force, is not only the creator of the universe, but part and parcel of it - nature is not only divinely created, but divine in and of itself..."

Them: "Yes, but the Bible says... {Insert bible reference/ quote/ paraphrasing here}..."



And thus I come (finally) to my point. Christians, in quite a lot of cases, merely take the Bible, and their religion, as absolute truth. Which is not in itself a problem. It becomes a problem when they fail to realise that the foundations of that do not lie in logic or [i]a priori knowledge - it lies, by definition, in faith; the believing of something to be true without proof, or the need for proof. When they quote from the Bible, or talk about Christianity in such a way, they are trying to convince someone with what they see as a logical argument, but to those of us who are not Christian, it is not a valid argument.

When a Christian (or a Jew, or a Buddhist, or a Pagan, or anyone else) is prejudiced against someone of a differing religion (or someone without one,) they are forgetting that simple fact - only those of their religion can possibly be on the same level in regard to religious topics (and sometimes not even then.)


Anyhow, enough of my rambling. I hope that all made sense to someone...


[hr]They say that if you play a Windows Install CD backwards, you hear satanic messages. That's nothing - play it forwards, and it installs Windows...
[/i]

Hey...that made PERFECT sense to me! Thanks for adding your opinion.

[iohannes]

Of course all religions are matters of faith. If it were purely a matter of logic and believing only what our senses tell us, we'd all be atheists.

Which, incidentally, I am. Thus allowing me to be judgmental and hold all religions in contempt. Just kidding.

[everyone prays to the same god]

[s]mackie wrote on 01:35, 27th Mar 2004:
I'm not generalising...of course there are some Christitans who don't judge people but I find it kind of hypocritical of the ones who do judge people.




As hypocritical as Islamic terrorists killing in the name of Islam, a religion otherwise guaranteed by most of the Muslim population to be about peace? Or as Jews killing in the name of Israel?

Every religion has its black sheep.

[Guest]

if you take any random portion of a society and see whether or not they are judgemental, and do the same with a particular population, i think you will find the same results.

[Midget]

Sorry, sorry, a big sorry for bringing this up again.

I found a book in a book shop yesterday called "A Dictionary (might have been encyclopedia) Of Christian Ethics".

Some of it was quite fair, good stuff, ie explainging what the Bible ment by meeknes, original sin etc.

Some of it though was hilarious, laugh out loud hilarious.
i.e. There were pages and pages on the Christian Ethics of masturbation, crusades, and just random things like that. The serious discussion of the ethics of masturbation was really funny. I'm certainly for hell it would seem.