“John, you moron! Everybody doesn’t believe in your god! We all have our own faith!”
Say it again, louder for the relativists in the back! “Everyone believes different things! Faith is personal. It is completely separate from logic, reason, and science! Any religion is true if it works for me!”
I hear you! These kinds of statements are fun to say because people will cheer when you say them. You’ll get credit for being open-minded, smart, and most importantly — reasonable. Stop reading now and you can postpone the anguish of losing your religion for another day.
“Everyone believes different things!” – Of course! Some people believe the Earth is flat. Some people believe it is round. Somebody is wrong. It is true that everyone believes different things. It is also irrelevant in your quest to find truth.
“Faith is personal.” – Right again! And personal beliefs can be incorrect. (See ‘Flat Earth’ above.)
“Faith is completely separate from logic, reason, and science!” – Nope. Faith is what you get when logic, reason, science, and intuition intermingle. It’s not an invisible force floating around that only ‘religious people’ experience. Faith is alive and active in your life even when you quit going to church and declare the Bible to be a hoax. Logic, reason, science, and instinct inform the faith that tells you God exists. Something called, ‘sin’ is making you kick against that faith.
“Any religion is true if it works for me!” – Actually, a true religion remains true even if it doesn’t ‘work for you.’ The truth doesn’t rely on your ability to discern it. Goodness is still good even when you don’t practice it. Walking away from Christianity to find something that ‘works for you’ is like somebody with asthma searching for an alternative to oxygen because breathing is really hard.
Also, just because it ‘works for you’ doesn’t mean you should be doing it. Employ a little of that logic and reason you love to talk about and you should be able to come up with a few dozen examples of horrific crimes that worked great for the perpetrators but absolutely were the wrong things to do.
You are free to make up your own religion but don’t make the mistake of thinking your religion is automatically true. God exists. Truth exists because God exists. Any religion that denies the existence of God, denies the existence of truth. Faith that is not built on the truth will eventually kill you.
(Acts 4:10) “It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. He is ‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone.’ Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”
2 Responses
How do you respond to someone who uses that argument to tell me that it’s all (God, salvation redemption, the virgin birth etc…) just a stories in a book, none of which are true. They are all bogus; we are all buying a convenient method of being brainwashed from childhood; and the is no heaven or hell or God… Were all just being controlled to “behave”. This is the argument my son and I keep having. He loves to debate. I know what I know, but he can confuse me in 2 minutes flat. He’s read the entire Bible through probably four times, has studied several religions and claims that they’re basically all the same and everybody claims theirs is the true religion, and that we’re all just stupid. He was raised in a Christian household and wants nothing to do with God. I know I’ve failed both him and God and I’m scared for his future.
bree~
Jesus said that His sheep hear his voice. It’s hard when family members turn their hearts against God.
I wouldn’t debate your son since he seems to think he already knows everything. Conversation is only possible when both parties are open to learning something.