I must admit, one thing that crawls all over me (is that a Southern expression?) is having a discussion with someone about Christianity and having them say, “I don’t believe in God or the Christian religion because I’m more of a logical thinker.”
I had someone tell me a few weeks ago that he had been up late the night before talking to his roommate about Christianity. The roommate, apparently, has strong negative feelings towards all religions.
I asked this person what some of his roommate’s reasons were and he responded, “Well, he doesn’t like how people act one way in church and a different way outside of church. He also doesn’t like how Christians ridicule anyone who believes something different than what they believe. Plus, my roommate is a logical thinker so he sees how ridiculous the stories in the Bible can sound. If you think about it… a lot of them are pretty unrealistic.”
Aside from the roommate having issues with Christianity, the guy I was talking to obviously had doubts of his own. I pointed out that the roommate’s reasons all seemed to be problems with people at church and not actually with the Bible. There were so many other things that I wanted to say, but I couldn’t. It was the wrong place and the wrong time.
Now, one thing about talking religion is that there are times to speak up and times to listen. I wanted to tell him that if all agnostics are smart, logical thinkers then all Christians must be shallow thinking and unintelligent… but that doesn’t seem very logical to me.
Normally, I would regret not saying more, but this person has a pastor in his immediate family. He is a former student at a Christian college. My well-intended words would probably have fallen on deaf ears. As much that there are appropriate times to speak up, I also believe that people will only listen when they are willing.
Have you ever missed an opportunity to speak up and regretted it? What about a time when you did say something and it wasn’t well-received?