Our new Care Group met last night. We had 8 people: 3 couples and 2 singles; one of the couples were members of the church that I pastored 7 years ago, who are now attending CTK (since the previous church closed about a year ago). We've agreed to meet twice a month: once in a home for fellowship, relationship-building, and spiritual encouragement, and once away from home, in service ministries such as feeding the homeless, or things like that.
I shared with our group about the enrichment I've been getting reading the ebay atheist and off the map . One of the recent posts invited Christians and atheists alike to offer one word characterizations of the other. Here's what the atheist said about Christians:
zombie - Fundamentalist - evangelical - Tedious - skeptical (most people are skeptical of what they have to say) - sheep - oppressor - Fat - hate - follower - boring - dangerous - When someone labels him or herself as a Christian, I tend to think of that person as a fundamentalist or someone who holds very strong religious beliefs - sanctimonious - hypocrites.
And here is how Christians labeled atheists:
Muggle - questioning - misunderstood (most Christians don't really want to know the Atheist or what they think) - questioning - empty - interesting - indignant - bitter - Seeker - lost - thinker - Blind - intellectual pride (in the sense of confidence that their brain can figure out and *think* their way through the existence of God; also in the sense that they often express contempt for the intelligence of those who are believers.) (that last one was mine)
Our converstaion at the group led me to write the following, which is now posted and receiving comments at off the map:
I find this entire site and discussion very stimulating. On your person blog you asked Christians and atheists alike to offer a one word characterization about the other side. Some of the replies were honest, some were harsh. My question is, have you ever encountered a Christian whose character and manner of engagement with you challenged the preconceived notions you had about followers of Christ? If you have had such an experience I would find it very interesting to know what you learned about them and in what ways they seemed different than you expected. Thanks! Rick
The idea being that the extremes tend to classify each group in the eyes of many people on the other side of the fence.
This conversation is very worth listening in on. AMong other things, Hement (the atheist) reveals something we should evaluate very carefully:
“I’m always listening for something I can take back with me (whether in person or on TV). If it’s an anecdote, wonderful. If it’s a lesson I should learn, fine. If it’s only someone spouting Bible verses, it’s in one ear, out the other. Unless it’s in a context I can enjoy listening to, the scripture part of it will do very little for me”
Incidentally, the pictures are not coming up on my blogs because they are linked to the CTK server, and we've just redirected our DNS to point to the site that is hosting our new website. We haven't yet made advantage of all the new features, but we're very pleased with church fusion.
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