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« on: November 14, 2017, 07:25:04 pm »
When I was in college, I answered the door naked once when JW showed up knocking. The mother slapped her hand on her daughter's eyes, her daughter was trying to squirm out of her hold exclaiming, "let me see, let me see!". I wouldn't do that now, of course.
In my current incarnation, I'm what you would call a liberal christian ( to overly generalize for ease of conversation ) - which is a christian who doesn't believe people go to hell just because they aren't Christians. A quick run down of the 3 basic categories ( again, overly simplifying for conversation - there are over 1600 denominations around the world, all full of texture, depth and identity ). Fundamentalists place going to church as or more important than the bible. Evangelicals put the bible ( as written word, verbatim best they can ) above going to church. Both F and E typically believe you have to "accept" Christ to be saved ( again, some texture - some believe Jews are exceptions, etc ). Liberal Christians believe it's not important to be a bible scholar to enter heaven ( a criticism of the Evangelicals ), but anyone who "walks" the life of Christ is saved ( or at least values/aims for that walk, nobody is perfect ). When Jesus says the only way to the father is through him ( bp ), we take that to mean living his life/living a "good" life, not requiring one to "accept him as lord and savior". We view the ( to use Bakker language ) endless disputation on the meaning of passages of the bible, the infighting among Christians on the "specifics" to be a waste of time and worse leading down the wrong path, driving away others. So Liberal Christians agree with the major tenets of the bible and try to shirk off the self-inflicted wounds of traditional Christendom ( hypocrisy, cafeteria sin tolerance, license for bad behavior ) ... so those really badly behaving people out there that claim they're saved giving them the green light to do whatever they like ... liberal Christians have news for them, they're not. Atheists can be saved to our point of view ( questioning God's existence gives God a ping of pride, to our way of thinking ). If you can follow just the one ( hardest ) directive of Christ, to love your enemies, the rest all falls into place and you need not read more on how to live from the bible or anything else. Of course, it can be a lot of fun to do so, but not required if you can actually love your enemies. The "proselytizing" we do is to walk that walk among others, lead by example - spread "good" if you will, not try to "turn" anyone.
Your position on religion is understandable - religion is run by massive numbers of humans, all fraught with error and evil. Bit of advice, don't let your sour view on religion deprive you of some cool stuff. Like reading the rich texts from various "gurus" for example. The mistake ( some ) evangelicals make is to disregard the amazing reads out there which dispute or criticize religion with some even "avoiding" science, which is sad to miss out on so much humanity. Atheists can make the same mistake in the other direction - some of the spiritual history and texts are wild, fun stuff to read. Religious history is the history of humanity - to avoid/disregard them is to miss out on some seriously cool history and exposure to wild-ass intellectuals.
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