God Bless You

I received this email this morning:

"Tom, I must admit Christians take first prize for hypocrisy; your book the Bible dams [sic] those who do not believe in your God but when we show another point of view you race to your chariots to fight the truth. It is very sad, and probably the reason why I am not a Christian, that you have so much hate and intolerance in your Christian families. There is more ethics and morals in the small finger of Bertrand Russell than the entire Christian community. Please God save us from your followers.

"You have my blessing in the hope you see the light of day.

"Happy Thanksgiving

"R. B."

For any of you who feel similarly, here is my response, which I emailed back to the sender.

Yes, he did include his name, phone number, and even his place of work and job title. Re-reading this now, I realize I left a couple of pronouns unconnected to their sources. I'm sorry, Mr. B--, for any confusion that may have caused. See below for the translation.

"Thank you for expressing your views, Mr. B-- . I salute you for signing your name; usually when I get mail like this it is anonymous.

I think there is something for me to learn from them, in the way we Christians come across to people with different beliefs. I certainly do not want to be hateful toward persons, and in my experience, that is also true of the vast majority of Christians. There are beliefs and practices with which we cannot agree, though, not because we feel we hold the truth, but because we are constrained by it. And the truth, properly understood, is a source of life and joy.

I hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving also.

Regards,

Tom

"Something to learn from them" was intended to mean, "something to learn from messages like these." Where I wrote "that is also true of the vast majority of Christians," I was trying to say that the vast majority of Christians do not feel the kind of hate he suggests we do. Unfortunately that impression of Christians does exist, though, and we Christians must do what we can to correct ourselves--our attitudes, not our convictions--to do what we can to correct that impression.

Anyway, whether you agree with all or none of what I offer here, or what Christians say, I wish a Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Posted: Tue - November 20, 2007 at 02:22 PM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

God Bless You

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson