Got A Message From A Friend

[Justin]

This is an attempt by my former best friend to win me back to Christianity. It's strange, but he has severed all ties with me but still says he regards me as his friend.

 

I'm asking for pointers on what to say (i have already sent a reply), because i tend to blow up quiet easily and turn any well groomed point into shit. This isn't like debating with some random fundie on here, like i said, this is my former best friend and i really want to reply back with something good. I'm not saying i can't hold my own, for me and him have went back and forth now for 5 years. I just would love to hear your alls thoughts.

 

 

"Friend,
How often do you think of God? How often do you weigh the consequences of your actions not with the blind scales of justice, but with God's uncovered scale of judgment. The notion that a person can live as they please and then die and be done is incorrect. To presume that God is not going to judge us for sin is unreasonable considering we as humans made in the image of God are very quick to point out and demand injustices committed against us be dealt with. Do you ever wonder when its quiet if you are wrong, if you are on the right path? I know that for the time being it is gratifying, but in the end will it be worth it? Do you sometimes think about Hell, and if there really is one? Do you prepare yourself just in case you go there? What will you do if there is a God and you must give an account for yourself, will you make the cut, will the balances fall in your direction?

"Sinners in hell are not the fools they were on earth; in hell they do not laugh at
everlasting burnings; in the pit they do not despise the words, “eternal fire.” The
worm that never dieth, when it is gnawing, gnaws out all joke and laughter; you may
despise God now, and despise me now for what I say, but death will change your
note." Charles Spurgeon

Is it that you disbelieve now, or is it that you still hold an inkling of truth that you merely keep cut low so as not offend your conscience? Will you take disbelief to the grave as a hypocrite with half of you yearning for repentence and the other half twisted and foul cursing the God that gives you breath to do it. Friend there is no more important time in your life than now to return to God. I fear that if you hesitate much longer even that grace will be removed from you.

Rest assured that your disbelief has not shaken the foundations of that ivory throne, take solemn notice that your petulance has not threatened the Creator, but past that hold it near to your heart that with each hateful, spiteful breath that you breath out towards God, you bring yourself one step closer to the dreadful day in which you will stand before him. It does not have to be so for as fierce as his judgment is, his mercy is tender.

2 Corinthians 6:2
(For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.)

In Christ,"

[florduh]

I can't understand why you even want to maintain contact with anyone who tells you:

 

"Sinners in hell are not the fools they were on earth; in hell they do not laugh at
everlasting burnings; in the pit they do not despise the words, “eternal fire.” The
worm that never dieth, when it is gnawing, gnaws out all joke and laughter; you may
despise God now, and despise me now for what I say, but death will change your
note." Charles Spurgeon

 

I don't know if there's a nice way  (or even a not nice way) to get someone so far off the deep end of religious delusion to stop doing what he considers to be his prime directive. 

 

I'd just say I have reason to hold a differing view and if the relationship is to continue, religion is a topic that is off limits.

[pawn]

Your "friend" is using horrible fear tactics to bully you back into the faith.  Some friend.

 

I have a similar situation with my own dad.  He basically stopped talking to me since I deconverted.  To give him credit, has hasn't tried to "scare" me back into the faith, at least not yet.

[RankStranger]

I'd be inclined to put together a similar argument as to why he should convert to Islam.

[mymistake]

Friend,

 

How often do you think of Odin? How often do you weigh the consequences of your actions not with the blind scales of justice, but with Odin's uncovered scale of judgment. The notion that a person can live as they please and then die and be done is incorrect. To presume that Odin is not going to judge us for sin is unreasonable considering we as humans made in the image of Odin are very quick to point out and demand injustices committed against us be dealt with. Do you ever wonder when its quiet if you are wrong, if you are on the right path? I know that for the time being it is gratifying, but in the end will it be worth it? Do you sometimes think about Valhalla, and if there really is one?  Do you prepare yourself just in case you go there? What will you do if there is a Skygod and you must give an account for yourself, will you make the cut, will the balances fall in your direction?

 

If it's any consolation, I think you're right. About the Frost Giants, about Laufey, about everything. If they were able to slip past Asgard's defenses once, who's to say they won't try again? Next time with an army.

 Loki,  The Holy Film: Thor 2011

 

Is it that you disbelieve now, or is it that you still hold an inkling of truth that you merely keep cut low so as not offend your conscience? Will you take disbelief to the grave as a hypocrite with half of you yearning for repentence and the other half twisted and foul cursing that Odin that gives you breath to do it. Friend there is no more important time in your life than now to return to Odin. I fear that if you hesitate much longer even that grace will be removed from you.

 

Rest assured that your disbelief has not shaken the foundations of that thunder throne, take solemn notice that your petulance has not threatened the Skygod, but past that hold it near to your heart that with each hateful, spiteful breath that you breath out towards Odin, you bring yourself one step closer to the dreadful day in which you will stand before him. It does not have to be so for as fierce as his judgment is, his mercy is tender.

 

Once, mankind accepted a simple truth: that they were not alone in this universe. Some worlds man believed home to their Gods. Others they knew to fear. From around the cold and darkness came the Frost Giants, threatening to plunge the mortal world into a new ice age. But humanity would not face this threat alone. Our armies drove the Frost Giants back into the heart of their own world. The cost was great. In the end, their king fell, and the source of their power was taken from them. With the last great war ended, we withdrew from the other worlds and returned home at the Realm Eternal, Asgard. And here we remain as the beacon of hope, shining out across the stars. And though we have fallen into man's myths and legends, it was Asgard and its warriors that brought peace to the universe.

 Odin, The Holy Film: Thor 2011

 

 

In Odin,

[Fernweh]

If I was the recipient of something like that I would simply tell him that I'm no different now than I was when I was a believer. My daily thoughts, actions, moral compass, and daily outlook on life are no different now than they were before. That "still small voice" that I was convinced was God telling me what to do? It's still there because that voice was/is my own consciousness. If that were not enough to make him leave me alone I would kindly tell him to fuck off.

[pawn]

Your friend will eat his words when he passes on into the afterlife and realized that the great flying spaghetti monster is the one true god!

 

In pasta,

Pawn

[Justin]

I can't understand why you even want to maintain contact with anyone who tells you:

 

"Sinners in hell are not the fools they were on earth; in hell they do not laugh at

everlasting burnings; in the pit they do not despise the words, “eternal fire.” The

worm that never dieth, when it is gnawing, gnaws out all joke and laughter; you may

despise God now, and despise me now for what I say, but death will change your

note." Charles Spurgeon

 

I don't know if there's a nice way  (or even a not nice way) to get someone so far off the deep end of religious delusion to stop doing what he considers to be his prime directive. 

 

I'd just say I have reason to hold a differing view and if the relationship is to continue, religion is a topic that is off limits.

 

Florduh, he sent me this out of the blue day before yesterday after virtually no contact for over a year. So it's not like i still keep him around in my life just for abuse. In a nut shell, he pretty much ditched me 5 years ago when i told him i was an atheist. We argued and fussed for a couple of years and then we just gradually drifted apart. I vowed that if he wasn't going to fight for our friendship then i was, because at the end of the day he can't hang that over my head. I wanted it to be understood, that i, the atheist, tried to keep the friendship even if he, the Christian, watched it wilt away. Like i said, this guy was my best friend, like a brother to me, so i wasn't going to let it go without a fight. But last year i let my emotions get the best of me and i was so fed up with the whole damn thing that i just said this is it, let us not speak again. This was the last things we said until this message day before yesterday.

 

I might be a fool, but i still hold out some hope for him. Not converting him or anything like that but just for our friendship. This is why i want to handle my response to him with care. It is probably pointless, i feel like Herschel in season 2 of the Walking Dead with that barn full of zombies thinking he can turn them back.

[florduh]

I might be a fool, but i still hold out some hope for him.

 

There's always hope, I guess. All you can do is reiterate that you would like to have a friendship, but you can't tolerate his emotional manipulation to make you believe what you know to be false. Christianity destroys a lot of relationships. Good luck.

[Ellwood]

Wow.   I would find it very hard to keep a friendship going with such a person.   There would not just be an "elephant" in the room with us all the time, it would be a charging herd of angry bull elephants!   

 

Religion sucks.   So sad that it does this to friendships.   

[RankStranger]

I think he means well- he just doesn't want you to go to hell.  He really believes that shit... and so he's compelled to bother you about it.  I generally don't go around preaching to people in my life- let alone trying to change their religion/politics/world-view.  But if THEY bring it up, then I'll say what I damn well please.  He brought it up, so IMO you've every right (if you feel like it) to tell him why his particular threat of eternal damnation is no more credible than a dozen others (or a thousand, depending on how you want to frame it).  

[MerryG]

I might be a fool, but i still hold out some hope for him. Not converting him or anything like that but just for our friendship. This is why i want to handle my response to him with care. It is probably pointless, i feel like Herschel in season 2 of the Walking Dead with that barn full of zombies thinking he can turn them back.

 

 

FWIW, you don't come across as a fool, just someone who is understandably sorry to have lost your best friend.

 

But if the message you quoted is the way he chooses to approach you after a year of silence then ... wow. Just wow. He probably thinks he's "caring" about you by trying to "save your soul." But seriously, this person doesn't appear to like you, the human being at all. He doesn't even appear to recognize your individual humanity.

 

He certainly never asked himself, "What kind of person is my friend Justin, and what would be the best way to approach him?" No. Instead, it's all brute force, insults, and threats. If he knew you or cared about you as a person at all, that's not how he'd have begun. What you quoted above is all pure agenda -- and a nasty, disrespectful agenda, at that.

 

I'd be very curious to know how you responded. Frankly, since you felt the need to respond at all, I hope you blasted him clear across the room.

[pawn]

If like to see your reply too, just curious.

[midniterider]

This is an attempt by my former best friend to win me back to Christianity. It's strange, but he has severed all ties with me but still says he regards me as his friend.

 

I'm asking for pointers on what to say (i have already sent a reply), because i tend to blow up quiet easily and turn any well groomed point into shit. This isn't like debating with some random fundie on here, like i said, this is my former best friend and i really want to reply back with something good. I'm not saying i can't hold my own, for me and him have went back and forth now for 5 years. I just would love to hear your alls thoughts.

 

 

"Friend,

How often do you think of God? How often do you weigh the consequences of your actions not with the blind scales of justice, but with God's uncovered scale of judgment. The notion that a person can live as they please and then die and be done is incorrect. To presume that God is not going to judge us for sin is unreasonable considering we as humans made in the image of God are very quick to point out and demand injustices committed against us be dealt with. Do you ever wonder when its quiet if you are wrong, if you are on the right path? I know that for the time being it is gratifying, but in the end will it be worth it? Do you sometimes think about Hell, and if there really is one? Do you prepare yourself just in case you go there? What will you do if there is a God and you must give an account for yourself, will you make the cut, will the balances fall in your direction?

 

"Sinners in hell are not the fools they were on earth; in hell they do not laugh at

everlasting burnings; in the pit they do not despise the words, “eternal fire.” The

worm that never dieth, when it is gnawing, gnaws out all joke and laughter; you may

despise God now, and despise me now for what I say, but death will change your

note." Charles Spurgeon

 

Is it that you disbelieve now, or is it that you still hold an inkling of truth that you merely keep cut low so as not offend your conscience? Will you take disbelief to the grave as a hypocrite with half of you yearning for repentence and the other half twisted and foul cursing the God that gives you breath to do it. Friend there is no more important time in your life than now to return to God. I fear that if you hesitate much longer even that grace will be removed from you.

 

Rest assured that your disbelief has not shaken the foundations of that ivory throne, take solemn notice that your petulance has not threatened the Creator, but past that hold it near to your heart that with each hateful, spiteful breath that you breath out towards God, you bring yourself one step closer to the dreadful day in which you will stand before him. It does not have to be so for as fierce as his judgment is, his mercy is tender.

 

2 Corinthians 6:2

(For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.)

 

In Christ,"

 

"Dear Friend, I no longer live my life in fear. I am confident the bible is fiction and Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit, Satan and all other characters in the bible are fiction. Thank you for your concern but friends don't attempt to control the thoughts, beliefs and attitudes of friends. Friends allow friends to be who they are."

[Justin]

This is my reply back to him.

 

"i have pondered on what to say or if i even wanted to say anything. i told myself i wouldn't, but then again, i know myself better than that. i am done fighting and bickering and longing for a lost cause. i'm so sick and tired of all that and i have moved on. it isn't easy. i do still hold on to the past and i'm not ashamed to say i cling to it dearly, for in the end that is all we have left anymore. the wound rendered around 5 years ago hangs like the death of a loved one and you simply cannot ever completely forget them and the whole ordeal. i will not fight but i want to make some things clear.

if at the end of the day all you have is scare tactics and fear what do you really have? for lack of truth and evidence you try to install a sense of fright and horror with the hope of persuading me. have you forgotten that for nearly 26 years i was a christian? fully aware of the definition of hell that you talk about. living for 26 years fearing hell and wondering about this and worrying about that. did you know that the concept of hell is one of the reasons why i left? not because i think it an actual place but the whole moral and philosophical debate around it. it is absurd. the christian worries about hell, not the atheist.

your whole argument centers around fear and the idea of what if by chance i find out i'm wrong one day. all you have done is reworked and repackaged Pascal's Wager. an argument that proves nothing and is as flawed as they come. apply the Wager to Islam or Scientology or some pagan religion and you get the same results. if you think it's a valid argument then i guess it validates all religions. what if by chance one day you find out when it is too late that Allah is the one true god? any religion can pull the Wager card. and it all falls back to fear and scare and the phrases "just in case" and "just to be on the safe side". what a foundation for any system of thought.

but i take greatest exception to your claim that i am twisted, hateful, spiteful and foul. whether you say i am this towards god or this in my life in general does not matter, for i can safely say that i am not bitter or angry at anything. i know that you think otherwise, you have to to keep up appearances. your prophecy 5 years ago told that i would either be dead or twisted, hateful, spiteful or foul. and i know you believe that whether you actually come right out and say it or not. but i am no more angry at god than i am Zeus or Thor or Godzilla. are you angry and bitter for what Darth Vader did to the rebel alliance? you may think i am being smart and sarcastic but i can assure you i am not. for the same reason you don't give a flip about Vader and the rebel alliance i don't give a flip about God. I cannot be angry toward what i don't believe it.

but as for my attitude about life in general, i couldn't be happier. i can honestly tell you that i am more honored to be alive than i ever was as a christian. i can live life without blinders and see things as they actually are and journey down paths that i simply wouldn't allow as a christian. paths of inquiry and knowledge and to just experience the world as it is without any superstitious agendas hidden under every rock. to know the real stories of us and all living things without demonstrably faulty stories telling of conjuring up magic and the paranormal. Yes my friend, i can say that i enjoy life to the fullest. you can say what you want but i live the proof each day i get up. and if it can be said that i have any aspect of my life that is angry and bitter, it is in regards to what you did those 5 years ago. not you so much, but what you did, but i addressed that in my first paragraph.

if i had any fear that you talk about, any worry about whether or not i am right, i am going to say something for the very first time on here. last Wednesday morning when i had my anxiety attack and when for over an hour i thought it was a heart attack and that i was going to die, you want to know what was going through my mind? my loved ones, friends and family, even you all. i wanted all these people there with me. i also thought i really didn't want to die strapped down in the back of this ambulance. i was scared in a way i had never been scared before. but you want to know something else? in that dark and bleak moment in my life not once did i think of god or heaven and hell. so whenever my day comes around, whether it's today, tomorrow or decades from now, i will be sacred, we all will be, but i will not be worrying about making it to heaven or just falling short and instead hitting hell. i will be thinking about the ones i will never see again. i will be thinking things like i thought last Wednesday, dear people that mean everything to me. and also 2 people now 3 who i would want by my side who might not be there because there is this senseless gulf that separates us all because we have a difference of beliefs."

 

 

I refer to "you all" and "2 people now 3" meaning he and his wife and their young son. He has since had a child in the time that me and him have had this strife and i have only seen his child two or three times. That bothers me a little.

[MerryG]

 

Well done, Justin! You said it all. This was the really key part:

 

 

if at the end of the day all you have is scare tactics and fear what do you really have? for lack of truth and evidence you try to install a sense of fright and horror with the hope of persuading me.

 

 

But all of it was excellent -- firm but dispassionate. If your temper was triggered, you sure handled it well. Liked the parts about Allah or Scientology. Most moving was your account of thinking you were dying and thinking of friends, family, this life, and all the things that really matter in it.

 

Of course, that alone will convince your friend that you're DOOOOOOOOOMED. But screw 'em. He has nothing to offer you.

[pawn]

Justin, that was great.

[florduh]

Good job, Justin.

[Guest MadameX]

Dude you knocked it out of the park.

[Lilith666]

So if this guy has cut off all contact with you, why is he still trying to save your soul? It seems like he just wants divine brownie points.

 

Edit: I just read your reply to him. That was powerful. Man--the part where you said when you thought you were dying you thought not about the afterlife, but about the people and things that mattered to you. Yeah. Good job.

[Justin]

Thanks everyone. I kind of surprised myself with that reply.

[Astreja]

Nice piece of writing, Justin.

[Blue elephant]

We should perhaps create a library of sample replies to this sort of thing? This is an excellent reply!

[Deva]

Great response, Justin.  It was heartfelt, true and real.

 

By the way, Justin, have I ever told you that you live in one of the most beautiful places in the world?

[leopardus]

I like the rewritten letter with Odin subbed for God. Good tactic.

 

I suppose an alternative is to ask him to recite the series of events that occurred during "the most important event in history", namely the resurrection. Since the four gospel accounts are hopelessly contradictory (like when was the stone rolled away) you should make him very uncomfortable. That might shake him out of his utter cockiness and condescension.