I’d like to ask non-Christians: If integral to Christianity was the belief that it was right and good to love each and every person exactly as they are, and to encourage and respect whatever their understanding and experience of the divine (whether they even think in terms of “divine” or not–and assuming that whatever they believe doesn’t involve the harming of others), would that that change your attitude toward Christianity?
If you knew that intolerance of other belief systems violated the tenants of Christianity, would you be more open to the rest of Christianity?
Am I right in guessing that the main thing that keeps non-Christians away from Christianity is the Christian conviction that Christianity is the only good, true, and valid way to experience or know God? Before I became a Christian that sure was the thing that kept me away from the faith — I’m crazily intolerant of intolerance — but I don’t know if that’s true for all or even most nonbelievers. So I figured I’d ask, see if anyone had anything to say it.
(Oh: in a recent post, What Non-Christians Want Christians To Hear, I did share a bit of what I’d heard directly from non-Christians about this sort of thing. Pretty interesting stuff, if you’ve not seen it.)
![John Shore on The Huffington Post](http://johnshore.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/huffpost.jpg?w=120 "John Shore on The Huffington Post\")
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It's a strange idea to entertain. If you aren't proposing a revising of the Bible (and I don't think you are), then this would be a temporary change only. But, yes, it would change my attitude – I would be less hostile.
No. I reject Christianity on the is claims before I ever get to the ought claims.
Speaking for myself and myself only, no. The main thing that keeps me away from Christianity is that there's no good reason to believe it. That was the case for me for as long as I can remember.
In my experience, convincing Christians of my (our?) motives is one of the hardest things to do. I just want to have as accurate a mental model of reality as I can. To accomplish this, I rely on methods that have proven themselves to reliably converge on more and more accurate models – scientific, historical mathematical, etc. My approach is one of lessening my fundamental ignorance. There are no such methods that point toward theism being an accurate model, much less Christianity.
My disbelief has zero to do with Christian claims about exclusivity. Math claims that the answer to 2+2 is 4, excluding an infinite number of other numbers, and that in no way keeps me away from math.
To comment 28 above
Deuteronomy 13:6-11
If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods that neither you nor your fathers have known, gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people. Stone him to death, because he tried to turn you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again.
After that Deuteronomy 13:12 says that if another town has nonbelievers in it then the entire town should be put to death. OK back on topic. There are a lot of other religions that are tolerant (or “accepting” if you prefer) of other people. You just don’t hear about them as much because they don’t go around yelling at people.
The original question of this article was, is the conviction that Christianity is the only true religion what turns you away from Christianity? And if not, then what?
So evidence, consistency, and theology aside, for me one of the important factors that hasn’t been mentioned yet is marketing. You heard right, marketing.
Christianity is unique in that it advertises far more than any other religion. If you see people going door to door trying to spread their religion, chances are they are Christian. There are more Christian channels on television than any other faith. Christians send far more missionaries overseas than anyone else. When you get down to it Christians are more likely than anyone else to try actively to spread their religion. They have the most aggressive marketing strategy.
Now bear with me this will make sense in a minute. At the company I work for we do online sales, and as such we need to advertise to get people to our site. When you go to google and type something in you will get two sets of search results. In the brown area up at the top and along the right side bar you will get sponsored links. And in the central area you will get non sponsored links, what’s called “organic listings”. The organic listings are based on how many people click on you, and the overall quality of your site. The sponsored links are based on how much money you pay google when someone clicks on it.
This means that there are two types of advertising. Word of mouth, or quality based advertising. And just paying for it. And we have found that if your organic listings are low you can make up for it by cranking out the sponsored links. If the quality of your web site is low you can make up for it by paying more for advertising.
You can see examples of this every day. Google is by far the most popular search engine today. I have never seen one Google ad on TV ever. This is because they use entirely word of mouth advertising. On the other hand I see a ton of those get rich quick ads on TV “I used to make railroad ties for a living. Now I make over $5000 a day by working at home with 20CashNow!”
In the early days of television advertisers found that the more loud and obnoxious their ads were the more likely people were to remember them. Think back to all the commercials you have seen today. While you won’t remember most of them I guarantee you will remember the one that was shouting at you “HEAD ON, APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD!”
As time went on, consumers caught on to this trick, and nowadays people are less likely to trust a product that uses more, and “shoutier”, ads. This same concept can be applied to proselytizing a religion. The more you push, the more people will pull away.
Here is an example. God is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. He is everywhere. And being the all powerful guy that he is, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, god is watching you, and guiding your every movement. No matter where you go, there he is. But for some reason he needs all his followers to go around telling people that he exists.
Let’s take another substance that’s quite popular, water. Water is almost omnipresent, while it’s not everywhere, it is in a lot of places. While some planets get by without it, water is pretty important, without it we’d all die, so it’s sort of omnipotent. Water is just a chemical compound, and not very omniscient. So we can agree that water is on the whole not quite as “with it” as god is.
But we don’t have to send missionaries overseas to tell people of the glory of water. You will never find someone who is agnostic to the concept of water.
Before I go I have a bit of a thought experiment. What would happen to your religion (not just Christianity, but everyone out there) if everyone just stopped proselytizing? No missionaries, no witnessing, no membership drives. What if everyone on earth went from an active marketing strategy to a passive marketing strategy? What if everyone went about their own business believing whatever they wanted, and if someone came along who wanted to believe what you believed then they could change their own mind. But nobody would go out of their way and say that someone else should believe what they believe.
One other thing I wanted to mention:
I personally would argue that there is a vast difference between tolerating and accepting. Tolerating, to me at least, has a negative connotation with it, where as acceptance does not.
As an example:
To "tolerate" gay people, means that you would be willing to live in harmony with them despite your feeling that what they do is immoral.
To "accept" gay people would mean that you acknowledge their right to live their life as they please and love who they please, even if their choices are not your own.
For christianity to be more "tolerant" implies there there is something in non-christians that you as a christian need to tolerate.
This is an assumption that puts christians on a "higher" level in their own minds/opinion, and intentionally or unintentionally implies that non-christians are somehow "less" than christians.
I don't believe that you mean it to come across in this manner, but it can certainly be taken this way.
Here again, context is everything. The expression “all men” refers to all elect men without distinction, or elect men of all nations, not to all men without exception. These elect men from every part of the globe are inwardly drawn by God the Father to God the Son. See Revelation 7:9 (After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.)
See also John 6:44: No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.
Sabina, I agree. There has been too much condemnation without love. We need to hear all about Love and Mercy and Grace. I just don’t want to leave out the whole truth. Sin is real and there are consequences as a result. Brushing the concept of repentance and atonement under the rug because we may be seen as intolerant or judgmental is a disservice.
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