Negative reactions from people when I say I go to church?

[ilovewelshrarebit123]

I've always believed, I was christened and my daughter is to.

My daughter is 9 and she goes to a Christian club for an hour every week and she loves it.

From this club she went to a week long holiday bible club and loved that to. After this we both started going to the church every Sunday morning, it's friendly, my friend goes to and I know a few people there. It's a baptist church and I really get something from going.

What's really surprised me is other people's reactions. My mum pulled a face when she found out we're going and thinks it's going to 'damage ' my DD. She's the one that never let up until I had my daughter christened, so don't understand this reaction!

My brother was embarrassingly vocal and said some quite unpleasant things about people who go to church. Why though, he made a big deal of having an expensive christening for his kids, which was obviously for show!

I've also had other mild comments from people . So, how do I react when people give negative reactions to going to church.

Why do people have these reactions, it's just a church with kind, friendly people who are all there for the same reason I thought.

Why should it bother you what people think or say? - if you feel it is right for you and your family then just go ahead.

I took my children to the local church because it had a splendid musical tradition and they learned and performed in many splendid works. I made sure that they had a bit of balance in the religious aspect. None of them (nor me) are churchgoers now, but the music has stayed with them.

To the poster who involved religion and a prayer in a session on Haiti, I would say that this is wrong, very wrong.

I am talking about the documented murders carried out in the bible- that holy book. Estimates put the smitings and genicide at millions. A millions of lives.

Like that heartwarming tale of Noah's ark, of global genocide that we all know and love.

According to the bible god is wrathtful, venegeful and jealous, and fond of killing people he doesn't like.

What bit of that is worthy of worship? I wouldn't even want to know such a person socially.

I choose not to be friends with lots of people based of differing ideologies. I wouldn't want to be friends with someone who is a member of the NF, or UK for that matter, someone who campaigns to bring back fox hunting, someone who fights for the right to smoke indoors in public places.

I'm an atheist and DS's best friend is the child of preachers. They're still small but already I'm getting 'mum, do you believe in God? Jack believes in god' etc.

They are a lovely family but I'm not sure how it'll go when they're bigger and more questioning. I've never had religious friends before.

teapot- it's the murders carried out by god that I am talking of. Close to 24 million in the bible according to the holy word.

That's not that actions of a nice man.

Well said Teapot.
Lots of good and bad people around both atheist and with faith. Like you, I ignore the idiots on both sides.
User s underlying - and frankly unbelievable - assumption is that all people of faith condone terrorism and murder , and atheists are the only people worth knowing.
It is those worrying kind of views which provoke hostility.
Off to work now to spend quality time with friends - atheist, Muslim, Jews and Christians.

User s underlying - and frankly unbelievable - assumption is that all people of faith condone terrorism and murder , and atheists are the only people worth knowing.

You wildly misinterpret my point.

I am talking of god as a murderer- not humans.

rarely life-threatening and no more harmful than the myriad other human parasites in the region.

You don't think typhoid, cancer and malaria aren't life threatening? God made virus too didn't he?

The point is separate from Fry's actions. His attitude to charity bears no relevance to the points he raised. What you're doing there is attacking the person asking the question because it's more comfortable than dealing with what he said. You're saying 'I won't examine what he said because of who he is'. What if someone who was doing aid work in Botswana made that statement. Would you be happy to counter it even if you could?

our instinct shouldn't be to discuss them, but to get angry and do something about them.

False dichotomy. You can do both. And it would be daft to not think about it and just 'do' stuff.

I don't believe God wants anyone or anything to suffer,

Who made all the viruses and bacteria that cause agony for millions of people?

Just back from work. Was chatting to a few atheist friends about User's refusal to have Christians as friends.
Without exception they were appalled at the narrow minded , bigoted attitude and want to make clear that that is not representative of atheists.
They said they would definitely not want to be her friend either..

God clearly isn't 'wholly good and loving' if you believe that everything on earth is his creation, unless you are a monster how can you possibly think that?

According to your beliefs, God created the cancer that is going to kill my mother. You are absolutely a monster if you believe that to be the action of something 'wholly good and loving'.

I see Christian communities and I see a lot of good in many of them, and in many Christians. But I read the Bible and I struggle with all the evil, God's evil, it contains. And I look at the world we live in, and I struggle to see it there. Because it isn't there. Innocent children die every single day, through no fault of their own. Where is your wholly good and loving God then? Punishing innocent people left and right.

I've been to a service in an evangelical church and it was pretty shocking. So much of what was said there could be totally ripped apart with 5 minutes intelligent thought. In fact, intelligent thought was what was really lacking, and I found it quite disturbing, tbh.

I go to church. I'm probably what some people would call a cherry picker:
I'm not married
My kids are not Christened (though the older ones are confirmed
I believe a large proportion of the Old Testament is just stories made up by people living through tough times
I believe God sent us Jesus because he felt we were getting the wrong message; Jesus is basically God in human form
So someone who is kind and tolerant and has little time for rules and earthly trappings
Lots of my churchgoing friends feel the same way
Jesus actually championed women in a society where women were oppressed
He felt they should be the equal of men with regards to learning and education and not just there to do the housework (Martha and Mary)
He refused to condemn a woman for sexual behaviour outside the prohibitions of society and made a friend of her (Mary Magdalene)
And he revealed his most important truth, his resurrection, to women.

I believe a large proportion of the Old Testament is just stories made up by people living through tough times

Jesus quoted a lot from the OT and appeared to think it was factual such as the creation story and the Ark. Wouldn't it have been better if he'd cleared up the confusion by saying 'now that OT stuff, god didn't really drown the whole earth, it was just what some silly people thought'. No, he was happy to let us think it actually happened.

He refused to condemn a woman for sexual behaviour

He doesn't get any awards for refusing to condemn her to death for breaking a law you accept he decided himself in the first place, i.e the OT. He made it very clear women should be stoned to death for sex outside a marriage in the OT. He ordered all the men of the town to stone her, and one of those men was probably the one who she'd had sex with.

I can't see what the problem is with people. I'm an atheist but have several christian friends and I think it's great they have their faith. I don't know why people have to be so rude.

It's a bit like vaganism, I have some friends who are vegan and they get non stop abuse from people. What's wrong with being compassionate towards animals, or having faith. I'd worry more about paedophiles or psycopaths :-/

Jesus often talked in parables and imagery. I don't recall any particular reference to Noah's Ark, though I am happy to be corrected.
In the Old Testament one of the Ten Commandments, supposedly from God, but I'm not entirely convinced, says "Don't commit adultery". But it doesn't say "if you do, then we reserve the right to stone you to death".

I am deeply suspicious of these big, warehouse, happy clappy mega churches that spring up on industrial estates, with their self appointed pastors.
As a teenager in the 90s, a group of guitar toting 'cool young christians' were permitted 'rock concerts' and free reign around our school for weeks. You couldn't escape them - they popped up everywhere, proselytising, having impressionable 14 year olds crushing on them, telling one lass that her mum wouldn't have got cancer if she'd believed in God and generally making a fucking nuisance of themselves.
This was until some parents complained (thanks mum and dad) and the RE teacher who'd permitted it was asked to rescind her invitation.
I've always given them a wide berth ever since. All this 'beach mission' stuff when we're on holiday, the (thankfully failed) attempt to set up a free school locally and the almost celebrity status of the founder of that big church in my old sussex (favoured by mn) town - I find Baptist churches quite sinister and predatory.

Deuteronomy 22 v 20

But if this charge is true, that the girl was not found a virgin, 21 then they shall bring out the girl to the doorway of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death

22 Then he said to his disciples, “The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. 23 People will tell you, ‘There he is!’ or ‘Here he is!’ Do not go running off after them. 24 For the Son of Man in his day[d] will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. 25 But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.

26 “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. 27 People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.

28 “It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. 29 But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.

30 “It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed. 31 On that day no one who is on the housetop, with possessions inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no one in the field should go back for anything. 32 Remember Lot’s wife! 33 Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it. 34 I tell you, on that night two people will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. 35 Two women will be grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left.” [36] [e]

You'll be telling me next that the Gospels were written by Jesus' disciples!

I had a close neighbour, we had lunch every weekend until she got sucked into the baptist church. Its been years now since we have spoken

If that happened to a family member I would try and stop them, or rescue them. I don't think it all religions but you just don't know which ones are safe.

Great thread. I actually like what user has posted, which seems to have been wilfully misinterpreted.

All the best, user, but I'm a christian. Yes I cringe at that precisely for the reasons you outline - with one exception: that I believe God is good. Personal experience, largely. Not that I've had a great life; I've had a very painful and difficult life. I'm a damaged sort like most of us

I don't get the vast majority of what goes on - as time goes on, even less so. What I get is the tiny, in the scheme of things, pod I live in; the pod that is 'me'. No, scotch that, I don't get that either.

If I don't get what is right in front of my nose, experienced intimately and daily, I (genuinely) don't believe I can get God; the concept of God, the personhood of God. I can say 'you sound like a rabid, dangerous nutjob sometimes in the bible' but I don't think I can come to a conclusion about that. He's God and I'm not. But I do think I can have it out with him re wtf was going on there? What did you mean? So in that sense I do think I can experience God relationally. He makes it very clear that's all he wants and I've taken him up on that - though getting to that point wasn't plain sailing is all I'm saying.

Interestingly, I am also on high alert suspicious when someone says they are a christian: my guard goes up and I wait it out to see what they're about. Not judging, just protecting myself. A lot of people in the church are very damaged people and, as the saying goes, hurt people hurt people. Which includes me, as I said.