Religious moral dilema!!

[supersox]

Hi All

I've never posted before, so hope you will not mind this intrusion.

I have a new friend, a woman I met at a soft play area who is new to the area. We get along really well, have lots in common and she is a really lovely person. My only slight reservation is that she is deeply religious (of the 'Happy Clappy' persuasion)which I don't have a problem with per se but why do I feel like a potential new recruit?

She's quite full-on and although I've been honest and told her it's not for me I think she thinks I can be educated!

This weekend she has invited my children to her Sunday School (they do want to go) so I feel I must accompany them! Any ideas? I really do value her friendship and we get on so well in every other respect.

Fair enough. There was once a decent chap called Jesus. There have been lots of decent people offering guidance either by what they say or by the example they set. It's not necessary to believe that they or anything else are supernatural to follow a set of ethical principles, that's all.

As to there being "no point" to Christmas celebrations without the Christian element, oh please! The Christmas festivities are a mix of German and Nordic pagan traditions with the Roman Saturnalia and a chunk of Christian mythology bunged in on top. You see, this is one of the reasons Christianity has survived as a religion: when the Christians came along and conquered and converted, they simply took over the names and dates of local deities and festivials and "reclaimed" them. The festival called Christmas is worth celebrating for what it is: the turning point of the year, whether you fill your house with Nativity pictures or just with tinsel, beer and people you like.

Oh bloody hell i hope not nearlythree! [do an Alpha Course I mean.]I do know how hard it is, I really have been there. I'm certainly not trying to make you believe anything, i don't know what i believe myself half the time. All I can say, is that the way you think about things and the way you view life [and Jesus Christ] for me is kind of the 'right' way, if you know what i mean. Just go with it and let yourself be a bit. I remember my Dad having a terrible lapse of Faith and depression that lasted for months - a darkness came over him and I was really quite worried. And it started when my Mum got ill, and when he went away on retreat and spent a long time in isolation. He emerged from it and felt stronger for it. Not saying that it is what will happen to you, or that it is what should happen to you, but I found it interesting.
I do think a Christian belief can be a lot less prescriptive and be interlinked with a much 'wider' belief in paganism, [or whatever else one might call it - words, like religions, immediately reduce and prescribe whereas our thoughts and imagination can't be pinpointed like that, and that is one of the problems. A problem I think Christ got around, but not the Bible. OK, rambling now. Sorry!

madamez of course Christmas is more than a Christian festival. Of course it started as a pagan festival. Don't think anyone is denying that here.

madamez, as a possible pagan convert I know where the origins of Christmas lie! But then that is celebrating Yule, isn't it? And if you as an atheist want to celebrate the turing of the year, and do so in a way that encompasses gift-giving and consideration for others, then of course you should do so. But it isn't Christmas - the Mass for Christ - that is the celebration of the birth of Jesus, which I doubt is a festival you keep. In fact, another reason the church survived so well is b/c of the witch hunts and the fear it instilled into its followers on anything 'pagan' - in fact it still does the latter today.

Ruty - glad your dad found a way through. I once consulted a complementary practitioner who had a poster of Jesus on one wall and Mother Earth another. I agree with you about going with the flow, it'll be interesting to see how things turn out.

my dad goes to a healer a bit like that nearlythree. She is an osteopath and does some physical work but also does laying on of hands. There are some dodgy 'healers' out there, but also a few interesting people i suppose.

Oh, extremely dodgy ones, ruty. When I have more energy I'll tell you my Very Sinister Lady story, but am off to bed now!

don't know if you saw any of the series on healing recently on BBC2. some rather dodgy characters on there! probably deliberately picked for that reason...