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[likeastreetmap]

I know there are a lot of people on my lj list with varied beliefs when it comes to religion, and probably a lot of people who don't normally read my journal too, but I ask you to bare with me for this one post, please. This isn't me being pushy, this is me being concerned. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, and I respect that, I just

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Re: continued from above, apologies for the length.

[quittingtheday]

Tackiness and emotional manipulation is something that I struggled with for a while. These things tend to vary from church to church, event to event, and are mostly a characteristic of the younger person's church service. I, however, do not believe that there are bad intentions behind emotionally provocative services. I believe that a young person's attention needs to be held until they begin to actually listen to the words in the songs and realize what they're at church for.

Just so you know I'm being honest, one of my early cynicisms occured at a young persons service at a pentacostal church. I believed that the moshing during the music and the games that they played before services were attempts to stimulate adrenaline which could provoke feelings of slight euphoria or peace. But as I said above, and I've heard youth leaders say in the past, kids will turn up to church for years and years, but one day they'll come up and say, hey i started actually paying attention to was was being sung tonight, and i felt something... Kids have different needs and wants and need to be catered to differently from adults. I do not believe this is emotionally manipulative, and unless you have different example, which I am of course open to hearing, then I think that we both were merely subject to our own cynical reasoning.

Which leads to my point on skepticism: Skepticism is fine when you already have a strong background of belief. I have questions that I consider potentially destructive to the Christian faith all the time, and I ask other people what they think of them and when they are logically and biblically answered, which they always have been, it strengthens my understanding and faith.

Skepticism however can be particularly erosive when it comes from not wanting to believe at all. For example, a year ago, in the youth of my faith, I would sit in church services and be cynical, whispering to my neighbour sarcastically about all that the preacher was saying that bothered me.
My cynical attitude came from a part of me that was searching for an excuse to up and leave - the questions I had yet to find an answer to still a conflict in my mind. Skepticism, at least, the skepticism that I've known, can lead one to ignore answers that oppose what they believe, and to happily lap up anything that supports them. This is as true in Christian faith as it is in atheism. The difference is that some people will cling to a belief despite what evidence is presented to the contrary, and the other will follow up a question and ask around. I try always to do the latter, and via this post I wanted to give people the chance to do the same.

At this point I am wondering if a better choice of words would have been cynicism rather than skepticism.

The thing that has to be remembered though is that I never would have found any answers to my questions about the Christian faith had I not taken a step of vulnerability into the church, into the lifestyle, and searched within for a while. Had I not given it a chance, I never would have come to know God as I do now. So this is me giving that chance back to those on my friends list.