Jocelyn recently on Awake-to-Dream posted a personal story about adapting both to a modern world filled with intellegent, skeptical people and a peer group devoted to faith and sharing that faith with others. Making that oil and water work was producing friction. She posted thusly and posed a number of questions she wished she had answers to:

Never in my life have I more wanted to just go into a group of completely non-religious people and just sit down and listen. I thought of going to my friend Cak’s room, where almost every night, a group of her friends congregate to watch TV on DVD. The questions I most wanted to ask were: What do you think about Christianity? How did you come to think that (i.e. what experiences or understanding lead you to that view)? What do you think about Christian people? What do you think when you come in contact with an “evangelistic event?”

To answer and generally contribute, I commented with the below. This was a real hum-thinker so I thought I would share it with you here.

Hey Joss,

You know I could go on, and on but my own opinions are well known and so defined in me that expressing them in this gentle forum would probably be seen as acerbic and rude so I’ll stick to some peripherals.

I have had few bad experiences with evangelicals. I even listen to them in my car on am 550 most afternoons to practice my funny accents (J Vernon Mcgee and Ian Gollahurt). Aside from not being offended by the practice, I do write them off as being irrelavant. Once in a while I wish they would do something useful with their convictions (you mentioned the Sisters in Calcutta in your post). But, like Bree the trend in my reaction has to be humour and pity.

My pre-teen and teen conversions to christianity were all about the soft sell, Great music, good activities and doe eyed brunettes got me coming back to the chapel time and time again. My rejection of the very premise of an unexplainable spiritual realm (let alone any one religion) was reached antiseptically and not form any particular aversive event. I had just seen the similarities and differences in the cultural stories, noted the appropriation of myth and tales for social control and tracked the changes through time.

There are lots of folks who could still be converted and not just the socially bankrupt. I may have a Bible-Story detector at 10,000 watts but put out the right cheese and go heavy with the emo-rock and the SFU group is surre to fish a few men.

Keep tryin’ for the answers Joss. I respect no one’s faith more than your own.

I don’t know. I want to be nice, I mean this is my little sister but for some people I meet I think, ‘hey, there is a reason youre struggling with this’.