So my (formerly agnostic, now atheist) friend (Christian) is very Christian and obsesses over it. Her only friends besides me are Christian and all they talk about is the Bible, Jesus, and God. She also tries to “convert” people. She tried to convert me by asking what my relationship with God as like, if I read the Bible, etc. and tried to get me to apologize to God for being agnostic and not Christian “for Christianity is the only true religion and He will come soon”.
She constantly talks about it like I said and constantly tries to get me to convert every time we talk.
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There is a stage that minds go through…
where an ego becomes formed-into, or immersed-in, some CULTURAL “answer”, & it presumes that THAT answer, is ALL THE UNIVERSE’S answer…
Sometimes it’s “religion”, sometimes it’s some other fundamentalism.
Some go through it, others don’t.
Try getting Muslims to accept that “The Lord of ALL Worlds” isn’t revolving around an individual-human-religion??
won’t work.
That is THEIR phrase, btw: “The Lord of ALL Worlds”.
It makes it absolutely-clear that we aren’t the center that all revolves around, but they ignore it, because their assumption-habit orders them to ignore what they’re saying.
ALL religions do that.
Every Last One of them.
I’m including Existentialism, Physicalism, Antitheism, all of the Abrahamic religions, all of the Dharmic religions, Scientism, everything.
IF G-D/OriginOfAllSouls/AllAwakeSouls/Brahman/OceanOfBuddhas ( pick a label: they’re all approximate-identifiers, because obvously we’re the “mice in the maze”, compared with it, right? )
is OriginOfAllSouls, THEN … how could it possibly be limited-to our ethnic religions??
That will become … abundantly-obvious, in the next stage of the world, during the regional-consolidation stage preparatory to WW3 … as the closed-reality ideologies all try killing-off universalism.
Fundamentally, the religiousity of your friend is … they felt a lack, & now they’re “overfull”.
Cloyingly overfull, from your perspective.
Please read https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/thinking-fast-and-slow
It is the ONLY book which gives understanding of what’s actually going-on in the world, right now:
Our animal-reacting-mind is trying to beat/break objectivity & correct-reasoning from the world, so that animal-reacting, with all its comforting “simplicity”, can own the world, & decide everything by … habit.
“System-1” as Kahneman & Tversky called it, the imprint->reaction system, is ideology/prejudice/“religion”/trained-expertise.
It’s all the same mechanism.
Lower-forebrain, if one meshes “Top Brain / Bottom Brain” with that book…
it is utterly-intolerant of correct-reasoning, objectivity, or worldview-consideration/change.
“System-2” is the objectivity & correct-reasoning & worldview-change system.
The research which discovered that programming is upper-forebrain backs that it is top-brain, too.
So, ALL ideologies are trying to eradicate correct-reasoning from all authority in the world.
Oh, it’s “sooo much comfier, when nobody’s violating our automatic belief!” … yeah, it’s “sooo much comfier” when we’re all herdbeasts, stampeding together, too, isn’t it??
That homogenous-culture-is-comforting current seems to be underlying ALOT of ideological-polarization, nowadays…
IF they “NEED” ideological overfullness, THEN … let them go.
Be open to their outgrowing it, but don’t snuff your health for sake of habit combined-with familiarity-with-them.
IF they “NEED” ideological-overfullness, … who says YOU do??
As Elisabeth Haich identified, one of the toughest lessons in human life, is learning that one has to outgrow a friend, or move on, when they won’t.
It isn’t narcissism, it is self-protection/health.
Another angle, is … why are they so frightened of objectivity? of correct-reasoning?
Because the don’t want to know that their religiosity is itself partly-made-up comforting.
Keeping the religiosity means they don’t have to experience objectivity, & therefore they don’t have to face objectivity, right?
Wishing you well, but if someone “NEEDS” to be immersed in a cult, let them go, & pray for them: let LivingSpirit rescue them when they allow their own rescuing.
_ /\ _
You tell her “I love you and enjoy spending time with you, but it’s starting to make me uncomfortable that you keep pressing the religion and conversion conversation.”
Then, if she keeps it up, you cut her loose because she doesn’t respect your boundaries.
This is the way, I feel. But sticking to it is difficult.
My best friend Chuck would follow any fad or trend, and he got into amway. He wanted everyone to be in the same club he was getting such validation in. He proselytized like mad. We told him no.
He kept asking and offering and trying to show the pitch videos. We told him no; and that the third time he tried this it’d be the last we saw of him.
I hope he’s doing well and broke free of those guys. It’s been 28 years, I’m sure. But we haven’t spoken to him since a few days after the ultimatum.
It is difficult, absolutely. It comes down to knowing that your personal, healthy boundaries are more important than whatever someone wants to talk at you about. You’re never obligated to interact with a person that makes you uncomfortable.
Very sound advice. To be honest, I’ve just entered my 40s and I’ve only just figured it out.
Having social phobia fucked me up in a few secondary ways and this is one of them - any conversation/relationship pretty much made me uncomfortable and it took me a long time to be able to separate normal conversations/relationships from the ones with people keen to take advantage of a meek, quiet person.
Abandon her like the plague
i think its wrong to force your religion onto others. that being said, i do believe in god, but not the church’s rules and homophobia. i try not to force my beliefs
Easy solution is to drop them.
Ask her if she’s ever been friends with someone who became interested in her, that she wasn’t interested in but who kept pestering her to go out with him/her. Spend some time commiserating about the experience, how awkward it made every interaction, how she constantly had to be on guard, how she was never sure when he might try again, and how she had to continually check for potential double-meanings or pitfalls. The guy has been told No multiple times but you’re just not interested, yet he send to think if he just keeps badgering at you, you’ll give in and date him.
Then tell her that that’s what her constantly bringing up religion is like for you. And that “No means No” applies to more than just sex.
Ask her which christian god she identifies with and ask her if she’d apologize to the other christian gods for picking the wrong one. Then she can move on to the other abrahamic religions with related but different gods that are apparently worth killing each other over. Then it is time to do a polite check in with the other non-abrahamic world religion gods and pay her respects because I mean what if. And after that it is worth mentioning that the abandoned religions that were the precursors to all variants of christianity might actually be the right one, unless she is prepared to admit that the current one she believes in might also be wrong because it is actually a future evolution that finally got it right…
Of course this is just a smug elaboration to point out the absurdity of the situation.
Personally I’d probably just quietly drop them from my social circle.
Push back in the same way.
Answer her questions about your lack of belief with your own questions. Ask her why she believes?
What makes her feel like her religion is correct?
What about Christianity is more right than other religions?
Does she think that she would still be Christian if she was born in India or China instead of here? If so, why?
Has she ever read, or considered reading, about Islam or Buddhism or any other religion that isn’t based on Christianity?I doubt you will hear from her much after that. If you do, she will likely ease up on the religious stuff.
Fucking Evangelicals are a menace to society. You may want to read about how to interact with and even deradicalize cult members.
You can’t win.
She is also weirded out by LGBT ppl and thinks it’s a sin but “doesn’t wish them harm”
Tell her about the Sentinelese who haven’t yet heard the good news about her Jesus. The problem will be solved.
Ask her what her relationship with God is and what is it that she gets out of what she is now doing. Is it out of fear that without this she will be worse off?, maybe making up for sins of the past?, out of a “calling” or some deep personal gratification?, maybe it’s is something she’s not fully explored? Make her uncomfortable and justify her stance and only when she’s able to provide a logical response can you then tell her calmly that shit isn’t for you. Without a common ground and understanding, cutting through to brain rot is a difficult and pretty impossible task because it’s usually not logical, so self preservation for yourself is best and keeping your distance until they answer to their own selves and come out from the fog.
I had a friend who went full Jesus, only to be secretly chasing a girl in the group, and then backed away very quickly once she cheated on him and he realised that people are people and religion has little to do with it. It was a bit of a loss for a while while they went on their high horse, but once they unplugged from the rhetoric the friend I knew was still there, and the rest of us were waiting. Tbh the “non-believers” in the friend group were more akin to actioning the prodigal son parable and more kind than any of the so called religious friends at end of this.
