Do you 'look up' to your Christian friends?

For some reason, I don’t have any Christian friends.

:(

Some of my Internet acquaintences are devout Christians and some of them are very, very nice people, though. But I don’t really expect special morality from Christians, or religious folks in general.

No, I just feel sorry for people who believe in invisible sky fairies, although I try to maintain sufficient tact to not tell them that to their faces.

Do you think that Christians are the people that others should look up to?

I actually laughed out loud when I read that. Thanks :)

I’ve never believed that Christianity was about morality, or at least not about actual morality instead of preaching morality while engaging in some serious hypocrisy. I’m more pleasantly surprised when I find Christians who don’t behave badly.

@FutureMemory Me too.

@FutureMemory so, assuming that you don’t look up to Christians. why don’t you?

@ilvorangeiceblocks A better question would be, why should I?

@ilvorangeiceblocks I’ve never had a drink in my life, by the way.

@FutureMemory excellent.

i’ve been wondering about prejudices towards/against different groups in society and the expectations they feel they have to meet and i thought about how people seem to expect Christians to take the higher ground on morality ethics and all that jazz. decided to throw this question at fluther to see whether people in the fluther hold this to be true.

“Why should I?” is exactly what I was thinking. That’s an absurd reason to look up to someone, if you ask me. How does being a Christian make a person any better than me? It doesn’t. And to assume that they are automatically going to take the higher ground on morality and ethics is utter nonsense.

This question made my day. GQ.

To answer your question, yes, people should look up to Christians. So long as the Christian follows all the good moral ideals from the bible and disregards all the bad ones. I only know one such person. His name is Frank, he goes to church every Sunday, and spends the rest of his days helping old ladies on his street with their gardening and chores, and is basically a bit like Ned Flanders from The Simpsons, only a little nicer and a touch more friendly.

If I thought Christianity was a really moral religion, and being one was a real boon to my opinion of you, wouldn’t I be one myself? And then you wouldn’t be my Christian friends, implying that I am not a Christian, so much as my friends (no Christian designator) or my fellow Christians?

@ilvorangeiceblocks, I wouldn’t say I expect Christians to take the high ground on morals and ethics (in fact I find many Christian beliefs deeply immoral).

What I do expect is for people not to be hypocrites. So, for example, if your’e a Christian who often preaches about the importance of “family values,” I would expect you not to go out and have multiple affairs. But that’s just a general expectation of moral consistency, not necessarily with christianity in particular.

@Qingu and @poisonedantidote , i agree with you. i believe that due to their faith, Christians are obliged to take the moral high ground etc. For them to behave oppositely goes against what they believe in. So I’m really not surprised that not many people ‘look up’ to Christians, considering how badly some can act.

But doesn’t that depend on whether you think their faith has good morals? I sure don’t.

@Qingu the Christian faith does not have good morals? do tell. i am very interested

@ilvorangeiceblocks “due to their faith”

Ok, before I start, I by no means intend to trample your sand castle with what I’m about to say, but I need to be direct in order for the point to not get distorted.

“Faith” – Thinking on my friend Frank some more, and how he lives, and contemplating the concept of faith, I cant help but ask my self, why don’t all Christians live like my friend frank does?

If I believed there was really a god, and I was wagering 100 years of mortal life versus an eternal after-life, and I believed this god had expectations of me, I would live a lot more like this Frank guy. I’n fact, I would go live on the streets, and donate all my things to the poor. I would volunteer at loads of places, and would put serious effort in to being rewarded.

This Frank friend of mine is a real anomally, I have never met anyone like him. He is almost unreal in terms of how community and friendship orientated he is.

The problem with looking up to Christians just because they are Christians, is this, that the vast majority are indeed just regular every day people, with only a smattering being so charitable, so few, that I would say it is comparable to how many good and charitable bakers you will find, or brick layers.

You can’t really expect people to think someone is good just because they are Christian, because chances are, it’s just some other guy.

@poisonedantidote you have a very fair point there. i’m probably going to end up thinking on it for the rest of the day.

Nor can you assume that someone won’t take the moral high ground just because they are not Christian…

I look up to all my friends, including those that are Christian. I will only befriend, or maintain a friendship, with those who share the morals and ethics that I deem are important. Being a Christian, or a member of any group, does not predispose one to being a potential friend of mine; nor does such a label fuel any expectations for me. Basically, I don’t care if someone is a Christian, as long as they behave properly and play nice.

If I do, it has absolutely nothing to do with them being Christian.

All things are legal ( spiritually ) for Christians, but not all things are expedient. We are instructed that if the things we do are an occasion for our brother to stumble, then we must not do those things.

Only Billy Christianson and that’s because he’s like 6’9”.

If people will look up to Christian friends they will end up with crazy ideas.

At any sort of a party I drink [ alcohol ] and I never hide this from anyone. [ But I know my limits and I try not to drink in front of those pones who had alcohol problems ].

I tasted a really excellent burbon my older son had, when I was back in NC a couple of weeks ago, but that’s really the first tast of alcohol ( other than the ocassional beer with lunch ) that I’ve had in many months.

I know a few people that have the courage of their convictions and “walk the walk” rather than “talk the talk”. But I do know a fair number who have cheated on their spouses, believe that Christians are rewarded financially for being Christians, whose kids are getting hammered at parties on the weekends and are very sexually active. With certain mega churches, there is a country club aspect, and an admonishment to “do business with church members.”

So no, I don’t think my Christians friends as a class deserve to be looked up to strictly because they call themselves Christian. On the other hand there are a small number who really do. They go to Africa on vacation and build wells, have taken in foster children, and are active in the community. They are relatively minimalist in their lifestyle.

@BarnacleBill

You are correct.

Is drinking immoral? I never thought it was…

Anyway, a lot of my Christian friends drink and a lot of my non-Christian friends don’t drink. Generally speaking, the only consistent difference between my Christian friends and my non-Christian friends is that the Christian ones go to church on Sundays.

That being said, I do think there are Christian churches that encourage charitable behavior. I think this does increase the probability of Christians doing good things because having people around you that do good things might increase your tendency to do good things. Still, I look up to people who do good things, not to people who put a label on their beliefs.

@roundsquare

Very true. “Not everyone who says until me ‘Lord, Lord’ shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Drinking is not “immoral.” Excessive drinking is. Since christians are held to a higher standard so that they may be reflections of the holyness of God, they should abstain from drinking if it will be a cause of someone else stumbling.

@ilvorangeiceblocks, the Christian faith’s religious text, the Bible, is the only religious text I’m aware of that actually commands genocide. See Deuteronomy 13:12, 20:16, and the entire book of Joshua (which is basically a long, victorious description of multiple God-ordered genocides).

The Bible also condones and commands slavery (Leviticus 25:45, 1 Timothy 6:1; Dt. 20:10 commands you to enslave cities who surrender to you in warfare, or to kill all the men and boys and enslave the women if they don’t surrender immediately) and sees rape as a property offense (Deuteronomy 21:22, where the law says a rape victim—if she doesn’t already belong to another man—should be forced to marry her rapist, who simply has to pay her dad the brideprice because “you break it, you buy it).

The Bible also says that disobedient children, people who work on the Sabbath, unbelievers, astrologers, and homosexuals should be killed. A woman who cannot prove her virginity on her wedding night must be stoned to death on the doorstep of her father’s house, according to the Bible.

And Jesus says all of these laws should be followed—and that anyone who teaches others to follow even the “least” of the laws will be called “Greatest” in heaven (Matthew 5:17). Paul says the law is “holy, just, and good” (Romans 7:12).

I had a great friend in between 12 and 15 years old. She was a hard up Christian. She always bothered me about it. I was a self proclaimed Satanist for a big part of my teens. I always told her to fuck off. But we were like sisters, man. I met her later after we went our own ways. She invited me over, and I saw a buncha Whiskey bottles in her room.

Not too long ago, I heard that she’s now married with two kids, and takes care of other kids, she runs a foster home.

I looked up to her when we were 12, and I look up to her now when I’m 29. But the reasons never had anything to do with her religion, or her drinking.

Worse is, she looked up to me. Haha. I remember when I fell out of a tree and broke my arm. She came to see me the day after, and told me that Jesus was in my heart and would help me through this injury. We also used to play Exorcism, and I was Satan trying to posses her, then she’d just break out in some gospel song she heard from church. It rocked.

@Qingu I beg to differ.

Jesus did not say follow those specific laws but obey to your superiors who represent authority and follow the “rules” [ laws ]. But later His words were understood perfectly to apostles who said they’d better follow God’s words then mans.
Out of context Paul’s Romans letter could be misunderstood .. But law [ jewish Torah ] makes one know what sin is and by not following one of those laws bringed upon them death and made them guilty of all the laws written there.
Law brings death while we are supposed to live under the grace.

I do not understand why so many people when talking about the Bible just state Old Testament .. they do not bother reading and understanding the New one.
If one takes comments out of context can make anything written sound awful.

Psalm 118 : 10 All nations surrounded me; in the name of the LORD I cut them off!
[ like cool man We should start a holy war and kill all around us because the Lord says so ] – easy to do so when one tries a bit.

Christianity should be judged and looked upon based on both testaments and see how things changed and how they were explained.

@Hibernate, I think you are interpreting that passage dishonestly.

Ask yourself this: if we were talking about any other text, would you take an interpretation that is so strained and counter to the plain meaning of what the guy in the text is saying?