[mrnoodle]

Originally Posted by Flint

I agree, and I add that you don't need to call yourself any special words, or join any special clubs.

Yep, it's the biggest weakness of "church" -- it tends to become clubbish. But no one ever seems to mind joining any other body; go to a sports bar on Sunday afternoon and there are plenty of people wearing jerseys and quoting statistics at each other who didn't go to church that morning because they were so independent minded.

From my perspective, I see more drawbacks than benefits to approaching spirituality as an organized group activity.

Agree. But there is a pretty big difference between associating with people who believe like you do (which, again, people do all the time; it's only when the label "church" is applied that they get nervous), and getting your spirituality from someone else. See previous post about trusting God vs. trusting what someone says.

How do you reach your "most often" conclusion? Perhaps some people just do things differently, for their own various personal reasons.

Oh, definitely. This is just personal experience. For every person I've met who says "I don't go to church, I never have and never will," there are a dozen who say "I don't go to church anymore because my parents made me when I was a kid" or "I had a bad experience" or "someone from a church did something bad to me, and therefore I don't trust any of them". It's not universal, just what I've seen in my life.

Point of contention with me: It's okay for people to make a generalization like "Christians just want to force their morals on everyone" -- it's instantly agreed to, or if not, the opposing voice feels he or she has to remain silent so they don't offend, or God forbid, open their mouth and voice their opinion, thus proving the statement. But any generalization that comes from the mouth of a Christian immediately gets a wave of criticism and nitpicking. In milder cases, it's something like "You can't make generalizations like that, see that's what I hate about Christianity".

Occasionally it's more venomous, along the lines of "Oh I suppose you want me to go stone some homosexuals now" or "lol, I saw you sin the other day, hypocrite". That doesn't happen on the Cellar, thankfully. But elsewhere, the argument always plays out the same way: people have done just enough research that the discussion starts with a very few select bible verses that are wielded like foils, used only to parry someone else's out-of-context verses.

Once they've been exhausted, it devolves into, "Well, Christians are narrow-minded, and that's that. I have my own thing, so stop pushing your crutch on me", to which someone replies, "You wouldn't understand, you're hopelessly ignorant of all things spiritual." We work hard to stay civil here and maintain open dialogue, but the phenomenon taints even Cellar discussions. It would be kind of refreshing if people would actually take the time to research the issues beyond trying to bolster their prejudices (both sides). Read the bible, take the whole work in context, and find out if its message is true or false. So few people even attempt it, because they either don't want to be challenged on their faith, are scared of having their mind changed and possibly having to examine their own life, or can't stop being argumentative long enough to be objective.