I'm currently reading a book by Stephen Bates, God's Own Country: Religion and Politics in the USA and it is very interesting. Faith is a rather tricky subject. I find it fascinating but extremely tiresome too. There's always the same arguments being bounded about.
Take Richard Dawkins for example, he is an atheist. No ordinary atheist though. He goes on telly, writes books, gets into peoples faces and generously forces his opinion on others. He is what I call, a militant atheist. So therefore, in that respect, he is arguing against great strength with great strength. His belief is in nihilo. Christians believe that God created ex nihilo. But, this aside, whilst Dawkins fervently argues against the faith that corrupts: That is, religious fundamentalism, he is a fundamentally an atheist, does not offer others to give their view point and shouts down any that do as idiocy, immature and uneducated. There are a great many respectable atheists who do not force their faith on others, just as there are many Christians, Muslims, Hindus etc that do not force their belief on others.
And then he thought it a good idea to say there was no God on the side of buses. Now there are some Christians who believe that they should preach the word of God in public, through shouting in the street, 'healing' people, writing it on posters and generally making nuisances of themselves. Why is this ok? It's not. Get fundamentalist faith off the streets. Instead, we should be Christians in how we behave, how we act towards other people. You can't say 'I went to war because God told me' or 'well, when it comes to the war in Iraq, I will be judged in Heaven' (Messrs Bush and Blair resp.) Don't use your faith as an excuse. With Dawkins; just because you are an atheist and you think faith is silly doesn't mean that everyone else that has faith is silly. 'God doesn't exist so get on with your lives.' Whether I am against or for the statement is not the case here; it is that the statement has a public platform. Get on with your life Dicky, and don't bother anyone else.
From experience, I have found that as soon as someone knows you are a Christian, they set to prove you wrong, they want to trip you up, like when Satan tested Christ in the desert. The secret is not to fall into the trap. When we constantly question everything in life, we lose out on the meaning, we think there is a motive to everything.
Don't go forcing your faith on others. They won't like you for it. If people want God in their life then He will come to them. If they call He will answer. If people aren't bothered in God then leave them to it - they will still be happy. We all believe in something, whether it is God, another god or deity, a prophet, a messenger or even nothing.
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