Bumble Bee Tuna

OK just kind of spur of the moment I was reading II and I was thinking about my brother. He turned seemingly fundy on my atheist family a few years ago. I say 'atheist family' though I don't really know- my parents have never talked about religion or gone to church, so it's an assumption. My sister I hear is a lukewarm general theist. But my brother attends "East Hampton Bible Church" and I don't know about him. He scares me because I hate to see that stuff in someone I care about. He's a smart person! I don't know how he could hav gotten sucked in to it. He alludes to it sometimes but he never really mentions it much, which is good. But he does stupid things to allude to it. Last time I saw a him we were talking about someone who did something good or something. So he says
"So he was a Good Samaritan" or something.
"I guess so" I said
"We can call him the second good samaritan" or something silly. Now if my memory serves me correctly the term Samaritan comes from a Bible story and the second comment was to say 'well we have to call him the second one because there really was an actual good samaritan in actual history because the bible is the truth'. Whatever. It was just a really pointless comment to make and I had to hold myself back from laughing. Just a minor thing.

Anyway I call him a "fundy" but that's really an assumption. He was kind of a misfit adolescent (we were all homeschooled until high school, I went to public, my sister went to private (Choate), he went to private but back to homeschooling after a year. He's an eccentric artist and he didn't fit in with anyone in my town (he tried the drinking/partying scene for a bit, got arrested for DWI (zero tolerance, he wasn't actually driving anywhere except down a few houses, he's not THAT stupid to drive drunk). He got sucked into the God thing because he got into a group of friends who are really serious Christians and I think peer pressure got the best of him. Anyway they seem very serious about it so that says fundy to me but I don't actually know what any of them believe. It has kind of been eating at me for a while because I'm scared of him being an evolution-denying, YEC, hardcore messed up Christian. I don't think he's quite THAT extreme but since I don't know my fears are of the worst case scenario.

so spur of the moment I just decided I'd write him an email and ask him. Here it is:

"I was just thinking about how you converted to Christianity a few years ago, and I'm curious. You don't really talk about it or bring it up too much, so I'm kind of wondering exactly what kind of Christian you have become. There are huge differences between the different denominations of Christians and so far I don't know which one you belong to.
I don't intend to argue with you about it, unless you wanted to, but I was curious as to what your beliefs are. For instance:

Do you believe the Bible to be literally true and inerrant?
If so, which translation? Or is it only the original manuscripts that are inerrant, and the translations could have errors? etc...
Which parts of the Bible do you think are literal, and which are symbolic? (i.e. do you believe in 6-day creation, do you believe in a 6000 year old Earth, do you believe that the Flood actually happened, did Jonah really spend 3 days inside of a whale's stomach, Did God actually stop the sun in the sky for that other J-named character I forget, etc...)
Do you believe in Hell?
If so, who do you believe goes there?
What does it take for someone to get to Heaven?
Do you believe evolution?
I could probably ask more but I don't want to do the Grand Inquisition here and it's inconsequential. Basically I'm just curious as to exactly how much you believe of the Bible. Don't want to offend you, and this isn't meant as some sort of challenge to your beliefs. I just want to know what your beliefs are. "

I already sent it so I'm not looking for pointers on the letter but I don't know if this was a good idea (I tried to be as non-challenging as possible). It's just one of those after-the-fact nervous things when you can't do anything so doubt sets in.

Any ideas on what might come of this? If a church is called 'Bible Church' is that good enough reason to think they're literalists or inerrantists, or am I wrong about that?

-B

butswana

I wouldn't worry about it. You have to know, so you have to ask.

Walross

BBT, I don't think you have anything to worry about. The letter was written in a respectful and non-confrontational manner, and shows a genuine curiosity. If I were approached in a similar manner by a christian, I would be happy to answer their questions. Regards,

Walross

wildernesse

I think that your email is a very nice way to ask about things that are important to you. I think that most, if not all, Christians will be able to reply calmly about what they believe regarding those things. There is nothing in your email that should send even the most rabid fundified person into any sort of defensive mode. IMO, of course.

I think that your brother will probably be glad to tell you what he believes.

I agree with you that a "Bible" church is more likely to be conservative/fundamental than not. I think on Baptist Board I read that some Independent Baptist churches call themselves Bible churches or worship centers--they're Baptist, but don't say so in their name. In the South, most Bible churches I know of are what I would call non-denom conservative churches that do tend toward literal, inerrant Bible interpretation.

That doesn't mean that your brother's church is a den of fundies, but I would also wonder about what the beliefs of a church are that was as general in its name as that.

The worrisome part to me would be what I replied when I found out about his beliefs if I were you. That is the trick.

--tibac

LLaurieG

(Laurie) My sister did the same in our family; married a minister and went fundy on us. She was married to him for 13 years and had three kids, then they divorced. My advice:

1) You're doubtless going to get some answers to your questions that you don't like. Anticipate it now; don't flip out. This could still be a phase on your brother's part, and he might need your "non-judgementalism" now in order to come back to later.

2) Based on answers he does give you, DO inquire further into aspects of his "beliefs." Do it diplomatically. You are a detective; this is information-gathering. Any hint of confrontation on your part at this stage and your brother will clam up, which dries up your info conduit.

3) Why not attend one service at his church? Again, information-gathering is your strength. They might turn out to be mellower than you expect.

4) Lastly, try to remember that it's HIS life; any mistakes in it are HIS to make; and it does not reflect badly on you whatsoever if your brother's "going religious" for awhile.

That all said, I think your questions to him were good ones, designed to make HIM reflect and think and self-define.

Speaking for myself, I have a tendency to really beat the atheistic drum, to STRONGLY intellectually espouse it - possibly too strongly, because in doing so, I've taken aback & borderline alienated some believers in my family. So in any "evangelizing" for atheism you will be sorely tempted to do, make it crystal clear that you are speaking for yourself. Use "I" statements. "I have a problem with this; I can't help but wonder about that, just for myself, it's hard to figure out..."

Good luck.

HelenM

BBT I don't think it was a bad idea.

I don't know how your brother will react, obviously.

I think some Christians, upon receiving a letter like that from a non-Christian sibling, would get very excited and interpret it as a sign that the non-Christian sibling may be moving closer to becoming a Christian themselves. The Christian may have been praying for this for years...

Others perhaps would get defensive, figuring that the non-Christian sibling was 'baiting' them. No matter how nicely the e-mail was phrased. (I think the tone of yours was fine, as others have said)

Other Christians would respond and take a wait-and-see attitude, hoping that an interesting exchange ensued, but not presupposing the motives of their sibling.

Maybe you know your brother well enough to have an idea of his likely reaction. I hope that you're happy with it, whatever it is!

Helen

Bumble Bee Tuna

Well, he responded:

So I'm not sure how I'd like to respond to this. It sounds like my worst fears are true- he's a Biblical literalist. This looked promising:
" Jesus told alot of parables, he told them with the intention that people truthfully believe them, not as actual events that actually happened, but not as some story that's just some story with no value either. "
But then this shot it down:
"if i were to reject the story of noah and the arc, just because i
can't seem to wrap my grasps around something so improbable, i would be missing the lessons taught by that story."

So I think I should ask for clarification on that. I'm kind of disappointed because he answered with stuff that I would expect any Christian to say but he didn't answer most of my actual specific questions. It's of course so tempting to response in a debating manner (a la "Redundancy in the important parts? Is that why half the details in each Gospel account of the Resurrection are completely different from one story to the next?") but of course I won't do that. I think I'll just write again and ask him if he could be more specific about questions. Any suggestions on how my response should go, I'll probably write it tonight.

One thing that really bothers me and is going to get a slightly confrontational aspect is his second sentence. He needs to be corrected that we're not "afraid of God". What a load of hooey. But I'll try and be as diplomatic as possible in my correction.

-B

beth

I'm glad that you got such a receptive reply.

Bumble Bee Tuna

OK I just responded but I forgot to save my response to show you guys. No big deal. I basically asked him about:

Noah's Ark more specifically
Age of the Earth specifically
And basically I just asked him to tell me what parts of Genesis he believed fell into which class- historical-literal/symbolic/parable/sorta-literal-sorta-symbolic, etc..

And I told him he didn't have to bother answering the other questions I had asked earlier since I could probabnly guess them and because it would probably just make both of us sad anyway.
(the other questions being his doctrine Re: Hell, Heaven, and less importantly evolution). But I said he could answer those if he felt like it. I said he didn't have to because I didn't want to sound like I was being too pushy. And what I said about it making me sad would definitely be true, too...the idea of my brother thinking I'm going to be tormented eternally in Hell is saddening enough without him confirming it.

I also responded to the "fear the name of God" thing, hopefully somewhat peacefully.

I'll let y'all know the outcome of my second foray into questioning.

-B

-RRH-

I don't know that the "afraid to hear the name of God" thing is all that bad. I think it was just an exaggeration about how uncomfortable religious discussion makes people.