Christian Community Interactions with Non-Christians

Following along with the weeks topic of "Christian communities" I found a though-provoking article written by Chris Stedman for the Huffington Post. Chris is a homosexual man who details his religious experiences and thoughts since he was a teenager. He talks about adoring his first pastor and participating in church events, and then suddenly not believing in God a few years later. Throughout his life he was trying to "reconcile [his] sexual orientation and [his] conservative religious beliefs". This led to him moving to a more progressive church community. It was here that he met Matthew, who would eventually become a pastor. Interestingly, Stedman talks about how he was accepted to a Lutheran College and wanted to become a pastor as well. This struck because you don't typically think of pastors and homosexuality in the same sentence, unless it's negative. That said, Stedman says that what he "didn't fully understand then was that [his] desire to help others and be in community existed apart from the theological claims of Christianity, which never sat as easily with [him]".

What happens next is what interested me the most though. After he decided to drop his pursuit of becoming a pastor in favor of atheism, he said that he "realized [he] was missing opportunities to learn from and with those who saw the world differently than [he] did". He became a part of the Christian community once more to meet with unlike minds and to learn from them. His overall experience is both inspiring and unconventional. He is still an atheist, but partners with a Christian community to tackle the broader problems throughout the world like hunger and disease.

His overall message is that we should embrace those with different views and put religion aside. While this is certainly going to create a degree of controversy, the idea itself isn't terrible. A world of peace is a world of similarities. He embraced the Christian community without actually being a religious part of it, but a part of it nonetheless.

Link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-stedman/why-this-atheist-still-ne_b_1308171.html

Atheist Spirituality

An atheist recognizing himself as a spiritual person is not something most atheists would do.  He explains the word "spirit" by connecting it with the ability to see beauty, to feel wonder and to be in awe.  From an atheist's perspective, he sees religion and faiths as a ball and chain that constricts the human's natural ability to imagine faith for themselves.  Religion and faith serve as an attempt to break down and understand something that is incomprehensible.  

Being atheist does not exclude the ability to have spiritual experiences.  The narrator talks about a time when he stared into the vastness of the stars, and realizes how mysteriously infinite space is; which was a very humbling experience.  Most humans are too caught up with what they already know that they are ignorant to mystery and the unknown.  Science and reason can explain most of what religion has defined as acts of a "God", but nothing can explain the imagination and the human being's ability to create their own faith.