Stories of Finding Common Ground?

[Unofficial Reverand Alex]

"Common Ground" being, for sake of my post, any sort of realization that we have more in common with a seemingly opposing group than we realize.

For example, my roommate for the past 2 years was a self-defined cosmic nihilist; that is, he truly believes that everything is meaningless, there's no point to anything, so why bother with religion or goals or pretty much anything. He lived this out, sleeping 12 hours a night & playing video games 9 hours a day.

I describe myself under what I call, practical religiosity. My main idea was that, at the end of the day, we really don't know & can't prove the existence of God or the meaning to anything (though the book Cold Case Christianity does the best job I've seen of proving the Christian God with historical facts, "Beyond a reasonable doubt"). That being said, I decided that the best route of action to take would be a belief in a God (what do I have to lose?), one that is a constant presence & support & encourager of pro-social behavior (Pascal's Wager is similar to my stance). I try to live this out, as a devout Catholic, always ready to make adjustments to how I live out my faith, because I want to do something good with my religion, not just let it be rules.

We surprised each other with how much we agreed on; my roommate would complain about Christians, and I would agree, because we both hate the useless bickering & excessive self-righteousness & censoring of any vaguely controversial thing that so often marks modern Christianity. I said that Christianity should be more focused on lifestyle than law, more interested in helping people than trying to shut out any mention of Black Sabbath or jokes about Jesus. He said that if all Christians lived out their religion the way I did, he wouldn't have any more problems with them; I said that if atheists were as open to discussion as he was, a lot less needless tension would exist between people.

Another time, I had a 45-minute ride with an Uber driver, who seemed to be Arab. We were talking, and I mentioned being a college student, studying Theology at a Catholic university. I decided to ask if he ever thought much about religion; he said yes, that he was Muslim, and his faith was the most important thing to him. As often happens when I bring up religion with people, he just kept talking for awhile about his beliefs. He said that he & I both believe in God, and that is most important; as long as we all love God & do good to each other, we really don't need to worry about anything else, because loving God and taking care of each other is the whole point. At the end of the ride, he called me "Brother" and wished me well.

Pope John XXIII was exceptionally good at inviting people of other religions in as brothers, even inviting Protestant & Orthodox church leaders into Vatican II, the major Catholic church council of modern history. He's done far more than I can list here; I just want to throw out his name, so you can look him up if you so desire.

The point of all this is, I think we get far too caught up in fighting each other, focusing on everything that divides us, and we miss the commonality we share with everyone. This is an idea that is being said so much in politics right now, and if we can't start putting it into practice on Christian Forums, where else will it start?

I would like to open this thread to any stories of finding common ground, but far more importantly, I would like to pray & encourage all of you to create stories of common ground. And don't keep being cynical about everyone being divided; that's overlooking so much evidence of people genuinely appreciating & listening to each other. By no means am I trying to turn everyone into a softie with this kind of talk; it's only with this kind of talk that "tough guys" and "bleeding hearts" will be able to coexist & not complain about each other, and be able to mutually benefit from differing viewpoints. Our own prideful opinions about how "right" we are & how "stupid" they are isn't a protection from being soft, it's just out of fear and discontentment; London Mafia enforcer-turned Catholic speaker John Pridmore has a lot to say about that.

May God continue to bless us all!

 

[DennisTate]

"Common Ground" being, for sake of my post, any sort of realization that we have more in common with a seemingly opposing group than we realize.

For example, my roommate for the past 2 years was a self-defined cosmic nihilist; that is, he truly believes that everything is meaningless, there's no point to anything, so why bother with religion or goals or pretty much anything. He lived this out, sleeping 12 hours a night & playing video games 9 hours a day.

I describe myself under what I call, practical religiosity. My main idea was that, at the end of the day, we really don't know & can't prove the existence of God or the meaning to anything (though the book Cold Case Christianity does the best job I've seen of proving the Christian God with historical facts, "Beyond a reasonable doubt"). That being said, I decided that the best route of action to take would be a belief in a God (what do I have to lose?), one that is a constant presence & support & encourager of pro-social behavior (Pascal's Wager is similar to my stance). I try to live this out, as a devout Catholic, always ready to make adjustments to how I live out my faith, because I want to do something good with my religion, not just let it be rules.

We surprised each other with how much we agreed on; my roommate would complain about Christians, and I would agree, because we both hate the useless bickering & excessive self-righteousness & censoring of any vaguely controversial thing that so often marks modern Christianity. I said that Christianity should be more focused on lifestyle than law, more interested in helping people than trying to shut out any mention of Black Sabbath or jokes about Jesus. He said that if all Christians lived out their religion the way I did, he wouldn't have any more problems with them; I said that if atheists were as open to discussion as he was, a lot less needless tension would exist between people.

Another time, I had a 45-minute ride with an Uber driver, who seemed to be Arab. We were talking, and I mentioned being a college student, studying Theology at a Catholic university. I decided to ask if he ever thought much about religion; he said yes, that he was Muslim, and his faith was the most important thing to him. As often happens when I bring up religion with people, he just kept talking for awhile about his beliefs. He said that he & I both believe in God, and that is most important; as long as we all love God & do good to each other, we really don't need to worry about anything else, because loving God and taking care of each other is the whole point. At the end of the ride, he called me "Brother" and wished me well.

Pope John XXIII was exceptionally good at inviting people of other religions in as brothers, even inviting Protestant & Orthodox church leaders into Vatican II, the major Catholic church council of modern history. He's done far more than I can list here; I just want to throw out his name, so you can look him up if you so desire.

The point of all this is, I think we get far too caught up in fighting each other, focusing on everything that divides us, and we miss the commonality we share with everyone. This is an idea that is being said so much in politics right now, and if we can't start putting it into practice on Christian Forums, where else will it start?

I would like to open this thread to any stories of finding common ground, but far more importantly, I would like to pray & encourage all of you to create stories of common ground. And don't keep being cynical about everyone being divided; that's overlooking so much evidence of people genuinely appreciating & listening to each other. By no means am I trying to turn everyone into a softie with this kind of talk; it's only with this kind of talk that "tough guys" and "bleeding hearts" will be able to coexist & not complain about each other, and be able to mutually benefit from differing viewpoints. Our own prideful opinions about how "right" we are & how "stupid" they are isn't a protection from being soft, it's just out of fear and discontentment; London Mafia enforcer-turned Catholic speaker John Pridmore has a lot to say about that.

May God continue to bless us all!

From 1972 to 1991 I believed in the Soul Sleep doctrine which really made me feel superior in understanding to the vast majority of Christians who believed in going directly to heaven at death. Thankfully...... the Holy Spirit led me to accounts like that of Mr. Dean Braxton and since that time I have came to realize that the vast majority of Christians understood the Bible far, far, far better than I did back when I first came out of Atheism into a denomination of Messianic Judaism that taught Soul Sleep.