Psalm 53
I know a few atheists who do good, I know some Christians who don't.
I know some atheists who hate Christianity, I know some Christians who hate atheists.
I know the atheists that I do because they are my friends. We are friends because we have things in common, our belief in God is not one of them, but that is alright. Some people may have just read that previous sentence and gasped. They have obviously not been moved by the amazon commercial with the priest and the imam buying each other kneepads. What the priest and the imam understand and many others do not is that you do not need to agree on everything in order to love and care for another person, in fact it is the only way to love and care for another person. I say that because you do not agree with anyone completely, and no one agrees with you completely either. To that end, we should allow ourselves to be open to people of different ideologies than our own.
Telling an atheist, or anyone else for that matter, that they are a fool is not the best way to get them to go for coffee or a coke. Stating that there is no one in this world that does any good on their own is being blind to all the good that is done in this world by people who do not believe the way you believe. I have atheist friends because we started in a common place and then spoke about our differences. I have atheist friends because I do not hang my belief like an anvil over their heads. I have atheist friends because my Jesus tells me to love my neighbor as myself. It's the same reason I have straight and gay friends, the same reason I have democrat and republican friends, the same reason I have DC and Marvel friends, the same reason I have friends who do and do not like oatmeal raisin cookies.
+ Do you have friends who have a different ideology than you do? Why or why not?
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