Christians' feelings hurt

[Wordleymaster1]

I'm relatively new here but even so, I've noticed many people seem to get their feelings hurt SUPER easily. Most of these people have been self ID'd as Christian.
I've noticed while I was a Christian as well as now that Christians tend to be able to get away with saying a lot of smack about other groups but when someone says smack about them, they scream and cry louder than a woman in childbirth!
It seems that, as Christians, many get upset over things WAY more easily and faster than before they were a Christian.
Do you see this to be true?
Can you give examples either way?
Does becoming a Christian, which is a very emotional affair, create a super-sensitive person, or is it that tyically only super-sensitive people BECOME Christian?

[Wootah]

[Replying to post 1 by Wordleymaster1]

I might agree with you.

I do think that if you accept death as part of life then you are choosing to numb your feelings and if you think death is the enemy then you will be sensitive to all the death there is.

I find myself with hope and so I am more sensitive than before for sure.

[Zzyzx]

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I do think that if you accept death as part of life then you are choosing to numb your feelings

A realist need not "numb feelings" to accept that death is a feature of all life forms.

A supernaturalist may choose to alleviate their fear of death by denying that organisims (including themselves personally) will eventually die naturally -- and that religious beliefs will entitle a "soul" (not demonstrated to exist) will transcend death into an "afterlife(* (not demonstrated to exist).

Perhaps this is comforting for those who wish to deny that they and loved ones will eventually die.

and if you think death is the enemy then you will be sensitive to all the death there is.

Some may think of death as "the enemy", others regard it as simply the termination of life functions.

I find myself with hope and so I am more sensitive than before for sure.

Religionists are certainly free to "hope" that they will not die (or that their "soul" will transcend death. Hope often needs no basis in reality to be comforing to the hopeful.

[Freddy_Scissorhands]

[Replying to post 1 by Wordleymaster1]

As much as I agree, that religous people get offended very, very easily...
I have to say, this forum here seems to have fairly non-sensitive theists. Maybe not less fundemental, or less passionate about their believes, but I haven't encountered many here who got easily offended either...
But I haven't been here for long, so I guess that's something that can change

[Divine Insight]

I do think that if you accept death as part of life then you are choosing to numb your feelings and if you think death is the enemy then you will be sensitive to all the death there is.

There's no need to make an 'enemy' of death just because you recognize that it's as much a part of life as birth. Also Christianity isn't the only religion or philosophy that embraces a concept of eternal life. In fact, that very ideal is actually a false propaganda of Christian theology. They act like they invented the idea of spirituality or a potential life after death. They most certainly didn't invent the concept. In fact, many other religion not only believe that there is life after death, but they also believe that there was life before birth. So that consider spiritual as truly being eternal in both directions of time.

I find myself with hope and so I am more sensitive than before for sure.

Actually if you were confident in your belief you should be less sensitive. Why should you be more sensitive? Being more sensitive suggests that you are afraid someone might burst your bubble of hope precisely because it is fragile.

~~~~

I personally have an deep innate feeling that I am an eternal being. I feel like there was never a time when I was not and there will never be a time when I will cease to be. This is an innate feeling that I've had as far back as I can remember into my childhood. In fact, this feeling was far more profound back then than it is today. And it was an innate feeling that had nothing at all to do with any religion.

As I grew older and realized that Christianity was clearly false, I looked around for other potential religions and spiritual philosophies to see if I could find something more in line with my innate feelings of being eternal. The Eastern Mystical religions with their concept of reincarnation actually feels far more in line with my innate feelings of having always existed and not really ever being able to die.

I guess it must be for this reason that I have never feared death because innately I just can't even imagine ceasing to exist. It's not something that makes any sense to me. So I certainly don't need Christianity in order to have a belief or feeling of eternal life.

As I grew much older and began to ponder all the possibilities, including the possibility that my own innate feelings of being eternal could be nothing more than pure secular materialistic psychology, I began to realize that maybe the atheists are right and when our bodies die that's genuinely the end of life. We simply black out and cease to exist.

Even though I can't imagine that scenario intuitively, the scenario doesn't bother me intellectually. The reason it doesn't bother me intellectually is because intellectually I can simply apply logic. If when I die all that happens is that I black out and no longer exist then I'll never even know that I had died. In fact, at that point in time I won't even know that I had ever lived. At that point in time I simply won't exist anymore to "worry" about anything.

So from a purely logical point of view of pure secular atheism is true and we are nothing more than some sort of materialistic accident, then it doesn't matter. When I did I'll never even know that I had ever lived much less that I had died.

Anyone who is afraid of that clearly doesn't understand it. There's nothing to be afraid of if that's the truth of reality.

On the contrary if something like Christianity is true we should all be terrified, including the Christians themselves. If we fail to pacify the Christian God in some stupid trivial way that we may not even be aware of then instead of merely ceasing to exists we could find ourselves in a horrible terrify state of eternal punishment.

Even Jesus preached that there will be those who have preached in his name and claimed to believe in him but he will not recognize them and they will be cast into eternal punishment for not living up to his expectations.

If Christianity is true then everyone should be terrified, especially the Christians who claim to believe that these threats are true.

Just because a Christian claims to like Jesus is no guarantee that Jesus will like them. If I were a Christian I'd be terrified to death.

[Zzyzx]

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As much as I agree, that religous people get offended very, very easily...
I have to say, this forum here seems to have fairly non-sensitive theists. Maybe not less fundemental, or less passionate about their believes, but I haven't encountered many here who got easily offended either...
But I haven't been here for long, so I guess that's something that can change

You may discover that Theists who continue posting beyond a few days or weeks tend to be those who are NOT inclined to adamantly defend fundamentalism / literalism with passion / emotion.

The latter seem inclined to become frustrated and hostile when their pronouncements are not accepted (since they may have experienced unanimous agreement in church or Christians only environments) and to violate Forum Rules prohibiting incivility.

[Wootah]

[Replying to post 7 by Zzyzx]

A realist need not "numb feelings" to accept that death is a feature of all life forms.

I can agree with this because I am a realist.

A supernaturalist may choose to alleviate their fear of death by denying that organisims (including themselves personally) will eventually die naturally -- and that religious beliefs will entitle a "soul" (not demonstrated to exist) will transcend death into an "afterlife(* (not demonstrated to exist).

Finally you use a term that indicates religion is natural. Show me any Christian within the supernaturalist subset that denies death occurs.

Perhaps this is comforting for those who wish to deny that they and loved ones will eventually die.

Agreed it is comforting. There is no comfort for evolutionists because everything dies.

Some may think of death as "the enemy", others regard it as simply the termination of life functions.

Yes it's a mindset.

Religionists are certainly free to "hope" that they will not die (or that their "soul" will transcend death. Hope often needs no basis in reality to be comforing to the hopeful.

Yes but that's the issue in this thread - why might one be more or less sensitive - not whether our hopes are valid.

I realistically argued the situation we are in. The atheist/evolutionist view offers no hope and so it makes sense to be less sensitive. Death is all you can hope for. Life is all I can hope for. No wonder, the more I follow Christ, the more sensitive I become. Whilst my body decays as yours does, I'm becoming more spiritually alive.

[Wootah]

[Replying to post 9 by Divine Insight]

Actually if you were confident in your belief you should be less sensitive. Why should you be more sensitive? Being more sensitive suggests that you are afraid someone might burst your bubble of hope precisely because it is fragile.

More sensitive to life not more sensitve to opinions.

[Divine Insight]

I'd like to address the questions of the OP as to how they specifically applied to me back when I was a Christian.

To begin with I didn't actually "become" a Christian because I was raised by a Christian family and attended a Christian church from very early childhood. So Christianity wasn't something I 'discovered' because I felt that I was a lost soul or whatever.

From a very early childhood I was innately spiritual. I innately believe in a "God". Therefore as I was growing up I simply accepted that the Bible and Christianity was "God's Word". I confess also that I was extremely naive when I was young. I thought that Christianity was true and all other religions were as fake as flying witches on Halloween. That's how our family and church viewed other religions. They simply had no more merit than fairytales. I fell for this line of baloney. After all, my very own parents seemed to believe it, therefore it must be truth. Surely my parents wouldn't be fooled?

So I accepted the religion, not "On Faith in God", because after all God never told me the religion was true. My faith was clearly "Faith in my Parents". And in our church clergy and congregation etc. Surely all these good people can't be fooled?

So I accepted the religion and began to study the Bible.

Was I offended when people didn't believe in Christianity? Actually no, I wasn't. The Bible itself suggests that there will be people who don't believe and that we should not argue with them. Evangelism, (as I understood it) was for the purpose of reaching out to people who had a genuine interest in learning about Jesus and God.

So my goal was to learn as much about Jesus and God as I could so that I could help other people learn. That's when I started to study the bible intently. Not to question it, but to simply understand its truths so I could help other people see these truths. It was during that process that I came the vivid realization that the Bible cannot possibly be true and holds no truth at all.

But putting all of that aside for the moment, and getting back to having feelings hurt. What I discovered as I was trying to learn more about the bible is that it was often quite devout "Christians" who caused me to become upset. Not the non-believing atheists.

And I'm not even sure if it was "Hurt Feelings" as much as basically "Anger".

I tried my very best to interpret the Bible as positive and compassionate as I possibly could. I tried my very best to make an intelligent, loving, caring, forgiving, and compassionate Jesus. But ironically I found that my greatest adversaries in this question was not atheists, but other Christians. Not so much Christians from within our church, but certainly from there denominations, etc.

They seemed to be hell-bent on making Jesus into a monster of damnation. Not only toward non-believers, but they would even use Jesus as a caustic weapon of hatred toward other Christians (i.e. me). They did not seem to like the idea of a truly forgiving Jesus.

I mean, part of my belief as a Christian was that Jesus did not require the people believe in him or in Christianity. I've used the Gospels to show this to be the case in the actual accounts of Jesus. But there were many Christians who would become extremely irate, and even hostile toward a Jesus who would allow anyone to not believe in Christianity or that Jesus was "The Christ" etc.

It was that attitude that cause me more emotional anguish than anything. So my "feelings" were hurt not by non-believing atheists, but by very strongly believing hardcore Christian fundamentalists. And trust me, there's a LOT of them out there. We even had a few in our church. However, our church as a whole did not preach that view.

So in any case, I found Hardcore Christian fundamentalists to be the most obnoxious of all people. Atheists who didn't believe in Christianity didn't bother me in the least. I don't think they would have bothered Jesus either. Jesus didn't seem to have a problem with pagans. In the Gospels themselves Jesus acknowledges that strong "faith" of many pagans. They weren't believing in Jesus because they thought he was the only begotten son of Yahweh. They were simply believing in Jesus because to them he appeared to be a magi. They didn't care from whence his powers came. They just wanted him to do his magic healing and that's where they placed their "Faith".

So in any case. It was never the atheists who bothered me. When I was a Christian my greatest antagonists were other Christians. Ironically when I finally rejected Christianity as being impossible to defend or support, nothing has changed.

Christians are still my greatest antagonists. I never had a problem with atheists or pagans at any time.

[Zzyzx]

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]Perhaps this is comforting for those who wish to deny that they and loved ones will eventually die.

Agreed it is comforting. There is no comfort for evolutionists because everything dies.

If comfort is what one seeks above all else, they might be well advised to adopt one of the religions that promises "hope" in an "afterlife." Perhaps those in need do not require that the "hope" be at all realistic or be anything more than imaginary.

The atheist/evolutionist view offers no hope and so it makes sense to be less sensitive.

This Non-Theist view does NOT require "hope" from a promised (but not proved) "god" or "afterlife" or any approval from a congregation.

Life, to me, is grand, fulfilling, satisfying, rewarding, interesting, exciting. I feel no need to "hope" for something better in an "afterlife" that cannot be shown to be anything more than imagination.

Death is all you can hope for.

How, exactly, do YOU know what I can "hope" for or if "hope" is significant to me? Are you a mind reader? Omniscient?

Correction: I LIVE a full and interesting life without any need to "hope" for more "after you die" " and regard that conjecture as irrational.

Life is all I can hope for. No wonder, the more I follow Christ, the more sensitive I become. Whilst my body decays as yours does, I'm becoming more spiritually alive.

May you continue to believe that you are becoming more "spiritually alive" and that I have no "hope" if that makes you feel better about yourself and your life. Sad though that position / belief may be it is not uncommon for religionists to feel superior by virtue of their worship practices and rituals.

[Divine Insight]

[Replying to post 9 by Divine Insight]

Actually if you were confident in your belief you should be less sensitive. Why should you be more sensitive? Being more sensitive suggests that you are afraid someone might burst your bubble of hope precisely because it is fragile.

More sensitive to life not more sensitve to opinions.

But this thread is about "Christian's feelings being hurt".

If you're not more sensitive to that, then you're not addressing the subject of the thread.