re an agnostic s question in article apr geneva rutgers edu jdt voodoo ca boeing com jim tomlinson jimt ii writes goodness that is within the power of each of us now the complication is that one of my best friends has become very fundamentalist that would normally be a non issue with me but he hello firstly what do you exactly mean by fundamentalist i will for the time being assume that what you mean is that your friend believes that the bible is god s word to mankind i suspect that what happened to him is what he ll call being born again anyway was that recent if the answer is yes to all the questions above it is quite understandable however imo i ld rather give advice to your friend i think i ve been through something similar to him and one thing i can say is that the basic problem is that each of you are now trying to communicate from different worldviews why he talks about those things is because they are now obvious to him what is obvious to him is not obvious to you secondly why he may be very persuasive is because from his point of view he has been on both sides of the fence this i mean that before he turned fundamentalist you two are agreeable because both of you see things from the same side if suddenly as if a new world of reality has suddenly opened up to him it is like the discovery of let s say a new continent or a new planet to him he s got to tell you because he has seen something much more wonderful than where he was and what he thinks is much better than where you are now you have got to realise that from his point of view he means well to you eventhough he may end up offending you to him it is worth that risk nevertheless it is really up to him to respect where you stand and listen to you as well at this moment it may be difficult because he is either very excited or feel it is too urgent to keep quiet about however he may not realise that he s really putting you off the bible that it is so so my question is how can i convince him that this is a subject better left undiscussed so we can preserve what is in all areas other than religious beliefs a great friendship how do i convince him that i am beyond saving so he won t try thanks for any advice so far i ve only been trying to explain things from his side however i do understand how you feel too because i wasn t a christian for a good part of my life as well i was quite turned off by christians or fundamentalists who were really all out and enthusiastic about their faith they really scared me to tell you the truth unfortunately religious belief is a very personal thing just as your agnosticism is also a very personal thing to you since the christian belief is inevitably at odds with anything non christian religious or otherwise it will be a touchy matter like all friendships it will take both sides to do their part to make it work in this matter maybe you can do your part by telling him nicely that you are not able to dig what he s trying to convince you about that it s beyond you or not your concern for now don t tell him it s nonsense because to him it is reality and that would be a real insult he ll also have to be careful not to insult where you stand too like i said before i wish i could give your friend some advice too i ll admit that i did similarly to some of my friends when i became a christian in some ways i wish i could have done things a little differently however it was difficult then because i was so excited and just blabbered away about what i ve found to me it was too good not to know to some i was crazy and i didn t really care most of the time what they thought you will probably think he s crazy too but god is very real to him as real as you are to him keep that in mind and he thinks he can convince you because since god is so real to him he doesn t see why god can t be real to you too i don t know how helpful this is to you but all the best anyhow this is quite a challenge for you to face by the way personal conviction nobody is beyond saving except the one we call the devil and his hosts regards selbyn liew dept of ee engineering university of melbourne victoria australia email sliew mullian ee mu oz au ph fax
