Well, I went out with RH tonight and it was fine. Fine meaning that we had quite a civil conversation and are still friends and I didn't yell or throw things or use my bus pass to get home. :)
We did get on the subject of deconversion and questioning the faith, though not until at least an hour into it, and I think I may have been able to avoid the topic if I had wanted to, but I felt comfortable, so it was okay. We talked about the emotions accompanying leaving, or having your friends leave, about my initial distress and how now I like it a lot better, and about his feeling distressed because I am his friend and now he thinks I'm destined for hell.
We did talk about the whole Israelite genocide thing and when I asked if genocide is wrong he actually said "it depends" which shocked me. Somehow I missed that memo. I always thought that was common sense, but apparantly from God's perspective, killing children and hamstringing horses can be seen as justifiable. I have some trouble calling a god like that "perfect" or "good" or "just" but maybe that's just me. (It DEPENDS?? Isn't that a George Carlin routine? People are actually serious about this?)
There were some things that he said that I disagreed with but didn't bother arguing about. I'm finding that my need to be right and therefore make everyone else agree with me is growing less and less. Maybe as I grow more educated in extianity I will become more adamant for a while again, but I like this not having to have the last word all the time. It's easier.
I think we were in kind of the same boat tonight, because he knows that he can argue till he's blue in the face and he's not going to change my mind, and I know the same thing of him. I don't think he could stop believing right now anymore than I could start believing in Zeus right now. Or Jesus for that matter. So there's not really much point trying to convince the other, we can disagree and still be friends.
(Note: suddenly yelling "cheeses!!" in bible college cafeterias draws much attention. I highly recommend it.)
My newest objection to Christianity is this: if the wages of sin is death, but not physical death because even the elect die physically, so it's spiritual death and separation from God in hell forever, and Jesus paid my wages, but he died physically and went to hell presumably for three days as a conqueror but never as a sufferer and certainly not forever, then where does the paying my wages part come in? RH fell back on the "yeah, there's a lot of confusion surrounding the technicalities, there's this theory and that theory and i don't know how it all works out" defense. I like that one, they usually mention more contradictions that help my case. Another girl told me that since Jesus is god, then his death is worth more than my death, umm... which isn't really taking my place (to me) since I'm not god so I don't owe a god's three days in hell, I owe a human's eternity in hell. Also ties in nicely in with the 'so how exactly was god separated from god again?' question. Another one that RH unintentionally helped me think of tonight was this: if hell is separation from god, and Jesus is god, wouldn't his being in hell for three days kind of mess up everyone else's hell experience? It does kind of ruin the point, doesn't it?
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