For background, he is a conservative that used to go to church. He left because he had questions that nobody seemed to have a good answer for.
Such as "why would God allow death/bad things?" The common answer usually is that its part of Gods will or its Satans fault. Neither answers the question and opens up more. This is why many people are turning to new age things and cults. God isnt working out for the common person anymore, for the sole reason that the common Christian and even preacher cant answer a single question even believers might have.
Why is this so? I personally think that religion got in the way of faith so long ago that faith has little meaning now. Telling people im a former Baptist raises questions like "so you're a Mormon now?" Because Christians have become a joke. Even to other Christians. If we want to WIN, we have to unite under faith.
Also, another question he asked was, "why do Christians bicker so much over trivial things?"
The answer, unfortunately, stems from religion. Which is such a mainstream part of culture now that it has lost meaning and relevance.
How do we, as Christians, not as truthers, become able to answer these difficult questions that turn away unbelievers and believers alike?
My coworker thinks that all religion is made up bs (which is true to a great extent) yet also hates existing for the sake of existing. Its a conundrum i cant help him with. Maybe someone here could?
Read someone smarter than yourself:
“It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine forth; and for the same reason, it is proper that the shining forth of God’s glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of his glory should shine forth, that every beauty should be proportionably effulgent, that the beholder may have a proper notion of God. It is not proper that one glory should be exceedingly manifested and another not at all, for then the effulgence would not answer the reality.”
“Thus it is necessary that God’s awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that the shining forth of God’s glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of his goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all.”
If it were not right that God should decree and permit and punish sin, there could be no manifestation of God’s justice in hatred of sin or in punishing it, . . . or in showing any preference, in his providence, of godliness before it. There would be no manifestation of God’s grace or true goodness, if there was no sin to be pardoned, no misery to be saved from. No matter how much happiness he might bestow, his goodness would not be nearly as highly prized and admired. . . . and the sense of his goodness heightened.
So evil is necessary if the glory of God is to be perfectly and completely displayed. It is also necessary for the highest happiness of humanity, because our happiness consists in the knowledge of God, and the sense of his love. And if the knowledge of God is imperfect (because of a disproportionate display of his attributes), the happiness of the creature must be proportionably imperfect.”
Jonathan Edwards