WITNESSING

I am a Christian because my parents were Christian and they raised me in a Christian way, making sure I attended Sunday School and Church every Sunday until I graduated from high school.  I was 18 years old when I graduated from high school so for a good 10 years I was mentally aware enough to understand what I was hearing in Sunday School and Church.  I was raised in the Methodist Church and heard the major stories contained in the Bible several times.

My belief is that you do not have to attend Church to have a strong faith and whenever I have attended Church, I have found that I am sitting in a pew inside a building where many of the attendees are attending simply to be seen because once out-of-church that hardly ever practice what they preach or have been taught.  It is this hypocrisy that has kept me out of the Church.

When I moved from NC to TN, I was exposed to the Southern Baptists and they are a completely different breed of Christian and spend most of the time talking about "being born again," and witnessing than any other group of Christians to which I have been exposed.

Apparently, these people did not believe in God and were not exposed to religion when they were young by their parents and experienced a life altering event that caused them to be born again and become totally engrossed in the Baptist philosophies without challenging their validity...  BLIND FAITH so to speak.  And, once they become born again, they share their feelings with everyone even if and when they do not really want to listen.  This behavior pattern is called witnessing.

I don't mind these born again Baptists witnessing as long as it is not with me because once they get started they can talk for hours without letting the other person speak at all.  And, their examples can come from anywhere like relating repairing gutters to faith or dust on a living room table to faith...  and, the biggest theme is that they all compelled to do something that they would not normally do and believe that to be God telling them what to do...  like taking a left turn on a city street only to find out that there had been an accident on the same road they were traveling had they not made the left hand turn...  and, strongly believe that decision to turn came from God.