This is the best way: responding to interest, and also showing by example in how you live your life.
Thanks. I think so. It's never going to do any good if you're trying to force the topic on someone who doesn't want to hear it.
Wait - didn't you post elsewhere that one of your parents was Catholic and the other (presumably some other denomination of) Christian? Not practicing, e.g. attending church regularly, is not the same as ceasing to believe.
Also, in what way do you see historical evidence demonstrating the validity of the Bible as a faith document? That only shows its merit as a historical account.
Well, to get more in-depth about it, my mom never truly had a belief of her own. Even now when we discuss it she doesn't have much understanding from anything she learned growing up, and even though her mom was a Christian and took her to church as a child (I'm actually not even 100% sure she was taken to church growing up, actually) my mom never considered herself a Christian. She's currently trying to learn more so that she can find her faith. My dad is a different case. He did find his own faith at one point in his life and became a Christian, so I guess you would say he's a Christian, but he doesn't practice it. He wants to, and believes it, but doesn't live his life as a Christian right now. But you are right about him, so good catch.
I appreciate seeing it from that perspective, actually. In my other post about my parents, I was more referencing how they were raised and that they never truly took on their parents' faiths as their own. I think both my parents--and siblings, for that matter--are still on that journey to discover their own faith, which is more why I say that none of them are Christians.
That's true, it does only show its merit as a historical account. For my sister, her argument usually comes from the question of, "How do I know the information in this document wasn't tampered with over thousands of years?" So when I can give her solid evidence that the history within the Bible is accurate, that helps her believe it in its entirety. And really, when you see the evidence that over 50 books spanning over thousands of years with over a dozen different others
is accurate, I feel like it lends proof to the fact that some Greater Power had to have had something to do with a book like that being formed and kept accurate throughout all that time. It seems highly unlikely to have been done purely by man.
But in reality, I think it takes many things put together to find ones faith. My mom may study all there is to know about Jesus' life and what He did, but she's going to need to believe in the Bible's validity to even believe that story. Furthermore, she's going to need to see evidence of His existence in the lives of other's, and in her life, to be able to
care about what Jesus did for us. Does that make sense? It takes putting all of it together to really build a solid belief in Him, and in the end it's always going to have to come down to whether or not the person really WANTS to have faith, anyway.
Hoping all of that made sense and answered all of your questions. I am sometimes verbose.
