Christians can be decieving

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A couple years ago I started hanging out with a group of christians. They were nice and all. They seemingly accepted me. After a while I began to figure out that they saw me as more of a pity subject vs. a friend. I got frustrated particularly with one girl who is a very friendly person. But she does things out of what she feels god is telling her to do. From a non-christian perspective, there's little to no logic between majority of her thoughts and motives. So basically it broke down to them pitying me because thats what god is telling them to do. Did they really enjoy me as a person, not really. So this past yr, I began to get very wary of Christians. And it didnt help that my aunt whos become very religious was preaching to me and wouldnt stop even tho she could see that I didnt like it. Sure Christianity is one of the religions that get the most complaits about. Well if trying to shove the preaching in our faces probably accounts for a good amount of the distaste.

Honestly I want to get other aspies perspectives. Does it actually relieve you that some group seems to accept you? Does it not? Im sure other aspies have been thru this.

I grew up in a Christian family and I didn't find a church that genuinely accepted me until I was 25. The only other place I was fully accepted was the boy scouts. The problem for ASD people is that even if they all accept you as individuals is that there's usually a ton of common AS issues with interacting with them in their atmosphere.

I cannot speak for the people you mention - know nothing about them. My sister was once temporarily recruited by some Mormons. I was once homed in on by some Scientologists. Once a colleague socialized with me a bit to get me to join his very strange political group.

I have never been accepted by any group for my neediness. I have been accepted by two groups in my life [one long since dispersed, I am in touch with only one of them, one current and including my immediate family]. Both groups were made up of like-minded people - people, that is, whose minds were like mine, for whom I was more human than alien.

I have met people who can actually be accepting while trying to be helpful without being condescending or preachy, and some of them have even been Christians. However, I have also often felt like I had been (or that I was being) tricked into something, and that never feels good at any time.

In other news: Water can be wet.

To many Christians, deceiving someone "in the Name of the Lord" is not a sin, especially if doing so convinces that someone to come to church and put money in the collection plate. Both Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses are exceptionally skilled at this, which is not to say that real Christians haven't done their fair share as well.

My observations: Christians out of bible study do the same things anyone else does - get drunk, smoke weed, get laid, etc. and socially - aside from the occasional talk about prayer, they're just as healthy in the practical/animalistic sense as anyone else.

Where we get deceived, if we're not careful, is taking it out of context. That is, we aren't fighting animal instincts or needing to release-valve them in the same way (at least in my own case and I've run into this with other aspies - we're great people but absolute failures as animals), hence we can easily take it too literally, too seriously, and then be completely disillusioned when we realize that even the supposed 'uber-Christians' cut some very elaborate networks of holes out of the bottom-line message.

On the other hand though - when and if you become an atheist - it stops being surprising and it stops being incongruent.

This is an excellent way of explaining my issues with it all. What's the point of creating rules that people are better off not following anyway?

My best guess is that it give people who somewhat passively wish they could be squeaky clean a social club and support group to walk away from after every meeting feeling like better people for going (whether that's bible groups or church). That's not to say they're all like that either, and I have met some very intelligent people who have seemed to clear up with themselves quite well what holiness is, what a life for Jesus means to them on a minute-by-minute pragmatic level, but these people, like erudites of any type, are maybe one in eight, one in nine if you're lucky?

I fully understand the desire for purity and personal inner-greatness and order though, IMO people need that for enduring happiness. I do find it strange that the secular/atheist world hasn't come up with tantamount organizations to... say... boy scouts, Masons, etc., but I it seems like right now secular humanism is anti-standards on a lot of levels and most people - on the level of outlook on such pursuits - still have religion too fresh in their minds to conceptually separate pursuit of excellence from bigotry. In that sense, even as a pretty strong nonbeliever at this point, I can identify with what seem to be the goals these people have, and if the 'secular' world could have such social organizations without all the baggage the bible have - I think we'd really have something.

I think I need to start getting people involved in analysis and criticism of politically active people without consulting them or worrying too much about accuracy or evenhanded treatment.

The problem is:

I was brought up to respect people ore at least their rights

I was brought up to think and reason from data

I was brought up to assess issues fairly.

This is a tremendous handicap, as the boors, boars, and bores wander through the garden rooting up what they fail to trample.

Back when I got offended when a conference participant reiterated that "We did not know what is these people's opinions" - with several of "these people" present and full of opinions.

Should I be less so when certains expatiate on the monolithic category "Christian" without wondering whether actual Christians present match their caricatiure?

Find yourself a new Church if you only feel like you're being tolerated. Tensions are just going to rise and it isn't going to go anywhere but downhill. Also watch out for Churches that try to bribe you into donating or converting. I remember this one Church would send us food all the time to get us to go to their Church.

Fear the Christians! Wooo!

Only those carrying semi-automatic weapons.

What about those carrying bolt-action rifles?

They need one hand free to hold their Bibles.

Are you kidding, Ray McCall can just switch through his inventory.

fixed.