Repug:
I'm actually not a Christian, I'm agnostic. In someways I'll characterize myself as a Free Thinker. I'm very accepting and open to all thoughts and hope to one day get out of this and eventually commit myself to a belief. I would be an atheist but the simple fact is I have some people in my life that I respect morally more than others that are in fact Christians. When I made the "real" comment these are people that I truly see their conviction for their belief and in all ways theres some sense of a truth about them. They believe it because they believe it because they believe it, get the point?
My brother is a great example of somebody who changed his life around and has some pretty amazing testimony to go with it. I know people will say "well he was extreme into this therefore he's now channeling that into another form of extreme" but thats not the case. You can see his impulses, mannorisms, etc. did not change but the way he went about life and the way he lives for God is evident. Frankly to me it's pretty amazing, maybe why I still consider that there could in fact be a God. I'm just not simply going to sit here and profess that I know God and have a personal relationship with him when in fact I don't. If I'm going to believe in something its not because somebody told me I should, or socially people around me are doing the same thing. I'm going to believe because I do believe from my own conviction, and those in my opinion are the people that show as true born again Christians.
Repug do not take this the wrong way but I couldn't disagree with the statement about your sister more. What your sister is doing isn't conviction, God would not condone speaking in tongues' aloud and doing some of the things described in your original post. she's doing those things because as mentioned she goes to a college where she is taught this and where it is socially the norm. People around her do it therefore if she doesn't she would be the black sheep. As I said before people that do things because of conviction show and people that do them because they are brainwashed do as well.
I'd also throw another category of people that claim to believe in God simply because it's the socially "acceptable" thing to do. Not many people claim to be an atheist, why? Because its such a harsh word and because its not socially acceptable. Many people claim to be a Christian because they were raised that way, or it gives them a sense of self content. Those people show through as well and in my opinion really don't have conviction to do things through Christ.
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