question re: discussing religion

[Pedersen]

I've found myself in a similar situation, smiley, and so far I've only managed to put off the inevitable.

My mom is looking forward to heaven in some ways. She's going to get to see her father and her brother again, and she misses them immensely.

My problem is different, in that I do not believe in Christianity at all. I believe there is something out there that can (and at least sometimes does) have an impact on our lives, but I know that Christianity (and Judaism and Islam and any other monotheistic religion with an omnipotent/omniscient all-creator) is false. Cannot be true (logically speaking, it's an impossibility, did a thread about it related to free will here).

If I show her this falsehood, and make her actually see it, then something she has clung to as something she can actually look forward to will be destroyed. Instead, she will have to face the fact that her loved ones are gone forever, and she will never see them again (at least not in the fashion she has believed in).

Do I destroy her faith? Do I take away a bright spot for a person suffering from clinical depression? Or do I let her have this delusion, and simply say "Sorry, not interested"? So far, I've been managing to go with letting her have the delusion. It makes her happy, and all the effect it has on me is that, on occasion, I have to listen to her talking about how wonderful church/God/Jesus is. I can put up with that for her sake.

I'll admit it's hard not to show her how wrong she is, but I just remind myself it does not harm me, and makes her feel better about the world. After that, I bite my tongue and smile for her sake.

Oh, and to avoid derailing the thread entirely with people telling me how wrong I am about god/etc, please do so in this thread: "Critical Logic Failure".

[BroomJockey]

My opinion? Crush her. If her faith is God is so weak that it can be damaged by a church comprised of people not being perfect, then it's not a faith worth having.

[smileyeagle1021]

OK, so something that has been bothering me for a while. My mother has been pressuring me to become active in a church, any church will do, as long as it is a Christian church. There has been an underlying theme that while she thinks any church will do, she really wants me to become active in the Methodist church, which is the church I grew up in and she still belongs to. She thinks that because of the church's policy of Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors that I can be truly accepted there. The problem is that she is a true believer that it is more than a policy, but a main tenet of the faith. She cannot comprehend a Methodist being a bigot. More to the point, she cannot fathom the possibility that someone wouldn't be welcomed with open arms, for that would be against one of the tenets of the faith to be accepting.
So, here is the quandary... at one point I was trying to be active in the Methodist church, even to the point that I was volunteering at UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief), which while not exclusively Methodist is supposed to follow all the same tenets and policies as the Methodist church. One day while I was volunteering there the conversation turned to where we had grown up, I had mentioned that I grew up in Nevada. One of the other volunteers asked if I knew how to play any of the casino games, I answered that I was guilty of playing more than a few hands of blackjack. At that point the head of the Salt Lake UMCOR depot made the comment "well, no one's perfect... besides, there are worse things than being a gambler, you could be gay after all". A clearer message could not be sent, you are not welcome here.

Here is the problem, if I tell my mother that, tell her that indeed the Methodist church does not always hold true to that social creed to have Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors, it would be a big blow to her faith. However, if I don't tell her she will never back off her pressuring me to try "just one more time" to become active in a christian church and me not becoming active in her church again will just be me being belligerent. So, what do I do, do I damage her faith but give her a straight answer as to why I'm not going back into the church, or do I protect her faith which she holds dear but have her thinking that I'm just being belligerent with the stakes being my soul?
Neither option has a good outcome and I can't think of a way out.