“And I'd like to never have this type of conversation again about that stuff...I hate repeating in life...lol.. its exhausting 🤣“ says my sister.
Because I keep pushing. I guess I need to pray more. It is exhausting when no one in my family want to hear truth. She took the vax. She made my nieces take the vax long before it was required. She has my niece so paranoid that a mechanic had to tell my niece not keep Lysol in her car.
To be honest having a relationship with my family is hard and not spiritually healthy. My dad is weak lukewarm. My family need prayers.
Dear VCR,
I know the feeling because I am the religious loner in my family, and you probably already know that most trads are lonely practitioners in their families of birth. The exception is the family who is still practicing the traditional faith.
There is a dual crisis here for many of us, as you are also reporting: One is the crisis of responsibility and futility with our efforts. However, God does not ask the impossible of us. I have many in my family who cannot be "reached" by me directly, via any route among the three Aristotelian appeals, separately invoked or together. The crisis is that on my own I have not succeeded. But since -- as with the situation in the world and Church right now-- divine intervention alone will succeed in reversing the decline of those who once believed and those who never believed, it is unrealistic to hold oneself responsible for frustrating outcomes.
I have found that the more persuasive way is to show them Jesus -- i.e., unconditional love. I don't mean unconditional about their practical atheism, apostasy, or ultra-worldly lifestyles. I mean continuing to quietly witness your own practice of the faith while finding common ground in non-religious areas. This has worked with a lifelong friend of mine (fallen away Catholic who now tells me she is saying her rosary again) and with a former student (former atheist now about to start Divinity School, recently chanted a Latin Mass, and is considering studying Teresa of Avila as part of her M.Div.).
The second half of the duality is the pain of realization that there is a limit to how close we can be to obstinate non-believers, since so much of what we should share does become impassable.
Both prayer and witness have improved my own situations. I have only confronted others about their state of belief, the state of their soul, etc. when the relationship was already quite trusting and intimate -- not rife with their defensiveness about the topic. When I know or sense that directness will backfire, I know that God does not ask me to invite a break in the relationship to prove a point. When that is the risk, any conversion/reversion attempt is likely to have the most negative outcome.
Remember that the purpose of prayer is not necessarily to remove our responsibility and put it in God's invisible and mysterious hands, but to make us better instruments at a better time and set of circuмstances than exist now.
Topic: Should we push on others to turn to Jesus? (Read 689 times)