I've got a real good friend who is in his early 40's. He was married young and has two daughters who are almost grown up now. He's been divorced from his first wife for several years. He used to like to smoke a couple of packs of cigarettes a day, snort cocaine whenever it was available, and he was a live-in kept man by a middle aged old bitch of an elementary schoolteacher who had a real nice house out in the burbs from her lucrative divorce. He would screw around on the old bitch and when he would get caught, there would be these godawful melees. One time she tried to decapitate him with a rake. Oh, and they both drank like fishes. Tequila was a favorite of theirs.
But here's what happened to him:
He's driving his Jimmy home one night late and goes to sleep at the wheel. He runs off the interstate and plunges about 30 feet into a ravine. He's thrown out of the front windshield and is lying there dying. A truck driver sees him and stops to call 911 and waits until they arrive.
So he's in hospital and he's a mess. Broken everything, ear nearly cut off, lacerations requiring hundreds of stitches. In a couple of days, they want to do a chest x-ray to make sure there's no internal damage they've missed. Guess what they find? He's got a tumor the size of an orange in his chest cavity. It's testicular cancer that's metastasized to his chest.
So, while he's trying to get over all the trauma from the accident, they have to begin chemotherapy and radiation. The survival rate's not too good in this scenario, I guess you know.
Well, a year later and he's doing fine. He's even able to smoke again, which he proceeds to do. He's able to party hardy again, which he proceeds to do.
Then, one day he comes home from work, and his bitch of a live-in is lying in bed, cold dead, butt naked. (This is the part of the story you will find hard to believe, but I've got no reason to make it up.) She's got a vibrator in her hand, plugged into the wall, still running, and there are burn marks all up and down her legs where it has been moving on its own. You could assume that cocaine was involved. (An elementary school teacher, remember. In the public schools.)
Well, since he's not married to her, even though he's been living there for five years, the ex-husband and the son of the dead woman throw his ass on the street with nothing but his clothes. Even his car was in her name. You can imagine how much of the stuff in that house was actually his, not to mention the money he'd put into improvements and such.
Well, the next thing I know, he's got Jesus. He's been going to a church where they've been working with him to get through all this and "change his life." Now, he doesn't drink or smoke or do any drugs, and he married a woman he's known for a long time who is also a believer.
So what's my point? Even though I'm as big an atheist as God has ever seen (yeah, I know), do you think I'd tell him he was being stupid? Do you think I'd ridicule him for his belief? No, I support him wholeheartedly, and he really appreciates it. Some of his other old friends have not been so understanding of his new views on life.
I just think some of you who are so set on railing against Christians need to lighten up a little bit. Let folks believe what they want to. Don't make fun of them. Hell, if you'd gone through what this guy did, who knows what sort of changes you might make in your life, just to get by?