The 10 Dumbest Things Christians Do by Mark Atteberry (2006, Paperback)

The book deviated a little from what I thought it''d be mainly focused on - Christians who lead exempletory lives at work - never loose their temper, never curse, never tell a bad joke, never talking ugly about other people, not attend office drinking parties - then one day, just one time saying something ugly, swearing, loosing their temper, etc. and what do the office folks remember? All the "good" behavior spanning years? No, the one time you slipped and then judge all Christians by that one slip of the tongue. I know becasue it happened to me. But back to the book - it was really great about explaining what Christians do to "put people off Christianity". Some of the things covered where slinging mud at the church, selling people on the church instead of Christ, and missing golden opportunities. This hit me especially hard as I have been thinking about times when God set the situation up for me to witness - and I just didn't recognize it until it was way, way over! I have asked God to knock me over the head or something to make me aware of the "golden opportunity", for example at Easter I was shopping in the Easter aisle and a Muslim woman was holding a bag of plastic Easter eggs - what an opportunity - but I was tired, hurting, and wanting to get out of the store ASAP and just let the opportunity pass me by. When I realized what God had handed me on a silver platter I kicked myself! That may have been the only time that women may have heard about Christ and I blew it. Witnessing has always been my weakness - I can plan a fellowship with ease, pull off teaching Children's Church, complete with crafting, in 5 minutes by can not witness. Most people who know me don't really understand how shy I am - I can't go up to someone at a function and talk to them - I lurk in the corner and hope it'll soon be over! The last thing in the book really hit home - it was about "We need to shape up", in this last tiny little section of the book he struck home with me more than anything else. He gave an example of going to a "strongly religious" couple's house and from where he was sitting saw a lot of "hard R" movies in their bookcase and from then only only had one thought - pulling one of the movies off the shelf and saying "If you've got such strong convictions, then how do you explain this?" Now he won't find any R rated movies at our house - but I wonder what he'd think about all my fantasy books on MY shelf in the bedroom. While I see these books as harmless entertainment, can they open a door for Satan to come into my house? I simply don't know. I am going to read my Bible and other Godly literature on the subject and pray about it. This is the genre I love to read best and it ranges from light fantasy like "The Secret Garden" to "Marion Zimmer Bradley's anthologies" to "Harry Potter." I don't read any of the darker fantasy like vampire books and other dark magic containing books (although I have read them - I felt compelled to not read these types of books anymore). I would recommend you read this book for yourself - you may, like I did, discover something about yourself you didn't know about, don't like, or an area you need to improve on and if you have not received Christ into your heart I pray this book will lead you to him. God Bless!