How do you manage dealing with close relatives who have religious belief that broadly differ from your own?

Question

Consider Thanksgiving Dinner. Do you and your family respectfully discuss religious matters? Avoid religious topics? Avoid each other entirely by celebrating Thanksgiving separately? Etc.?

What's your family's pattern of dealing with conflicting beliefs?

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I hate it when I have a typo: "beliefs that differ"

Answer 1

My family has several topic on the Do Not Discuss list. Among them are religion and politics. It just makes it a lot more peaceful for everyone.

Answer 2

Seems to me that Thanksgiving Dinner is the time for being with your friends and relatives to appreciate each other. It's a time for a little touch football or watching TV.. more football, punkin pie, sweet potatoes with marshmallows and a big old turkey with cranberry sauce.

It's a time to catch up on who's been up to what? What movies you may have seen, concerts attended, how Betty Lou is doing in her nursing school?

If you come together on this modestly religious day.. Actually, you can just be thankful for each other, right? .. but if you sit around and discuss politics or religion on this day, I think you're asking for trouble. If some family members have rigid beliefs, you're in for more trouble.. and if you've coaxed your Jehovah's Witness cousin Sid to come and he discovers it's a holiday.. whoa.. look out!

Just enjoy the day and each other. Save the discussion for Ramadan.

Answer 3

nicely you're a pagan and that i'm a Hedonist and that has brought about conflict between us at cases...(although greater than a number of the conflict replaced into relatively because of the certainty which you quite often have been a wordy, pedantic little goody 2 footwear and you used to sh!t me witless.) yet I relatively have observed that by using many Yahoo incarnations, you have loosened up plenty ( morally speaking I advise) and that i such as you extra and further now. Slappers of the relatives unite eh? enable's bypass celebration on some monkey ar$e, eh sis?

Answer 4

Since we don't celebrate Thanksgiving because we believe we should all be thankful everyday instead of just one day every year, we don't have to deal with the conflict on that day. It is not so much a problem for us--although we are concerned for our families as they seem to have so many more problems that they have to deal with and they really stress over some of the smallest things. I think they don't like talking with us over the things we disagree on. Partly because we like to use the Bible to show why we believe what we do and they don't even read it for themselves, so they don't really know where to find anything.

Answer 5

Your religion is not any "better" or more "accurate" then anyone else's religion. If you are a true believer, then you will respect each and every person equally regardless of their religious beliefs. If you cannot respect the beliefs of your relatives, then you are no better then a non-believer. People interpret the same religions in vastly different ways. Nobody is right and nobody is wrong. If you still have trouble with their choice, then i recommend that you only converse about family and not religion. It is not your place to judge them, people should only judge themselves.

Answer 6

We have celebrated Thanksgiving for many years and the only religion about the holiday is if you thank God for your food and friends. What does Thanksgiving have to do with Christians?

Answer 7

My family, all but me and I'm being literal about this, completely ignores the one person who is oh so religious. This person is a huge zealot and the family can't understand why I get uppity when the person tells me that I should be married already with a kid on the way and heaven forbid I have sex before I get married and on and on and on. It usually ends bad, which is why I'm not invited to family dinners, much quieter without me telling the person that I'd rather go to hell than be under their control all the time.

Answer 8

I live with someone who differs with our beliefs. My mother-in-law has a laissez-faire attitude about things like truth ... I'll give you an example.

The house next door burned down, after the people moved out. Out front of their house is a beautiful rosebush that survived the fire. She wants to go and dig it up and plant it over here, said no one would know, and it would be compensation for the trouble we've been through with this fire.

I say it's stealing ... it's not our plant, not our business, and if we want to be recompensed, we'll take them to court. "Nobody will know", she says, to which I say "I'll know, and that's enough". She still doesn't get it lol.

So we just avoid those types of subjects when we can, and when we can't avoid them, we just stick to our beliefs and refuse to cooperate with her "evil" plans lol

Answer 9

We don't agree on anything! There religion is demons and devils and hell fire. mine is love and kindness and eternal life in paradise. They are involved in political debates and I refuse to discuss politics.
We don't celebrate holidays together. and I don't celebrate them at all. Stops a lot of fights.
Supriseingly we get along the rest of the time.
They fight with each other more than with me. Because I refuse to fight with them. Don't have dinner together. Don't discuss topics that make you fight and don't celebrate the holidays.
Then no fights.

Answer 10

Leave them alone. Let them believe in what they want. Best not to discuss it and then there will be no conflict. Same way with any religion or cultures. Let them believe in what they have been taught from early childhood. You can't change them and their beliefs. So just stay away from those subjects and enjoy the meals and Holidays that you have together. Life is short. We're here today and gone tommorrow.

Answer 11

I'm a Muslim my grandmothers a Christian and we don't talk about religons for Thanksgiving we just go for the food. I have a Cousin who is Christian that I'm really close with but when we get together we don't talk about Religons we just talk about having fun. My other Cousin acutally pays us to have debates with him and we do and we both enjoy it but it's not like we don't talk cause we do.