As a believer in Christ, it deeply saddens me how the world views the Christian church. In a lot of ways their views are correct...as stated previously, we've ignored the actual words of Jesus instead to impose our own selfish twist on what he is trying to tell us. I've had many conversations with people I'm close with who are atheists and agnostics and outside of not believing or being highly skeptical of the basic idea of an all knowing, all powerful God, their main issue is Christians just don't seem like good people so why would I want to believe anything they say.
I don't try to convince anyone to believe a certain way, but I do at least want them to understand why my faith is the most important thing in the world to me. And the way world has formed an opinion on the church (again, in many ways rightfully so), it's very hard for anyone to understand that. So my response to people who question Christianity is basically read the words of Jesus and his disciples. Specifically, just read the book of James. It's only 5 short chapters and it's purpose was to describe how the Christian should live his life. I read it and even now I think how far we've gone away from the basics.
Long cat incoming...