The Atheist Christian

On March 6th of 2017, when things were looking like we would be at war with Syria and that Russia would join Syria to fight us, I posted on Facebook “From the onset of World War III, good Lord, deliver us.” An Evangelical relative posted a response that we need to keep faith. I replied that it would be easier to have faith if the Big Red Button wasn’t under the control of an impulsive, belligerent toddler who had been talking enthusiastically about re-starting the nuclear arms race. The relative then said our faith should be in God, not men.

And in that moment, I had a chilling realization:

“I don’t believe that anymore. Not even a little bit.”

I realized I couldn’t believe that God would intervene to prevent a brewing war, because:

God never saw fit to stop the Nazis - people had to do that.

God never saw fit to stop polio - people had to do that too.

God never saw fit to protect vulnerable people from being abused and neglected, or heal them from their trauma - I have to do that at my job, and God hasn't seen fit to give me the tools to really do it. I don’t get to simply lay hands on them, command the universe to be as it should, declare “Be healed!” and make it so. I have to try to heal them by slowly, painfully, moment by moment helping them have new experiences that will rebuild their wounded brains, neuron by neuron.

And if a war is prevented, it will not be by God – he’s never done it before. It will be by people. Someone with half a brain will step in and smooth things over. That’s the only thing that has EVER prevented a war.

 

People died in Auschwitz praying to God for deliverance. People die every day of horrible diseases that no loving God would ever have allowed to exist, begging God for healing as they die. People die in floods, famines, earthquakes, wars, who have done nothing to deserve it, and they die praying to a God who never answers. Children die in schools at the hands of strangers who are so angry about their otherwise powerless and unremarkable lives that killing people is the most meaningful thing they can think of doing, and God never stops a single bullet despite everyone’s thoughts and prayers.

Because he isn’t real.

If he was, he would fucking DO something.

If he was, he would never have fucking let this shit happen in the first place.

 

I’d been a lifelong Christian up till that moment – always having doubts about my faith, but always able to do the necessary mental and emotional gymnastics to convince myself that my doubts were based on fear, or a lack of ability to see things as they really are, and God was the reality. In that moment, I suddenly realized that it’s God that is based on fear and not seeing things for what they are. Reality is what it is, and there’s no all-powerful Sky-father to make it any better.

It’s just us.

It’s only EVER been us.

 

And this moment was just about the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. God had always been my friend when I couldn’t talk to anyone else. God had always been the Father I needed when my own parents, or my own parenting, fell short. God had always been the one to thank any time I narrowly escaped harm. God was, when all else failed, someone to yell at about the things that are wrong with the universe. And suddenly he was gone.

I went to church that Sunday, and had to leave the sanctuary and go to a quiet corner upstairs. And as I stared at a project I’d made with my child and several others for Sunday school showing Jesus as the vine and our names on the branches, I wept uncontrollably over the loss of my imaginary friend. I grieved the death of my God more than I grieved the death of real, flesh-and-blood people who were dear to me and had actually done tangible things to show that they had loved me.

I grieved as I realized that I, though an imperfect father, would never let anything harm my child if I had the power to stop it… yet this supposedly perfect father created a world in which suffering, disease, and death are inevitable for every one of us. I, an imperfect father, would never punish my child beyond the minimum required to stop a behavior and make a point… yet this supposedly perfect father would allow the children he supposedly loves to suffer either annihilation or the infinite agony of eternal separation from him, for not believing or doing the right things. I, an imperfect father, make sure my child can see me being there for them at every opportunity… yet this supposedly perfect father shows up one time, dies and comes back, leaves, and then never shows up again. I, an imperfect father, make sure to clarify when I see that my child has misunderstood something I tried to teach them… yet this supposedly perfect father continues to allow his children to commit atrocities in his name, and never steps in to tell the perpetrators they’re wrong, or to heal the victims and tell them it wasn’t their fault. If we, being “evil”, know how to give good gifts to our children, why does a “good” God never do it?

If God does exist, then he either isn’t powerful enough to stop evil, or isn’t good enough.

And if God isn’t powerful enough or good enough, then God is not God.

If God does exist, and has the infinite power and wisdom necessary to stop evil but CHOOSES not to… then it is God who needs to repent, not me.

 

And since that cannot be… God cannot be.

It’s just us.

It’s only EVER been us.

 

And surprisingly, the first thought I had when I finished weeping was “Who do I thank when things go well? And who do I ask for help when things go badly?”

And the answer was immediate and obvious: Me. Me, and other human beings.

 

So, I’m an atheist. I’ve been an atheist for almost four years. I don’t believe in God. I can’t believe in God. And please, well-meaning readers who will worry about the state of my soul, don’t try to convince me to believe – you'll be wasting your time, because I won't bother reading your arguments. And I won't bother reading them because I already know all your arguments – chances are that I’m better at making them than you are. I went to Christian schools all through my childhood, I attended a prestigious Evangelical college, I took enough classes in theology and Christian education to out-religion most pastors, I fasted and prayed and read the Bible cover to cover multiple times, I tried every denomination from the most fundamentalist to the most liberal, and I did all that because I desperately wanted to believe in God and kept trying to find SOMETHING that would make his existence believable. The arguments convinced me for decades only because I wanted to be convinced, not because they are true. I never had certainty in all that time, never had that “blessed assurance” I begged for - only faith.

I finally have certainty now.

And certainty sucks.

But it is unshakeable, as faith never could be. Because ironically, it turns out that faith was what was founded on the shifting sands of imagination, and atheism is where I finally could lay a foundation on the solid rock of reality. I can’t believe in God anymore, as much as I’d like to. And after four years I still can’t quite figure out what to do with that, after 40-plus years of using God to meet all my unmet needs.

But…

I still do believe in my little Episcopal church community, which tries in its messy, fumbling way to do the things that a God should be doing in the world. We try to bring reconciliation between people of different races. We try to bring food to the hungry. We try to bring peace to the suffering. We try to minister to the sick. These are the things that no God exists to do, so humans must.

And I still believe in the things that Jesus taught we ought to do. I still believe that we should do unto others as we would have others do unto us. I still believe that we ought to help those who cannot help themselves. I still believe that the one thing that matters in life is love, and that love means working for each other’s good as hard as we work for our own – this is what it means to love our neighbors as ourselves. I even still believe that in a way, the willing self-sacrifice of a good man for a just cause can save the world. Even though there is no God… in the act of willingly going to the cross, Jesus became something more than human, something worthy of worship and emulation. In the absence of God, he MADE himself a God.

 

So… I don’t believe in God. And yet, more than ever, I do believe in the mission and teachings of Jesus. I guess that makes me a Christian atheist? I don’t know what else to call it.

It’s just us.

It’s only ever been us.

No imaginary father will step in and give us the love, or guidance, or healing, or assistance that we need.

So we must do it for each other.

We must be the God that we need, for each other.

We must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, minister to the sick, set the oppressed free, bring peace where there is discord, bring light where there is darkness, bring joy where there is sadness.

God is dead.

So we must do his job.

Long live God.