Atheists Are Cool

I'm dovetailing a bit today off of Kevin's blog to say that I absolutely love and respect atheists. I've talked to many atheists in the past few years, and they are quite honest in their opinions of church life. They can do this because many of them used to be evangelical Christians, so they speak from experience.

I believe Christians become atheists, not because of spite or hatred of Christian people, but because of things they were taught that they found difficult to believe. Many of them were raised on the notion that God is someone to be frightened of because, as they were told, God holds their very lives over a firepit by a shoestring. And God is very angry at them, they were taught, and will remain that way until they repented, said they were sorry, and accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior. But until then, their situation was hopeless. They would remain sinners in the hands of an angry deity. Many of them were on the verge of insanity looking for ways to placate the wrath of a cosmic sadist and failing at every turn.

So they took leave of God. Can you blame them? If the only version of God available was the one they were fed as kids, then the only other choice was to not believe at all. I think they were given a bad story.

Let's take a cue from atheists and learn how to tell God's story in a way that is true to Scripture. Believe it or not, when an atheist tells you his/her story, he/she is doing you a big favor! Don't react negatively to their thoughts. Learn from them and understand that the version of God they ultimately rejected is a very unscriptural one. We should look to do the same!