In the early morning hours I often sift through the news apps on my IPad looking for inspiration for this blog. This morning it seems I was staring in the face of atheism and it wasn’t pretty. There seem to be article after article about atheists or written from an atheist’s point of view. It was depressing.
Perhaps I am prejudiced by my first introduction to atheists. While a clerk for Judge Tom Clark on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, we had a case in which Madelyn Murray O’Hare was a party. She showed up with a party of her atheist buddies. They were not an impressive lot. The one word that best described the group was “unhappy.” Ms. O’Hare had an engaging enough personality, but she seemed so angry. As did all of her buddies.
Maybe it was that history that worked my mind this morning as I perused the atheist articles. There was one which was topped with a photo of an attractive woman smiling and holding a sign which read “Be happy. There is no hell.” To me the smile seemed pretty shallow. Maybe because I realized that if the woman was right and that there were no hell, there would also be no heaven. With the “truth” of no condemnation comes the ‘TRUTH” of no hope. No wonder they seem so angry and unhappy. I shouldn’t be surprised since some who claim to be Christians also carry around signs proclaiming the nonexistence of hell.
There was another article written by a seventeen year old who related her “coming out” as an atheist after a missionary trip. Her “religious” parents had sent her on a mission trip to a third world country where she was confronted with poverty. She could not believe in a God who would allow his children to live in such conditions. Apparently, her mission trip was not accompanied by sound teaching. I couldn’t help but wonder if her religious parents were living the kind of life that would make a teenager desirous of following their life trail.
Yet another article was a list of quotes from scripture that “proved” how “bad” God must be. I resisted the temptation to go through each quote and write a response. I know from experience my response would fall on deaf ears.
Yet another article pointed out how the presidential candidates all claim christianity and how, in the writer’s view, their lives were very “unchristian.” There is no doubt that like Lucy in I Love Lucy, we Christians have a “lot of explaining to do.”
My morning made me happy to be a Christian; but unhappy at the poor job we Christians do in illustrating what it means to be one.
Ours is the way of truth, joy and fulfillmernt. We need to do so much better in proving it.
Go out and find an atheist, listen to him and love him and maybe change his life.
Be blessed.
Nick
Be the first to reply