Making Friends with an Atheist

My daughter brought the above flyer home from the local university where she was studying a number of years ago. She didn’t take it to discourage people from attending the meeting of the Atheists and Agnostics Club (after all, the flyers were everywhere); she took it because she knew I’d be interested. And she was right.

I actually thought the use of the fish image was pretty clever. So, I accessed the contact information at the bottom of the page (blacked out for the sake of anonymity) and emailed the contact person. I said that I was a pastor, explained how I had obtained the flyer, and asked if he would he be willing to have lunch with so that I could hear about his club? It turned out that he was the president and founder of the club, and he agreed to meet.

He was a commuter student and lived 35 or 40 miles away from the campus, so we met at a coffee shop somewhere in between. He was bright and assertive, and I liked him right away. I learned that he had been raised in a very conservative Christian household and was the only member of his family to discard Christianity and embrace atheism. His family and other people had, apparently, challenged him many times about his views of faith, and he figured I would continue that process. He started asking multiple questions, all of which seemed designed to get an argument going.

I’m afraid I disappointed him, at least at first. I said I really didn’t care about debating some of the things that others might desire. I just wanted to know why his atheism was important to him and why he felt he needed a club. Mostly, I just wanted to know about him.

Gradually, our conversation shifted. I asked about his life, what he was studying, what he wanted to do in terms of work, and so on. He had a number of high aspirations in terms of education and, like many college students, was still trying to work out what he would pursue in terms of a career.

The university where he and my daughter were studying had about 30,000 students at the time. I figured that my young friend’s club had a respectable number of members. Imagine my surprise when he told me that there were only eight people who had joined. And they were all his friends.

I couldn’t help but laugh. But it wasn’t a laugh of mockery or disdain. You see, I was a pastor of a church that I had planted, and I constantly wondered where all the people were. So I said to my new friend:

“I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at you. I’m just feeling your pain. I know that it’s really hard work to draw a crowd when the topic is ultimate reality.” We both laughed at that.

After a while, he became quiet, and I could tell he was thinking about something. He said,

“It just occurred to me that you have nothing to gain by talking to me.”

I agreed. I told him that I didn’t come to get him to do anything, or to convince him to come to my church. I just wanted to hear his story and find out about the heart behind the conviction. He said he might surprise me someday and come to a service. I think he actually showed up once.

He did, however, call me a year or so later and asked to have lunch again. This time we met not far from the university, at a favorite pub of mine. He was excited about his next step in life, moving to a respected and prestigious university campus where he would pursue his PhD. I told him I was glad for him.

Then he smiled at me and said, “I have to tell you something: I’m not an atheist anymore.”

This, of course, caught me attention. “What happened?” I asked.

“I’ve decided that I’m really more of an agnostic.” I wondered if our prior conversation had anything to do with that shift in his beliefs.

His face darkened as he spoke. “But,” he said, “when I told my friends in the club about the change in my thinking, they became angry. They voted me out.”

I was sad for him. His friends excommunicated him from fellowship because of an honest shift in his belief system. I was sorry that he had to carry the cloud of abandonment and rejection into this new season of life. But I was glad that he chose to come and tell me about it.

I’ve thought about those conversations a lot over the years. It bothers me that our culture—and I mean the culture as a whole—is short on listening and long on anger. I worry that we are becoming a people that uses terms like love and hate to categorize those who agree with us against those who do not. I am troubled when we see human beings as mere symbols of ideology rather than as real people with stories to tell and hearts that long for meaning and acceptance.

We who claim to follow Jesus ought to be good at listening and caring, but I’m not sure that we’re any better at those things than anyone else. There is something in the Bible about this:

You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. (James 1:19-20)

Let it be so among us.

On Beauty - A Reflection for Ordinary Time

The mighty one, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth. (Psalm 50:1-2)


I love to visit the eastern Sierras in California. The air is clean and the views are dramatic. The beauty is sometimes breathtaking, and it always seems to fill something within me that I didn’t know was empty.

I’ve hiked with friends in those mountains who would stop occasionally and declare their amazement at God’s handiwork. They see God’s fingerprints everywhere, and they have no doubt that they are witnessing the effects of the Creator’s artistic touch.

It doesn’t quite work that way for me. I look at the rugged mountains, the expansive valleys, the pristine lakes, the lovely and aromatic trees and shrubs, and I think about ancient earthquakes and volcanoes, massive glaciers and millennia of corrosive activity. I even imagine how people’s appreciation of the landscape would change if they were lost in those mountains and facing a cold and lonely night, with only bears to keep them company.

I used to be troubled at my apparent lack of theological reflection about God’s creative work in nature. I wondered if I was secretly and unconsciously an unbeliever (maybe some of my Reformed friends were right, and double predestination was a reality, and I was on the wrong side of election but didn’t know it!). Maybe one of my atheist friends could point out that I had discovered what had already been apparent to others—nature is just nature, and you can’t prove God by its wonder and beauty.

They’re probably right, those atheists. You really can’t prove God just by looking at nature. But here’s the catch: Isn’t it a wonder that we can stand in those places and be overwhelmed by something we identify as beauty? What is it within us that characterizes a rugged, ancient landscape as beautiful? Do the wild animals pause every so often to enjoy the amazing views? Or do they just function there, looking for something to eat and a place to sleep? We might understand how something huge and overwhelming would produce a feeling of awe, but how does beauty do that?

I may have trouble clearly identifying the effects of a glacier with the hand of God, but I’m coming to marvel at the fact that we all seem to have a capacity for beauty in the first place. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but my ability to appreciate things that are beautiful gives me pause.

For me, the fingerprints of God are there.

The Danger of Caricatures and Cartoons

I recently saw this bold statement posted on Facebook:

“The only time religious men put their faith in science is to kill men who believe in different gods.”

I don’t know the source of the quote, but I am stunned by the caricature that it creates, one of religious zealots with bloody hands cheering as others die (the background was of a nuclear blast and resulting mushroom cloud). It assumes a great deal—that all religious men (is it only men, or are religious woman included?) desire to kill people who believe in alternative religions and that they care nothing for science until its time for killing.

I’ve seen this type of thing in a number of places, and so have you—every election season assaults us with the dark art of caricature. We religious folks are just as guilty, too often vilifying our opponents by reducing them to something ridiculous. We do that to atheists, people of other faiths (but hopefully not with intent to kill), evolutionists, and to each other when we disagree on some theological topic.

A caricature, of course, is different from a cartoon. Cartoons aren’t typically depicting particular people, but rather using animation to give life to people and animals that are fun and able to do what we regular creatures cannot do. By contrast, a caricature is a comic representation of a real person (think of those talented artists who love creating caricatures of each new US President).

Of course, a caricature is not the real thing. When we create an ideological caricature of someone, we have not depicted the person with complete honesty. But it feels victorious to mold and shape our comic representations of our enemies and then skewer them, claiming that we have won all arguments. It just isn’t honest.

Various high-profile comedians do this regarding Christianity (think of Bill Maher and Ricky Gervais*). I respect how their journeys of life have resulted in antagonism toward religion in general and Christianity in particular, but when you hear their arguments against religious belief, they come off as disbelief in things cartoonish.

But Christians do this as well. We’re not as good at listening as we ought to be. Conservatives and liberals attack the caricatures of their own creation, but rarely come to the table to listen and understand each other. Some of this comes from ignorance, but a great deal of it, I believe, is grounded in fear—fear of losing something that is important, or even fear of losing dominance and power.

I don’t believe we need to live in the kind of fear that reduces our detractors to nonsensical representations of their true selves. We who follow Jesus don’t have to live in the kind of fear that claims we have things to lose, because we don’t own anything in the first place. It is we who are in the grip of God, and if anyone owns anything it is him. We should be free to engage honestly with those who stand in opposition to us, refusing to take the bait of false characterization.

The apostle Paul, I think, had something to say about this:

“So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.” (Ephesians 4:25)


*But I must confess that Ricky Gervais is one of my favorite comedians. Sorry.

Putting a Face on Our Enemies

I think that one of the reasons that the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is so attractive to people is that he has become accessible to us as a real person. His Letters and Papers from Prison offer a glimpse into the inner life of the brilliant theologian, putting a real face on an incredible mind. His biographers show us that his written work was not mere theological abstraction—it was increasingly formed in the crucible of the horrors of Nazi Germany and World War Two.

The work of the German theologian Jürgen Moltmann attracts me in a similar way. In the introduction to his fine book, The Spirit of Life, he recounts his formative time as a prisoner of war in Scottish and British camps at the end and after World War Two. He came to faith in Christ during that time, and his story is one that I can barely read without tears. Knowing a little about how his life was formed, I am helped in the reading of his work.

We need to put faces, not only on our heroes, but also on our enemies. There is a great deal of caricature in public debate—after all, you know how those atheists are, you know how those fundamentalist Christians are, you know how those Emergent-types are, you know how gay people are, you know how liberals are, etc., etc.

Mostly, we don’t know.

I had lunch one day with a young man who was the president of an atheist club at the local university. He thought I wanted to meet with him in order to fight. I just wanted to hear what his atheism meant to him. We heard each other on that day, and became friends. We knew each other’s names.

I know a man who was treated with a rudeness bordering on violence by a man he visited on a business call. It was enemy time, and should have resulted in a quick getaway. But the man I know stuck around and persisted in conversation. It turned out that the man who acted rudely had just lost his eighteen-year old son in a traffic accident just a couple of days earlier. The environment changed, and enemies had faces and lives.

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus is quoted as saying, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven . . .” (Matt. 5:43-45)

Loving one’s enemy cannot be limited to some sort of warm and fuzzy feeling toward those who stand in opposition to us. It has to be real. Part of that reality, I believe, is putting a face on our enemies, allowing ourselves to enter their space and hear their story, not listening in order to rebut, but in order to understand. Then we might earn the opportunity to tell our own stories and to be understood. Love could actually emerge between enemies when that happens.

Taking the Candidates' Religious Temperature

There is more news these days about why evangelicals should be wary of voting for Mitt Romney. The basis of this wariness is found in the doctrinal differences between Mormons and Christians (the fact that Mormon’s consider themselves to be Christians notwithstanding).

Clearly there are doctrines and teachings that separate Evangelicals from Mormons, such as, for example, the doctrine of God as Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Mormons don’t believe in the Trinity. Of course, neither do Jewish people. So does that mean that Evangelicals should not vote for someone who is Jewish? Don’t our divergent views about Jesus cause us problems here?

But a Roman Catholic, like John F. Kennedy or Rick Santorum, would be okay, right? After all, they are committed to Trinitarian theology and the divinity of Jesus. Oh, but wait: There’s all that other stuff about saints and papal authority and transubstantiation. Those are all things that Evangelicals in general do not endorse.

For Evangelical voters, is doctrinal correctness (however that might be defined) the litmus test for presidential suitability? In the USA it is legal to be affiliated with any religious group that one desires. People are free to be Evangelical, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim (yes, even Muslim) or of any other religious persuasion. We have this whole freedom of religion thing going for us, and I’m glad for that.

This freedom also means that a presidential candidate can be any or none of those things. While the USA probably wouldn’t elect an outspoken atheist to the presidency any time in the near future, it is not illegal for a candidate to disbelieve in God.

I wonder if, rather than asking about how a candidate’s religious faith (or lack of it) lines up with a certain brand of orthodoxy, we should be asking how that faith (or lack of it) informs their view of the world and the way they make decisions. Does a candidate’s religious orientation produce the kind of leadership that serves a huge and diverse nation like the USA? Does the candidate find an ethical and moral basis in a life of faith that gives voters confidence in the way that decisions will be made and how this country will engage with the rest of the world?

While our candidates typically enter office as Democrats or Republicans, once elected they must serve the entire nation and not just members of the party that elected them. Would a Mormon or Catholic or Jewish or Muslim president be able to serve the entire nation, or just adherents to that president’s preferred faith tradition? Would such a president be a leader to all, or just to a select few?

I think that we are often asking the wrong questions. Are we asking about a candidate’s faith because we want to know how our particular interest group will be served, or because we want to know how that nation at large will be served? Are our questions about acquiring a political power base for ourselves, or about the well-being of our neighbor?

The wrong answer to the questions would be that faith doesn’t matter, or that it can be set aside as though it is irrelevant to leadership. Of course it matters, and of course it forms people at a very deep level. How that faith produces a leader who can lead well is what we should try to discover.

Pity the Poor Skeptics

The "Reason Rally" was successfully launched in Washington DC last, according to CNN. Even in the rain, people showed up to make their presence known to a world that is apparently unaware of them. Advocates are claiming that they "will never be closeted again," and speak of "coming out."

Is atheism is the the new gay? This is news to me, but the CNN article does make the comparison.

I heard one of the event's organizers interviewed on NPR. He claimed that atheists are discriminated against in the marketplace and even are fired from their jobs once their atheism is revealed to their employers. When the NPR interviewer pressed him on his evidence for his claims, the man offered an embarrassingly weak defense.

I was not aware that atheists had any kind of a closet to come out of. I've known atheist folks for quite some time, and none of them were particularly hesitant to proclaim their non-belief. Is disagreeing with an atheist tantamount to unfair discrimination? Do job applications in the general society of America have a box where you check that you have some sort of acceptable religious faith? This, again, is news to me.

Also, atheism as a way of thinking about ultimate reality (or the lack of it) isn't really all that new or unknown, is it? Bertrand Russell's book Why I am Not A Christian was published in 1925 and has been standard fare in philosophy and religion courses ever since. As a philosophy, atheism has been traced back thousands of years in human history.

I once made friends with a young man who was the president of the Atheists and Agnostics Club of a nearby major university. There are 30,000 students in that university. When I asked my young friend how many members he had in his club, he told me that there were eight, counting him. Eight. Out of 30,000 students. That's a percentage number with a whole of zeroes after the decimal point. I must admit that I offered my sympathies to him, recognizing that it is often difficult to draw a crowd when the topic is ultimate reality.

Maybe these atheists are upset, not because of discrimination, but because most people really don't care that much about their non-belief. Maybe they want us to care. Maybe we could make caring for atheists a law. That would probably do it.