The impatience of atheists

  • When it comes to Ortho­dox evan­ge­lism, I won­der if we’re miss­ing the point.

    I was handed a pam­phlet on a street cor­ner a cou­ple years ago. The title was some­thing like “Do YOU know where YOU’RE going after you DIE???” I looked it over, and it struck me that it had some strange ideas about who non-believers were.

    They imag­ined sneer­ing scoffers ask­ing ques­tions like “Jesus Christ? Isn’t he just another TEACHER like Bud­dha or Con­fu­cius???” or “But SCIENTISTS have proven that there’s no such thing as heaven, RIGHT???” And, more bizarrely, they imag­ined that those peo­ple have to shut up — or at least stop talk­ing in all-caps — if you just give them the right Bible verse.

    This isn’t a very rea­son­able out­look. It’s as if the doubters that sur­round us on all sides were lapsed Sun­day School teach­ers with amne­sia (“Wait a minute. You mean II Corinthi­ans says so? Boy, what a jerk I’ve been!”).

    The word for it — or one of the words for it — is ‘deriv­a­tive.’ Like when you look up ‘per­spi­ca­cious’ in the dic­tio­nary and it says ‘the state of exhibit­ing per­spi­cac­ity.’ That’s a cute trick for a dictionary-writer, but when the aim is evan­ge­lism, it’s just delu­sional. Non-believers don’t believe that the Bible is an author­i­ta­tive text; if they did, they’d already be devout Chris­tians or Jews.

    And we Ortho­dox are just as bad. I’ve never met a non-believer who put cre­dence the Church Fathers or in the­ol­ogy, but you wouldn’t know it some­times to hear what passes for apolo­get­ics in our cir­cles. We seem to imag­ine scores of non-Orthodox who believe in the author­ity of the Fathers, Church his­tory, the­ol­ogy … AND the Bible.

    If my very lim­ited per­sonal expe­ri­ence is any indi­ca­tion, we are not accorded a lot of time to make our points, so we can’t afford to miss the most obvi­ous fact about athe­ists — they don’t believe in our God, or any god. When they go on the attack about Bib­li­cal accu­racy or the Church, it’s just by way of say­ing that every­thing we base our beliefs on is super­sti­tious or spu­ri­ous. I can’t see think­ing that it’s time to craft an elab­o­rate answer based on theology.

    I under­stand why we get this way. We pre­fer our straw-man athe­ist to the real thing. It’s very dis­tress­ing to real­ize that much of our per­sonal expe­ri­ence with the liv­ing God that can’t be put into words, and that goes also for the com­bined expe­ri­ences of the Body of Christ through the cen­turies that give us the tes­ta­ment of his­tory and teach­ing. For all of that to be dis­missed or held in con­tempt is almost unbear­able, which is why so few of us can actu­ally stand to try to argue these things for very long.

    But I don’t know. If we’re not going to try, that might still be bet­ter than wad­ing in with a false set of expec­ta­tions. We would do a lot bet­ter, it seems to me, to BE Ortho­dox, sane and intel­li­gent — because in merely exist­ing, we would chal­lenge an atheist’s con­cep­tion of who WE are.

    Just a thought ….


    Related posts:

    1. Rats! and atheists!
    2. The scary Mary prayer
    3. Think athe­ists don’t believe in the Easter Bunny?
    4. About med­i­ta­tion
    5. Chris­t­ian music: Sweet-singing or some­thing else?

    July 2nd, 2010 | Grace | 6 Comments |

6 Responses and Counting...

  • Alden 07.02.2010

    Well said.

  • s-p

    Amen, sis­ter. Most of what passes for evan­ge­lism by any ilk of Chris­tians is mostly an embar­rass­ment. We deserve the con­tempt of most we try to evan­ge­lize IMO.

  • Suzie B.

    Your blog entry reminded me of these quotes… I hope I attrib­uted them correctly.

    “Most peo­ple don’t reject Chris­tian­ity, they reject a false car­i­ca­ture of Chris­tian­ity.” C.S. Lewis

    “Preach the gospel always. If nec­es­sary use words.” St. Augustine

    I wince when I see the way “Chris­tian­ity” is gen­er­ally por­trayed in the Amer­i­can media. I know that if I was seek­ing truth, lis­ten­ing to TV evan­ge­lists and such would make me scratch my head and think, “THAT can’t pos­si­bly be the truth …

    Who can blame peo­ple for reject­ing the cir­cus of “Chris­tian­ity” when what they see, hear, and read is so melted down and con­vo­luted and con­fus­ing. May God have mercy on believ­ers who seek to live lives of repen­tance, wor­ship, and good works. May oth­ers see these things and be drawn to the Holy Trinity.

  • C. Suzie B.

    By the way, I just thought I’d throw this in for free: I LOVE GRACE BROOKS. Hav­ing a cup of tea with you right now would be my idea of a heav­enly afternoon.

    If I could, I grab the car keys and drive a few thou­sand miles to get to your kitchen table…even if the tea might be a lit­tle cooled off by the time I got there.
    ; )

  • Grace

    Suzie B.:
    *Excel­lent* quotes! Doesn’t it fig­ure that great minds would be able to econ­o­mize my point down to one sen­tence? :-)

  • Grace

    That is so darn sweet I can’t stand it. And if it doesn’t just sound like we’re start­ing our own Mutual Admi­ra­tion Soci­ety, I can return the com­pli­ment. There’s no one I’d rather see show­ing up on the doorstep — with or with­out the teapot (!!)

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