Spirituality Column #793

January 25, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Atheists Don’t Cut It

By Bob Walters

"The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, they cannot see the light of the gospel ... the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." - 2 Corinthians 4:4

 There sure are a lot of folks coming after Christians these days and I don’t think it’s because the critics are atheists.  Most people who call themselves “atheists” – in my experience – don’t really know what an “atheist” is, or how empty that bucket truly is.

What they tend to be are people who’d simply rather not be bothered with the whole “supreme being” dynamic.  “Who is more supreme than me?” they might ask.

No kidding here.  What the Apostle Paul is talking about in the above verse from his second letter to the church at Corinth – 2,000 years ago – are “unbelievers” who specifically do not believe in Jesus Christ, Son of God, Son of the Father, Creator of all things and judge of all men.  He rebooted the entire believing world, including Israel. 

Jesus was a whole new idea, and replaced every religious leader, emperor, and god anybody had ever conjured with His own holiness and the actual, absolute, saving, humanity-fulfilling and divine Truth from the mind of God.  Jesus was/is the real deal.

Anywhere in the world in those days there was no shortage of gods, worship, pagans, and beliefs in nature, spirits, demons, idols, you name it.  Greek philosophy was big, as were the mythic but created and fictional gods of the world’s great cultures and empires. Everybody believed in something; an atheist would have been…an oddity.

Anywhere in the world today, it seems you can believe – by law – in anything except Christianity.  Examples are rife; it is Christian teaching and prayer outlawed in public schools and politics, while any nutty, destructive personal opinions are bogusly canonized.  “My own truth,” I think, is more accurately a plea to justify, “My own lie.”

Jesus the Son of God, who is Truth, is who culture tries to silence.  Who’s smart?

Look around the world.  We have it pretty good in the west, Christianity wise, but the fashionable “religion” is sterile “belief” in … well, nothing.  The self-deifying “I believe in me” is perhaps a bit more responsibility than a sane person would want to undertake.

Personally, I’m joyous that trustworthy truth – Jesus - exists external to my own fallen and I’ll admit sometimes crazy notions, appetites, temptations, and opinions. 

The god of this age – today, not 2,000 years ago – is an amalgamated self-centered muck of fame, money, fluid self-identity, freedom from “judgment,” immunity from having one’s judgments challenged (think “CRT”), and the collective contempt of and disregard for the absolute, eternal Truth of God, Jesus.  “I want my own truth!”

But that’s not atheism.  Hating God isn’t atheism; it’s simpleminded fallenness.  Not understanding God, or not believing Christ, is lack of education and perhaps absence of the Spirit.  The Bible is clear that not everyone will understand.

Our best play is to stick to the Bible, understand the Spirit, fellowship with believing Christians (those who know, trust, love, honor, obey, and believe in Jesus; you know, the Church), and endeavor to live out the simplest and most direct commands of Christ: love God and others.  You’ll not argue the Spirit into a soul, but love might work.

Yes, it is hard to be a Christian, but it is the path to eternity … not to emptiness.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that God gave us freedom to believe what we want, and gave us Jesus to know what is true.  Atheism is a short walk to nowhere.