My next book, The Atheistic Theist: What You Don't Believe About God is Just as Important As What You Do Believe About God, is nearing completion and should be released in early to late November. It will be a much simpler and shorter book than my last, and will focus on getting us to ask questions of our faith, and will seek to set us on the path of an atheistic theist - that is, one who rejects all Gods but the loving Abba of Jesus.
I wanted to share the introduction to the book with you all, so here it is! Enjoy:
I don’t believe in god.
It’s true.
I don’t.
Now, before you close the cover on this book and list it for sale on amazon, – since throwing it in the trash wouldn’t be all that economical - let me explain.
I believe in God, I just don’t believe in god. That is to say that while I do, in fact, believe in a God, there are many others whose existence I vehemently reject. I guess you could call me an atheistic theist. While there are multitudes of gods whom I have always rejected, there’s another that is fairly new to the list.
The god of Christianity.
Now, I know that’s sort of a shocking opener for a book that you probably found in the “Christian” section of some bookstore or website, but if I’ve gotten your attention, then it did its job.
One of the most prominent and outspoken atheists/anti-theists of our day, Richard Dawkins, has written “Everybody is an atheist, some just go one god further”. And what a true statement that is!
Barring the possibility that you’re an ancient, Norse time traveler, there’s a very good chance that you’re an atheist when it comes Thor. We’ve been atop Mt. Olympus, and have all pretty much concluded that Zeus doesn’t exist either. We’ve dived to the ocean floor, have calculated its depth with sonar technology, and have viewed it from outer space via satellite, and as of this writing, there’s still no sign of Poseidon. We know the precise distance of the sun from the earth, what it’s made of, and approximately when it will burn out, but have yet to capture even a blurry photograph of Ra, the sun god of ancient Egypt.
The world is dominated by atheists as far as most of the gods of antiquity are concerned, some people just keep going one god further.
The Muslim, for instance, is an atheist concerning all gods but Allah, and the Jew concerning all but Yahweh. There’s a very good chance that you’re an atheist concerning all but one god as well. It’s likely that you reject the Hindu pantheon, and I highly doubt that you’re secretly offering sacrifices to the gods of ancient Greece or Rome. I assume that Ba’al and Molech aren’t your religious cup of tea either, and I’m almost entirely certain that you don’t bow before Tamuz, if you even know who he is.
Yet, with all of these gods you disbelieve in, I’m sure that there is at least one whose existence you still cling to, and it’s likely the God who “wrote the Bible” through the willing channels of prophets and apostles, inspired David to pen worship songs about murdering Babylonian babies, created the cosmos in six literal twenty four hour periods, and still had enough energy to personally oversee founding of the United States of America – that is, the God of modern, Western Christianity. As I’ve already stated, this god is one whom I’ve freshly added to the gods-I-can-no-longer-believe-in list, but I also stated that, while rejecting this god, I do, in fact, retain a belief in God.
So…which God, if not that of Christianity, do I as a Christian believe in?
The God of Jesus.
While some may argue that the god of Christianity and the God of Jesus are one and the same, and couldn’t possibly be separated, I would beg to differ.
The god of Christianity is largely a cultural phenomenon, and one that we Western nations have exported to the rest of the world. He looks peculiarly like us, votes republican, is always very much on our side in whatever war it is we’re fighting (be it cultural or militaristic), and, last time I checked, His favorite colors were still red, white and blue. He speaks in King James English, goes to church on Sundays, and is more concerned with whose posterior is planted in a swivel chair in the Oval Office than he is with whether or not babies in third world countries go to bed with empty stomachs.
He’s a god that is chained to both Old and New Testaments, and must look like the deity described in both. He must approve of genocide and infanticide, while also promoting non-violence and a strict, turn-the-other-cheek policy. He claims that raping a young woman can be remedied by paying the girl’s father fifty shekels and marrying her, but also insists that there is no male or female, and that women deserve as fair of treatment as men. He is the God who commands us to love our enemies, but who, if we succeed in life as Christians, promises to bring us back with Him - on spirit horses - to help him slay and butcher his enemies.
He’s a God whose actions are often extremely contradictory, and beyond difficult to reconcile.
He’s up one day and down the next.
Bi-polar doesn’t even begin to describe Him.
Yet, He’s the god that most teach their children about. He’s the ultimate standard of goodness held up as the proverbial “moon” for which we must shoot. Yet, if we ever did hit said moon, we’d be jailed for criminal conduct.
This is the God that has been taught and promoted in Christianity for far too many years and whose existence has gone largely unchallenged by those who claim to worship Jesus. Though His actions are as barbaric and “bronze-aged” as those of bloodthirsty Canaanite deities, most Christians still remain theists as far as he is concerned.
But it’s time for that to change.
For centuries, it has been only those from outside of the institution of Christianity who have dared criticize, ridicule, and attempt to disprove the existence of this god, but that must change as well. Those who claim to follow Jesus must become as staunch of atheists as Nietzche or Dawkins when it comes to this violent deity, and must then come clean, making it clear to a hurting and confused world that this “god” represents neither Christianity nor its Christ!
It is time for the atheistic theists to arise - those who have caught a glimpse of a beautiful, loving, non-violent Father, revealed through His Son Jesus Christ, and who have let go of all vestiges of a bloodthirsty god of wrath and war. This god’s existence may be provable through the use of scripture, and his character qualities may be rooted and grounded in the words of the Bible, but Christianity is required to go further than obscure passages from Joshua or Exodus. We are required to look squarely into the face of Jesus Christ, and define our God by what we see in His countenance. And though our stiff and starchy brand of religion has restrained us from doing so, we must do it anyways.
It is truly time for an atheistic revolution, where a wholesale disbelief in the god who has masqueraded as the Abba of Jesus Christ takes hold, and a kind, loving, self-giving and humanity-loving God is re-revealed!
It’s time for a new breed of Christian; it’s time for the atheistic theist.
Many would say that it's not important to define the god we do not believe in, and that we only need to loudly and proudly proclaim the one we do believe in. They’ll usually follow up with an illustration about counterfeit money or something. However, in a culture that has been wounded, beaten and battered by an angry brand of Christianity, and terrorized by its monster-of-a-god, it is just as important to define who we don’t believe in as it is to define Who we do believe in. We must move beyond being theists, and become atheistic theists who make it clear that we not only believe in a God of love and grace, but also staunchly reject and disbelieve in a god of anger and violence.
Throughout the pages that follow we will seek to dismantle and deconstruct some of the angry portraits of God that have been painted in the past by Christianity, and to then redefine Him in the light of what Jesus has revealed. We’ll see that the identity of one’s god may be wholly rooted in the scripture, and yet that god can still be an idol of the likes of Thor, Ba’al or Molech.
We’ll liberate ourselves to ask questions of our faith, think outside the box and color outside of the lines. We’ll attempt to discover a brand of spirituality that isn’t chained to the idea of denting a pew or lying prostrate in prayer, but that is based on an observation of God in everyday life. We’ll even drill to the center of doctrines like Biblical inerrancy, and see if they truly hold water in light of the revelation of Jesus. And hopefully, at the end of it all, we’ll discover that we can be both atheists and theists at the same time.
I’m not asking you to abandon your belief in God, just in a certain picture of god. I’m not asking you to throw away your faith, only that you direct it away from one god and toward another.
I’m simply asking that you add one more god to the pile you already disbelieve in. Yes, this one may prove to be a bit more difficult for you to discard than the others, but still, I’m asking you to consider going one god further in your atheism.
Yet I’m also inviting you to add one, and only one, to the Gods-I-can-believe-in list, and it is the one revealed in the loving, altruistic, violence-rejecting, humanity-embracing life of Christ.
I’m inviting you, brave reader, to become an atheistic theist.
Are you ready?
I wanted to share the introduction to the book with you all, so here it is! Enjoy:
I don’t believe in god.
It’s true.
I don’t.
Now, before you close the cover on this book and list it for sale on amazon, – since throwing it in the trash wouldn’t be all that economical - let me explain.
I believe in God, I just don’t believe in god. That is to say that while I do, in fact, believe in a God, there are many others whose existence I vehemently reject. I guess you could call me an atheistic theist. While there are multitudes of gods whom I have always rejected, there’s another that is fairly new to the list.
The god of Christianity.
Now, I know that’s sort of a shocking opener for a book that you probably found in the “Christian” section of some bookstore or website, but if I’ve gotten your attention, then it did its job.
One of the most prominent and outspoken atheists/anti-theists of our day, Richard Dawkins, has written “Everybody is an atheist, some just go one god further”. And what a true statement that is!
Barring the possibility that you’re an ancient, Norse time traveler, there’s a very good chance that you’re an atheist when it comes Thor. We’ve been atop Mt. Olympus, and have all pretty much concluded that Zeus doesn’t exist either. We’ve dived to the ocean floor, have calculated its depth with sonar technology, and have viewed it from outer space via satellite, and as of this writing, there’s still no sign of Poseidon. We know the precise distance of the sun from the earth, what it’s made of, and approximately when it will burn out, but have yet to capture even a blurry photograph of Ra, the sun god of ancient Egypt.
The world is dominated by atheists as far as most of the gods of antiquity are concerned, some people just keep going one god further.
The Muslim, for instance, is an atheist concerning all gods but Allah, and the Jew concerning all but Yahweh. There’s a very good chance that you’re an atheist concerning all but one god as well. It’s likely that you reject the Hindu pantheon, and I highly doubt that you’re secretly offering sacrifices to the gods of ancient Greece or Rome. I assume that Ba’al and Molech aren’t your religious cup of tea either, and I’m almost entirely certain that you don’t bow before Tamuz, if you even know who he is.
Yet, with all of these gods you disbelieve in, I’m sure that there is at least one whose existence you still cling to, and it’s likely the God who “wrote the Bible” through the willing channels of prophets and apostles, inspired David to pen worship songs about murdering Babylonian babies, created the cosmos in six literal twenty four hour periods, and still had enough energy to personally oversee founding of the United States of America – that is, the God of modern, Western Christianity. As I’ve already stated, this god is one whom I’ve freshly added to the gods-I-can-no-longer-believe-in list, but I also stated that, while rejecting this god, I do, in fact, retain a belief in God.
So…which God, if not that of Christianity, do I as a Christian believe in?
The God of Jesus.
While some may argue that the god of Christianity and the God of Jesus are one and the same, and couldn’t possibly be separated, I would beg to differ.
The god of Christianity is largely a cultural phenomenon, and one that we Western nations have exported to the rest of the world. He looks peculiarly like us, votes republican, is always very much on our side in whatever war it is we’re fighting (be it cultural or militaristic), and, last time I checked, His favorite colors were still red, white and blue. He speaks in King James English, goes to church on Sundays, and is more concerned with whose posterior is planted in a swivel chair in the Oval Office than he is with whether or not babies in third world countries go to bed with empty stomachs.
He’s a god that is chained to both Old and New Testaments, and must look like the deity described in both. He must approve of genocide and infanticide, while also promoting non-violence and a strict, turn-the-other-cheek policy. He claims that raping a young woman can be remedied by paying the girl’s father fifty shekels and marrying her, but also insists that there is no male or female, and that women deserve as fair of treatment as men. He is the God who commands us to love our enemies, but who, if we succeed in life as Christians, promises to bring us back with Him - on spirit horses - to help him slay and butcher his enemies.
He’s a God whose actions are often extremely contradictory, and beyond difficult to reconcile.
He’s up one day and down the next.
Bi-polar doesn’t even begin to describe Him.
Yet, He’s the god that most teach their children about. He’s the ultimate standard of goodness held up as the proverbial “moon” for which we must shoot. Yet, if we ever did hit said moon, we’d be jailed for criminal conduct.
This is the God that has been taught and promoted in Christianity for far too many years and whose existence has gone largely unchallenged by those who claim to worship Jesus. Though His actions are as barbaric and “bronze-aged” as those of bloodthirsty Canaanite deities, most Christians still remain theists as far as he is concerned.
But it’s time for that to change.
For centuries, it has been only those from outside of the institution of Christianity who have dared criticize, ridicule, and attempt to disprove the existence of this god, but that must change as well. Those who claim to follow Jesus must become as staunch of atheists as Nietzche or Dawkins when it comes to this violent deity, and must then come clean, making it clear to a hurting and confused world that this “god” represents neither Christianity nor its Christ!
It is time for the atheistic theists to arise - those who have caught a glimpse of a beautiful, loving, non-violent Father, revealed through His Son Jesus Christ, and who have let go of all vestiges of a bloodthirsty god of wrath and war. This god’s existence may be provable through the use of scripture, and his character qualities may be rooted and grounded in the words of the Bible, but Christianity is required to go further than obscure passages from Joshua or Exodus. We are required to look squarely into the face of Jesus Christ, and define our God by what we see in His countenance. And though our stiff and starchy brand of religion has restrained us from doing so, we must do it anyways.
It is truly time for an atheistic revolution, where a wholesale disbelief in the god who has masqueraded as the Abba of Jesus Christ takes hold, and a kind, loving, self-giving and humanity-loving God is re-revealed!
It’s time for a new breed of Christian; it’s time for the atheistic theist.
Many would say that it's not important to define the god we do not believe in, and that we only need to loudly and proudly proclaim the one we do believe in. They’ll usually follow up with an illustration about counterfeit money or something. However, in a culture that has been wounded, beaten and battered by an angry brand of Christianity, and terrorized by its monster-of-a-god, it is just as important to define who we don’t believe in as it is to define Who we do believe in. We must move beyond being theists, and become atheistic theists who make it clear that we not only believe in a God of love and grace, but also staunchly reject and disbelieve in a god of anger and violence.
Throughout the pages that follow we will seek to dismantle and deconstruct some of the angry portraits of God that have been painted in the past by Christianity, and to then redefine Him in the light of what Jesus has revealed. We’ll see that the identity of one’s god may be wholly rooted in the scripture, and yet that god can still be an idol of the likes of Thor, Ba’al or Molech.
We’ll liberate ourselves to ask questions of our faith, think outside the box and color outside of the lines. We’ll attempt to discover a brand of spirituality that isn’t chained to the idea of denting a pew or lying prostrate in prayer, but that is based on an observation of God in everyday life. We’ll even drill to the center of doctrines like Biblical inerrancy, and see if they truly hold water in light of the revelation of Jesus. And hopefully, at the end of it all, we’ll discover that we can be both atheists and theists at the same time.
I’m not asking you to abandon your belief in God, just in a certain picture of god. I’m not asking you to throw away your faith, only that you direct it away from one god and toward another.
I’m simply asking that you add one more god to the pile you already disbelieve in. Yes, this one may prove to be a bit more difficult for you to discard than the others, but still, I’m asking you to consider going one god further in your atheism.
Yet I’m also inviting you to add one, and only one, to the Gods-I-can-believe-in list, and it is the one revealed in the loving, altruistic, violence-rejecting, humanity-embracing life of Christ.
I’m inviting you, brave reader, to become an atheistic theist.
Are you ready?
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