My son and daughter happily watched a Superman movie yesterday afternoon. Shortly after it finished, I heard my five-year-old daughter tell my wife, “Superman is awesome, he’s better than God!”
My wife immediately said, “No he isn’t! Superman is just pretend and God is real.” My daughter started to cry because she thought she had done something wrong.
My daughter’s statement abruptly stopped me as I was on my computer responding to one of the numerous comments to my last post. Since I recently walked away from my faith, I have decided to stay fairly neutral on this with my children.
My wife still takes them to church regularly, but whenever my daughter asks me questions about God I am honest with her. I am not disputing my wife’s desire to teach them about her belief in God and when they are older I will discuss with them from my perspective. The last thing I want to do is force my children to agree with me. I want them to see the world with open eyes and decide for themselves what they believe.
My question is what does this say about “faith like a child”? Young children will believe whatever we tell them. But even at five years old my daughter is already questioning God.
My daughter broke her arm a month ago in a fall off playground equipment. The broken bone required surgery and she was in a great deal of pain. She woke up screaming for me in the middle of the night and I ran to her room. She immediately told me, “I prayed for God to stop my arm from hurting so I could sleep. But he didn’t do it. Why?” I looked at her and honestly said, “I don’t know sweetie. I ask the same questions why a loving God wouldn’t help you.” Then I made her comfortable and gave her Ibuprofen. On that night, a dose of children’s Ibuprofen was better than God too.
So how should I respond to my daughter’s statement yesterday? What could I say to her that wouldn’t build a wedge into my marriage? I do have to agree with my daughter, the only superpower God seems to posses is the power of invisibility.
I was planning to write up a detailed story about my Christian life and the recent rejection of my faith. But my goal is not to build a case to prove I believed in God or to demonstrate how good of a Christian I was. I did truly believe in God for most of my life and worshiped and prayed to him daily. I believed he was at work in my life at all times and using me to touch other people’s lives.
So you might be wondering what changed.
The change was a culmination of things that I could no longer ignore. Faith is belief in the unseen and unprovable, but still requires a foundation for that faith. With the countless religions of the world, I began to question why the god of the Bible is more believable than all other gods worshiped on earth. With the mountain of evidence staring me in the face, my faith began to die.
Last fall, I finally moved past guilt and admitted to myself that I no longer believe in Jesus or the god of the Bible. Surprisingly it was a relief. Not because I wanted to run wild and sin freely, but because I no longer felt the weight a Christian carries. The weight of guilt, unworthiness and fear of god’s judgement. I continue to spend my days striving to be a good husband, father and son. I help others in need around me as often as I can. The big difference is I do these things today because it brings me joy, not because I believe it brings an imaginary god joy.
For those wondering, here is a condensed “Top 20 List” of the things that led to my rejection of Christianity.
God is wrathful, jealous, hateful, and kills nations of people like it is a bodily function. He is certainly not just or “holy” in nature.
The act of throwing people into infinite torture and punishment for not believing a Jewish guy from 2,000 years ago was God’s son, or unknowingly worshiping the wrong god, is extremely cruel and sadistic.
The statements, “God works in mysterious ways,” or “It will all make sense in heaven,” are little more than irrational cop outs. This God allows horrible atrocities to be committed against innocent men, women and children every day.
Bloody animal and human sacrifices are illogical demands by a divine god as payment for petty wrong doings. These actions are no different than the rituals of archaic pagan religions. Not to mention the bizarre ritual of symbolically drinking human blood and eating human flesh.
If God loves us and wants us to know and believe in him, why be so completely invisible? What is the purpose of being so illusive to those who believe and worship him?
God never manifests himself or performs miracles as he regularly did for the Israelites in Old Testament stories.
Prayers are never answered. Certainly not in the way Jesus described. Prayer has absolutely no affect on the world around us.
Jesus did not fulfill major Old Testament prophesies or even fulfill his own promises and predictions.
The authors of much of the Bible are unknown. And of these unknown authors, the men who wrote the gospels likely never even met Jesus considering they were written 40-70 years after his death. A far cry from reliable testimony.
The Bible is repeatedly contradictory with itself, reality, and the laws of morality. Couldn’t God inspire a less poorly written book?
The Bible is open to interpretation. Everyone interprets it in the way that suits them best or serves their purposes.
Throughout history, Christians have justified horrific actions by the Bible and its teaching.
The Bible promotes hate and persecution against women, homosexuals and those who worship other gods or no god at all.
According to the Bible, nearly 70% percent of the people in the world will burn in hell because they don’t believe Jesus was the son of God.
The only reason I was a Christian was because I was indoctrinated into the religion as a child as a result of the culture and region of the world in which I was born.
Christianity has no more rational or factual foundation than any other religion on earth that I openly reject.
The Christian church is disjointed and can’t even agree with one another.
Christians are not at all ethically or morally different from non-Christians.
Today, powerful church leaders steal, lie and molest young children. The church repeatedly attempts to cover up these atrocities, only to reluctantly apologize as a last resort.
It is absolutely irrational to continue to believe archaic teaching with the amount of knowledge we’ve gained through science and technology. The Bible reads like a book of primitive folklore, not divinely inspired insight into our true reason for existence.
I have always found it extremely odd when Evangelicals profess to have a “personal relationship with Jesus”. How personal can the relationship be when the other person is invisible and never speaks to you?
I don’t know about you, but I got tired of talking to myself.
A personal relationship with Jesus should be more like this:
Sister Marie Marot, of the the Fraternite Notre Dame order, was found not guilty of running a red light moments before a fatal crash in an Elgin intersection in 2007. Marot slammed into a Honda Civic carrying four teens, killing one of the Honda passengers, Keith Forbes, age 16.
Eyewitnesses from the Honda Civic and another motorist behind Marot testified she did not slow down as her van ran the light and plowed into the Civic. But somehow she was still found not guilty.
Nuns have to live a life of celibacy, but there are apparently other perks.You are allowed to live above the law.
For over 70 years, thousands of Irish children were abused at the hands of Roman Catholic nuns, priests and brothers. I cannot even begin to comprehend depth of misery these people endured. But this brave man, Michael O’Brien, gives an extremely powerful testimony of his lifelong suffering as a result of those he was entrusted to in the name of Jesus.
John Shelby Spong, a retired Episcopal bishop from Newark, N.J., talks about why Christianity must change its view of hell. Spong is one of the leading spokepersons for liberal Christianity.
His views aren’t exactly biblical, but he certainly addresses some of the biggest issues that lead me away from my faith. A flawed Bible, a cruel god and a religion that has been used to control and persecute people throughout history. He’s more of an agnostic than a Christian, but a pretty cool old dude none the less.
It is a sad fact that stereotyping and mocking people can still be openly accepted in a public forum. Steve Harvey preaches intolerance as he mocks all atheists as immoral. This results in Tyra Banks and the entire studio audience laughing.
If an atheist were on the show and warned people to avoid relationships with Christians because they are all immoral, would the audience have laughed or gasped in horror? How can it be so openly tolerated for this type of stereotypical bigotry to be spewed on a public stage?
Yes, atheism is to blame for war and destruction and is a greater evil than sin itself, according to Archbishop Vincent Nichols:
“What is most crucial is the prayer that we express every day in the Our Father, when we say ‘deliver us from evil’. The evil we ask to be delivered from is not essentially the evil of sin, though that is clear, but in the mind of Jesus it is more importantly a loss of faith. For Jesus, the inability to believe in God and to live by faith is the greatest of evils.“
I wonder if Archbishop Nichols would rather live next door to a murder and a pedophile than an “evil” atheist? Until the Catholic Church can purge their evil saga of child molestation and abuse, they need to stop preaching judgement and hate toward people like myself. Not believing in a deity does not make a person evil; a person’s evil actions make them evil.
