OPEN LETTER TO HURT CHRISTIANS WHO
EMBRACED ATHEISM
Many atheists are former Christian believers. A large number left Christianity because of
one or more experiences that left them hurt, disappointed or both. This letter
has been written by someone who was also very hurt and disappointed in the past but chose to blame the source of his problems and
that source was not God.
This section is very hard to write as I too have been hurt by fellow Christians
along my Christian path. In a few occasions my hurt reached the level where for
a brief while I was tempted to question the goodness and fairness of the One we
worship and
who really had nothing, but nothing to do with my pain and disappointment. Some
of you where hurt and disappointed so much that you did question and then went
on, I believe, to punish the One who "allowed" your anguish and your pain. Then, I would propose,
you punished God by rejecting Him and everything that
previously nurtured your faith and your joy.
There are
quite a few former Christians who have embraced atheism. Many will tell you that
the reason they did so is the fact that the evidence for God and Christ did not
hold up to close scrutiny. I would like to propose that their hurt favored a
rejection and clouded their judgment. Deep inside, they know full well that the
Apostles would have never lied about a Being called Christ, about the miracles
they witnessed, His death and resurrection. You know full well
that there was no reason for them to conceive such an intricate set of events,
preach it to hate-filled crowds and then be persecuted for and
die for only a set of lies. Deep inside you know that the coming of the Holy Spirit on
the Day of Pentecost was not creative writing and that all 21 Epistles support
the same message and the same events, because they were not lies but undiluted
truth.
I believe that
most of you gave all of you had to being good Christians and then
maybe people let you down. Some of you were committed totally and then your
minister hurt you or disappointed you terribly. Perhaps you saw the hypocrisy in
some people; perhaps their weaknesses overwhelmed you. In some cases God did not
answer your prayer at a critical moment. Some of you felt rejected and abandoned
when you felt that you needed him the most.
Whatever
happened was very painful. The hurt must have been unbearable and then you reacted -- and God went by the way side. This is what happened for a great
many and, for a few, there was more than one cause.
The past
thirty-five years as a Christian I had to learn a lot of lessons, and the
greatest lesson was to accept the fact that I am a created being totally
dependent on a Benevolent Force that keeps me alive, and that this Being owes me
nothing. If fact, I am the one who owes all to Him. He is not my Genie. He is not
there to fulfill my wishes and needs. He is God, and I am nothing but a puny
little speck of dust in the vast universe. I am the servant, not Him. I have to obey
His
wishes, and He doesn't have to obey mine. His will is best because He sees what
I could never see, and because it fits His plan, and His plan is
ultimately best for all.
There is another great lesson
I had to learn: humans are humans and God is God. Humans are weak, frail, not always wise, not
always well-intentioned. Humans can be insincere, hurtful, reactive,
hypocritical and sometimes mean. But I too am weak, frail and not always wise. In
the past, I have not always
well-intentioned, and I may have been sometimes insincere and, on occasion, hurtful, reactive and
perhaps a few times even hypocritical.
I have been hurt, and I have hurt people. I have been mistreated and without
doubt I have mistreated others. I have at times been unkind and not always totally Christian. Most
of the time I believe I have been a decent person, but on occasion I have failed and,
when I failed, I may have hurt fellow Christians.
For some, my rare action may have been "the straw that broke the camel's back," and
it may have aided their decision to leave Christianity and forget it all.
But in all this it was I and you and them that caused the mess
not God. Yet,
we like to blame the Boss. "He allowed it," some say, "thus He is to blame, and since He is to
blame He deserves to be punished and the best punishment is to blot Him out of
existence."
My dear friends, the time has come to be honest with ourselves and to be
truly objective about the whole thing, and then to re-evaluate the whole brutal
experience with a different frame of mind. In so doing, let's be honest about our
part in the whole mess. Let's admit that we may have been weaker than we would like to
admit. Let's give others the benefit of the doubt. They might have been
hypocritical or maybe they may have been plain "human." Most of all, let's leave
God aside and if He did not answer our prayers let's not forget that He did not
answer Christ's prayer either, before He was about to be brutally flagellated and
crucified. "If possible let this cup pass from me," Christ begged, and
the answer was negative. The difference between us and
Him is that He did say, "Nonetheless let your will be done," while we tend to
want our will to be done, not His.
Please allow my
heart-felt words to enter your heart and do consider returning to the Master once again and
submit as a Son to a Father, and allow Him to rule in your life, as we all
should.
While you
do so, I would like to suggest a booklet offered by a Church organization
for free: "Why
Does God Allow Suffering?"
It helped me put much into perspective, and I believe it might do the same with
you.
Furthermore, I would also like to suggest an excellent, recent work that effectively
addresses some of the issues dealt with above and much more. It is titled,
If God Disappears: 9 Faith Wreckers
and What to Do about Them, by David Sanford. (Click on title for more
information).
God bless you with healing and a
renewed commitment to the Almighty and Jesus Christ.
M. C.
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