Pushback: Jesus against the Isms Atheism

Text: Psalm 14
Pastor Bob Phillips
May 5, 2013

This is week two in the series on Jesus against the Isms. We saw last week that an
ism is an idea that has developed a bad attitude. The idea can be perfectly fine but the ism is in
the attitude. This week we look at athe-ism.
I say it in this way because there are three types of atheists. There is the probing atheist, a
person who doubts the existence of a divine being but is open to fresh information and dialogue
because he or she sees it to be a crucial question of life. Some of my most refreshing
conversations and friendships have been with probing atheists and I am a better Christian for it.
The Bible welcomes the probing spirit of serious questions. When John the Baptist was
arrested, he sent word through friends to Jesus to ask if Jesus really was the Messiah or if they
should look for someone else. Today we honor both Jesus and John when we ask such a question
if that is an issue of the heart. After the resurrection the apostle Thomas missed Jesus first
appearance and refused to believe until he could see for himself. When Jesus honored that
request rooted in doubt, Thomas replied with a profound profession of faith, My Lord and my
God. In Matthew 28, just prior to Jesus speaking the words of what we call The Great
Commission in sending out his followers to disciple all nations, we ready that among the
gathered disciples that day, some doubted.
Elie Wiesel was a young teenager when he was imprisoned in Auschwitz by the Nazis.
He survived, unlike the rest of his family, and later wrote a memory and reflection on his ordeal,
entitled Night. He spoke of an occasion when some prisoners were caught stealing food, seeking
to avoid starvation. The guards took the prisoners to the gallows and hung them before the
gathered inmates. Two died quickly, their necks snapped by the fall. One, however, was a boy
younger than Wiesel. Small and light due to his wasted condition, his neck did not snap. He
twisted in slow strangulation for 20 minutes until the end.
As Wiesel watched the horror unfold, he heard a voice from a prisoner behind him
whisper, Where is God? Another prison replied, God is up there, hanging on the gallows.
Personal tragedies, injustices that never will find redress, a tsunami in Indonesia and Thailand
over Christmas that kills 250,000 people mostly children, or genocide that kills millions can
cause many thoughtful and spiritually alert people to doubt the existence of a loving and
powerful God. Faith is like money; easy come, easy go.
This is why doubt is an old and agreeable companion of serious and maturing faith. The
probing atheist may not believe any god exists but the doubt is healthy, open to new insights and
honest, always honest in pursuing the truth wherever it may lead. This message is not about that
kind of atheist.
The second type of atheist is the practical atheist. This is the person who always tells the
Gallup poll that he or she believes in God. They just live their lives without reference to God. If
tomorrow word hit the street that there is no God and never was a god, that would not affect the
life of the practical atheist in any meaningful way. Their use of time and money, their
relationships and values, all have been structured and practiced in ways that render the notion of
God irrelevant. Psalm 14 and other scriptures thump the practical atheist. This is the only kind of
atheism specifically addressed in the Bible, since nowhere is there an argument for the existence
of God. His existence is assumed. Then, and now, the practical atheist is the most widespread of
all the cousins and spiritual nephews of the word.
I speak this morning to a third kind of atheist, the professional atheist. These are the ones
who take the perfectly honorable idea of atheism, an idea with which I heartily disagree, and turn
it into an ism. Modern media gleefully has given wide publicity to the writing and whining of a
Sam Harris, a Christopher Hitchens and a Richard Dawkins, among others. What has turned their
efforts as atheists into an ism are the factors of personal contempt and ironic ignorance.
It is one thing to have contempt for an idea. I trust everyone here holds notions of anti-
Semitism or racial hatred in contempt. These characters hold those who disagree with them in
personal and obvious contempt. Hitchens wrote a book about Mother Teresa, the very title of
which is too suggestive and contemptuous to mention, in which he accused her of cruelty,
corruptions, greed and numerous other crimes and misdemeanors too nasty to list in detail.
Name-calling and sneers build no bridges and resolve no conflicts but with professional atheism
the point is not mutual understanding or respectful disagreement or even search for truth. Search
and destroy is the more accurate description of this ism attitude.
Ironic ignorance is the second attribute of athe-ism. In a debate on religion at UC Berkley
a number of years ago, Sam Harris and Chris Hedges traded shots. Harris was insisting, without
proof, that the Muslim religion was responsible for the carnage in Croatia and the Balkans.
Hedges, a practicing Christian of the quite liberal type and for seven years the Balkans bureau
chief for the New York Times, began to realize that Harris literally had no idea of the factsand
that he didnt care that he didnt know the facts.
When the ism overtakes the atheist, the irony is that in the name of denouncing ignorance
religious people the professional atheist is gladly willing to shed facts, data and any other
inconvenient truth that stands in the way of their prejudice. Recall the reminder of modern
psychology that all of us, including everyone in worship today, has a natural tendency to filter
fresh information through a lens that remembers and accepts data that agrees with what we
already think and that forgets or dismisses data that collides with what we already think. The
professional atheist, no less than the worst of the religious fanatic, forgets this human dynamic
and is content to dwell in the world of allegation, accusation, exaggeration and bile.
I offer two avenues for Christian response to athe-ism. First, welcome honest doubt. We
are moving, in right and biblical ways, in the direction of being a spiritual family of Jesus where
honest questions are welcomed and not treated with canned or stereotype or straw man replies.
Christ calls us to be a place where those who have seen or felt horrible injustice or calamity can
bring their questions and anger to the table to question and argue with God, as did Job of old.
This includes being a church that is willing to say, I dont know when faced with questions
where we really dont know an answer and refuse to settle for a clich to silence the discomfort
of the issue. Christ, who reminds us the truth shall set us free and he himself embodies truth,
would have his followers act no other way. Let our words build bridges rather than fan flames.
The second response to the professional atheist comes from Jesus reply to critics, when
he said, Listen. If you dont want to believe in me, at least believe in the works you see me do
(John 10:38). While working on this message at the end of last week I was driving near the
church and stopped as two women crossed the street. They were two nuns from the Sisters of
Charity order founded by Mother Teresa to work among the poorest of the poor throughout the
world. They are working near our church, in the projects and elsewhere for Jesus sake. I am still
waiting for the Hitchens lobby to create similar outreach for the sake of the poor.
Thats just the point. Every survey and poll indicates consistently that the professional
atheist is least likely to share either money for charity or time to volunteer for community needs.
Sometimes the best argument is to live the response rather than debate it; to walk the way rather
than talk it. That is why in the name of Jesus we are where we are, why we feed and clothe and
care for those on the margins, why we visit one another and are present for one another in times
of loneliness or need. We point to Jesus as redeemer because he has redeemed us, transformed
us and through us is working his transforming grace in our community and in the world.
The world of athe-ism offers neither solace nor hope. It is a world without any eternal
sense of right or wrong, a world without meaning or purpose since all that exists is by collision
and accident rather than design. It is in our lives lived as people of hope and in tangible love
shared with others who cannot repay that our case is best made, our argument best heard, and the
issue best decided. As we out live, out love and out serve the professional atheists of our day, we
and they and all the world will see the difference. For the follower of Jesus, that is enough.