What I Learned from Atheists

Sometimes an outsider can see things more clearly.

That may be particularly true of the importance of the Christian faith because we Americans have figured out how to say we are Christians without letting it change very much how we think. "There is no longer a Christian mind," said British author Harry Blamires. "There is still, of course, a Christian ethic, a Christian practice, and a Christian spirituality...but as a thinking being, the modern Christian has succumbed to secularization."

Today 92% of American households have a Bible and an astonishing 47% of Americans told researchers that they read the Bible at least once a week outside of church. And yet there is widespread ignorance about the Bible's content. Evidently Americans believe the Bible -- even though they are not quite sure what it says.
In that context, I found comments by two self-identified atheists particularly interesting.

Matthew Parris grew up in Malawi when it was Nyasaland and has traveled all over Africa. Even though he is a "confirmed atheist," he says, writing in the London Times Online, he has "become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa. ...Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good."

"Faith," explains Parris, "does more than support the missionary." it also rescues his flock. Parris had observes that "Anxiety -- fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders."

And along comes Christianity "with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being [and] smashes straight through the philosophical/spiritual framework I've just described." It does so by offering "something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates."

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

Why does it take an atheist to point out that Christ and the Christian faith makes such a significant and positive difference to a culture? Maybe it's because if we have "succumbed to secularization," we Christians don't notice it or are afraid to mention it.

"Peace on Earth: The ‘war on Christmas' is over. Christmas lost" in the Wall Street Journal pointed out that "the secularization of America's favorite holiday" has been effective. (That word "secularization" again!) After discussing the charge that some Christians are bigots for their exclusivity, the article quotes Heather MacDonald -- an atheist -- who points out that "to a true nonbeliever, a belief about who is going to hell or whose prayers God hears is mere nonsense."

However, she also wonders if "modern Christians still believe with the same fervor as in the past all those unyielding doctrines of eternal damnation for the unbaptised and unconverted?" She is curious because "They sure don't act as if they do."

MacDonald wonders this because, she supposes, "If they really were convinced that their friends, co-workers, neighbors, and in-laws were going to hell because they possessed the wrong or no religious belief...that the knowledge would be unbearable. Christians surely see that most of their wrong-believing personal acquaintances are just as moral and deserving as themselves. How, then, do they live with the knowledge that their friends and loved ones face an eternity of torment?"

One might normally expect that to lead "a frenzy of proselytizing, by word or by sword," but both seem to be lacking these days. MacDonald concludes that in our world "dominated by the secular values of tolerance and equality[,] [e]ither believers live with an extraordinary degree of cognitive dissonance between the inclusive values of their society and the dictates of their religion, or they unconsciously mitigate those bloody-minded dictates as atavistic vestiges from a more primitive time."

Two statements: The Christian faith makes a significant, noticeable, and practical difference in a person's life. A person who is not a Christian is eternally separated from God. Either of these statements - both made by atheists -- is a powerful argument for evangelism if we really were to believe them. If both are true, we need to throw off the influence of secularization, restore the Christian mind in our thinking, and unashamedly proclaim the truth of the Gospel.

This sounds like something we should put on the agenda of the next meeting of the evangelism committee at my church so that we can pray about it.