I'm an Atheist

His eyes looked extra blue today. It may have been that slim fit white polo with light blue stripes or the glasses he wore because he knew it would make me happy… and he probably didn’t want to deal with his contacts, but for story sake, it was for me. I even got to try them on.

I reached over the table and snagged the glasses off his face. I needed something to entertain me as we waited for the African American server with a bindi piercing on her forehead to bring us our Thai food. As I put them on my face, I realized that my left eye could see about fine, but my right eye, it struggled. We joked about how blind he is, in one eye, and shifted our dinner conversation.

I had just got back from coffee with a friend who was visiting from college, and I shared with him how she melts my heart whenever she comes to mind. No, not the romantic melt-my-heart, but the love that says, “I’m so lucky to know an outstanding and unique person such as you.” You know, sometimes you absolutely love someone for who they are, mostly their quirkiness or maybe their originality.

One time after we got coffee together, I blew her a kiss. She grabbed it out of the air, threw it in her mouth, and chomped down. The attention I got from the rest of the coffee shop for my outburst of laughter left me slightly embarrassed. “Oh my gosh I love you,” I laughed as she walked away.

I continued to tell him how my friends at my university blow me away by the depth of their character.

“Praise Jesus,” he jested, sipping on his Thai iced tea.

He knows I go to a Christian university. We joke about it sometimes. If anything, he grew up with more of a Catholic background, but he’s not a really fan of Christians or God, or so it seems. I don’t blame him. It was a difficult task for me to stay connected to the church, and I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t gone for the Christian college emersion technique.

“Shut up,” I jokingly sneered. “They really are outstanding people, beyond the Jesus stuff. I think you have the wrong idea of Christians.”

These wrong ideas are the shackles that inhibit people from gaining a better understanding of God, the immense jungle that we limit to some trees, vines, and coconuts. If we hold on to these limitations, we will never see the different breeds of animals sneaking through the jungle brush, the trillions of species of insects bouncing across the leaves, and the families of delicious fruit hanging from the limbs of the zapote trees.

God is more than we Christians share. We’ll throw out words like “omnipresent,” saying that God is always with us, but we leave out where and fear to say how. I’m an atheist too when it comes to the tree-vine-coconut God, the expansive, over-arching figure evaluating our every act. I believe in the God who is already present in miniscule good that seen all around us, in both the acknowledged and the neglected:

Revealing in the cycling ministries of our Mormon friends,

Renovating in the truth-demanding, honesty-yearning questions of a non-believer,

Reconciling in the authentic and healing love found between two homosexual men.

Through extensions of the love and Spirit of God, the work of God is displayed in the crevasses of each relationship between individuals.

One of our greatest problems is starting with the lofty idea of “God,” where people already have their lack-love, judgmental presuppositions and theories that must be broken down. Perhaps we should start with Truth, Hope, and Love, the things that everyone believes in and longs to see. Tell them to pray to Truth, to sing of Hope, and to paint for Love. Then, hopefully, they discover that these three figures all have the same name, Yahweh.

The Invitation

“Emotionally, how does it feel to be wrong?” asked Kathryn Schulz in a presentation I recently watched on TED Talks. Peering out into the crowd, she listened for some responses.

“Dreadful.”

“Embarrassing.”

A thumbs-down from the girl in the background.

Schulz points out that these were great answers, but they were answers to a different question: “You guys are answering the question, ‘How does it feel to realize you’re wrong?’” She continued, “Being wrong feels like being right.”

Much of the time, we live our lives thinking we’re right, especially us as Christians.

Recently, a fellow Christian and I sent messages back and forth, aiming to resolve a conflict. “Sorry that I expected as a man of God you would…” she wrote, feeling my Christianity threatened. “Apparently we are in two different places spiritually,” the following sentence proclaimed.

The statements interrogated my spirituality deeply, as I saw her godliness surpassing mine, and suddenly, I sat astonished.

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The other week, I was sitting in a small group meeting. Fifteen guys sat in a circle, discussing what it looked like to follow and Jesus and what that looks like in our life.

“I realized I don’t have to worry because God has it under control,” said one. “God just wants to spend time with us,” reaffirmed another.

With almost each self-focused statement, my heart pounded in my chest.

“It’s not about you!” my heart pressed but properly failed to have the audacity to say.

As Christians, we’ve started missing what’s important. We discover it’s so easy to point fingers and so easy to make ourselves feel better, but is it really about either? We look in the mirror declaring all the ways we’ve done right and denouncing the places where we’re just a little off.

Proud we reprimanded him,

Ecstatic we defended Genesis 1,

And thrilled we can honestly say we’ve never had a sip of alcohol.

We’re told to be humble, but we develop this pride as though we have the answers to all of life’s questions. Instead, we just end up pointing fingers at those who have yet to realize that Christianity is the antithesis of discrimination. Once we stop judging others, stop praising ourselves, and start stepping back, we realize what we missed before and see all that’s wrong with the world.

That we should not have a faucet in the kitchen, the bathroom, and the other bathroom, along with a hose protruding from the side of the house; and they should not need to walk five miles to find clean water.

That she should not complain about a soft overripe apple, and he should not be living underneath that bridge, hoping tomorrow brings a meal.

That I should not worry if he will text me back, and she should not sit in the comforting darkness of her own room, wondering about the best way to take her own life.

In neglecting something greater than ourselves, we make Christianity to be about morals and God to be our therapist. We forget the portion of our spirituality that is an invitation to be a vessel of God and a tool for God’s work among humanity. We think we have this whole Christianity thing figured out but forget the part where we’re saying we know the will of God:

Why she has cancer,

Why he had to die,

Or why I’m gay.

We were placed in a unique relationship to God, a relation that says, “I am God. You are human. I know. You don’t.” The words come back, and we are humbled and left with an invitation to work within community, seeing to it that this invitation does not end with me and reaches beyond you.

This invitation to participate goes to my uncle who denounces religion, to that guy I almost dated who called me ignorant for being a Christian, and to each individual who told us that we had to change in order to be accepted in this community. The invitation is a beautiful gift that catches us off guard when our heart breaks for them and melts for him, reminding us with the words, “You are well, but remember, they need you. Love them for Me.”

Fundamentals

My small private Christian high school could be described as decently conservative, maybe overwhelmingly conservative, practicing some of the you-say-a-swear-word-you’re-going-to-hell Christianity and turn-or-burn religion.

Detentions were handed out for saying the word “fart” and don’t even thing about saying “c-r-a-p.”

The Bible was taught as a science book, the key to all knowledge, and evolution was that bad “e”-word.

Bad things don’t just happen because adversity is God’s judgment and punishment for all the times you don’t follow the commandments.

Blessings are handed out to good people, but don’t worry, grace still exists… somewhere.

My sophomore year of high school, I was dating this guy. I would hardly call it dating, but at the time, we labeled it, so I’ll label it now. He went to a different school, but we would see each other at track meets. Between events, we’d leave the track, talk for several minutes, kiss goodbye, and walk back to the track.

Some of my good friends heard what had been going on, and news began to travel. Eventually, it made it to my track coach… some other parents… and some teachers. Sure enough, I became a big target.

Warming up for my district meet, a parent pulls me aside and asks me if we can talk in the bleachers. We sit down, and our conversation begins: “Sean, if you were driving a car, and I knew the bridge ahead of you was out, I would be a fool to not warn you.”

Not exactly what I was expecting, but she continued, “Other parents and teachers are giving me a hard time because they know what you have been doing...”

Caught, and my eyes began to water as I became more disconnected from the conversation, or lack there of. Amongst my anxious staring, foggy eyes, and sorrowful sniffles, I made out, “Sean, God has no reason to bless you.”

Images of my track career going down the drain began flooding my mind, and my please-God-to-get-good-things background began to solidify. Grace had no place because of course, I had to earn grace. I had to work hard enough, and then I would gain God’s favor because God only gives things to the righteous.

I put my shades on to cover my watery, bloodshot eyes and finished my warm-ups. I won four events that day, and I didn’t leave the track with my boyfriend at all.

God blessed me with a place that taught me the key to success: please God and gain the desires of your heart. Why offer your life as it is and allow God’s will to work in your life when you can work to please God yourself and gain self-righteousness?

Grace never really made sense to me there, but that’s all right. One extreme showed me the other extreme, and indecisiveness taught me to look for the median.

Sometimes God meets us where we are, where Christians are too afraid to go, working in the lives of the undeserving:

Saving an adulteress from being stoned,

Embracing a bewildered lost son,

And kickin’ it with the outcasts.

Jesus taught the futility of all people, the lack of ability to do it oneself. Sin is best manifested in the idea of thinking that one can live this life on their own, thinking that everyday can be handled without the presence of God, without the Spirit.

The debt has been paid, and we have been taught to love God and to love others. Too many times have I tried to understand God and save others. I don’t know why it didn’t make sense earlier: love others, embrace them as they are, and let the Spirit take care of the rest. It’s all I can do.