A TROUBLING TESTIMONY AND SOME LESSONS

While the way we think affects the way we live, the way we live also affects the way we think. This testimony of a Christian-turned-atheist reflects this truth. She explained how her life was affecting her faith:

·       For a long time I couldn’t have sex with my boyfriend (of over a year by this point) without crippling guilt. I had anxiety that I was going to Hell. I felt like I was standing upon glass, and, though I knew it was safe, every time I glanced down I saw death. I had trouble coping with the fact that my entire childhood education now essentially meant nothing — I had been schooled in a sham. I had to start from scratch in entering and learning about this secular world. Uncertainty was not something I was accustomed to feeling. Though I had left Christianity intellectually, my emotional beliefs had yet to catch up.

Why did they catch up? Understandably, she couldn’t tolerate the fears of eternal punishment. Had she been “schooled in sham,” or did it merely feel this way? Even in the midst of her failures to abstain from sex, she could have continued to confess her sins to God who would have forgiven and cleansed her (1 John 1:9). However, I would guess that she had eventually chosen sin over God, and she realized that she couldn’t continue to confess her sin, if she had already determined to continue to it. Therefore, God had to be eliminated.

After making her decision to crucify what was left of her “emotional beliefs,” she was able to find an alternative belief system:

·       For a while now, I’ve been educating myself in science, a world far more uncertain than the one I left, but also far more honest.

While she claims that she would not exchange her childhood for another, it seems that she now regards her Christian training as dishonest. Why? She doesn’t explain. However, when we discard our former beliefs, we have to convince ourselves of their lack of truth, lest they continue to indict us. She now has found a new god:

·       Freedom is my God now, and I love this one a thousand times more than I ever loved the last one.

I don’t doubt that she now has a greater sense of freedom having rejected the God who she felt condemned her. As many atheists have testified, a world where there are no objective standards of right and wrong and no one to indict us, feels like freedom. However, such “freedom” ceases to pay dividends. Instead, this “freedom” becomes a cold and unfeeling world devoid of meaning, purpose, and rules that make a game fulfilling. No rules, no chess or checkers. Initially, the atheist Bertrand Russell believed that humanity could impose their own will and purpose on the purposeless void:

• Undismayed by the empire of chance, [man determines] to preserve a mind free from the wanton tyrant that rules his outward life; proudly defiant of the irresistible forces... [He determines] to sustain alone... the world that his own ideals have fashioned despite the trampling march of unconscious power. (A Free Man’s Worship)

However, there are dreams that will not take wing no matter how confident we might be about them. Years later, Russell confessed that his dreams folded like a rose dropping its dried pedals:

• I wrote with passion and force because I really thought I had a gospel. Now I am cynical about the gospel because it won’t stand the test of life.

How are Christian parents to protect their young? They need to prepare them not only with arguments in favor of their faith but also with an understanding of the impact of the temptations of this hostile world, especially the sexual sins and our sinful attempts to justify them. I also think that parents need to be very candid about their own failures and how they rediscovered the faithfulness of God through them. There can be no better testimony!