The Christian Atheist?

I came across a book on Amazon the other day with an intriguing title: The Christian Atheist.  While I haven’t read the book, I did check out the website and I believe the main idea can be summed up in the following challenge made to fellow Christians by author, Craig Groeschel:

You say you believe in God. Do you really?
Do you live your life as if God is in the room, or do you assume He’s not paying attention?
You call yourself a Christian. Are you who you say you are?

These are really good questions for any Christian to ask him or herself.  Really good.

When I was still a believer, I can remember asking myself these sorts of things all the time. But whereas Mr. Groeschel likely poses them in order to help Christians “have more faith” (or to stop being “Christian Atheists”, as he puts it), I would ask that Christians really think long an hard about them rather than simply using them as an impetus to try harder.

You say you believe in God.  Do you really?

Does your frequent “lack of faith” mean that you simply need to “have more faith” or that perhaps you need to explore why it is that you feel a need to believe in the first place?  Have you examined evidence for his existence presented by people who used to believe but don’t anymore?

Do you live your life as if God is in the room, or do you assume He’s not paying attention?

Is it important for you to feel like God is watching in order for you to behave morally?  If you felt like God wasn’t watching, what would keep you from doing the wrong thing?  Do you know any people who don’t believe in God yet seem to be good, moral people?

You call yourself a Christian. Are you who you say you are?

What does it mean to be a Christian?  How do you define this?  Is there one standard definition that all Christians can agree on?  If not, which one should you follow?

Religionless Ethics and Values

Well, my attempt at parenting advice now seems incredibly feeble and incomplete compared with the below suggestions made by Elizebeth Joy:

Be Kind and Gentle to everyone and everything.  Treat others the way you want to be treated.  Have love for humanity and the universe.

Enjoy this life as much as you can.  Assume this is all you are going to get (there may not be an afterlife).

Search for beauty and good in everything.  Everything has a positive side.  If you don’t see it, create it.

Test yourself, your ideas and beliefs.  Trust what your senses and intuition tell you.  The more extraordinary the claim, the more convincing the evidence must be to support it.

Use Reason and Creativity to solve problems, and don’t count on anyone else solving them for you. You are empowered.

…

Live without fear.  Most fear is unhealthy and unhelpful.  Use your gut instinct to choose how to respond the best way in a situation where you may be in danger, but do not live in that state.

I might take issue with a few small things on the list–like everything having a positive side–but on the whole it is very similar to how we are trying to raise our kids.  I especially like the part about trusting your instincts but not living from them.  I think our instincts can tip us off to when something may not be right, but in the end we should attempt to follow through and find the facts rather than just continuing to trust our gut.

Check out the rest of the items on her list and let me know if you have some of your own.  Thank you, Elizebeth, for posting them and thanks to Hemant Mehta of  Friendly Athiest for the link.

Nonreligious Parenting

The following excerpt is from an email conversation I recently had with a friend of mine, Karen (not her real name).  Like me, she only recently became a non-believer after having been raised as a Christian.

No kids yet for me but when they do come along I am uneasy about how to handle the whole religion thing.  What I came to hate about my upbringing is that there was never any choice to being Christian it was just assumed.  No alternative was presented, I never knew there was another option.  To their credit, they don’t believe there IS another option so they think they did the best for me but I don’t want to do that even with non-belief.  I don’t want to present non-belief like it is the only option even if that is how I choose to believe.  I plan to be very open and present all religions to them from a research stand point.  Science will be ever-present in our house as well, something else that was never mentioned in my childhood home.  How do you and your wife handle that?  Do the kids ask you about what you believe?  If they wanted to continue being religious, what would you do?

I certainly don’t have all the answers and am stumbling along like the rest of us, but I think this is a huge issue for many people in situations similar to ours, which is why I asked her permission to post it here, along with the gist of my reply:

Karen,

That’s a great question.

They really don’t ask, or at least they haven’t yet; and we haven’t gone to church in 18 months, so if the questions were gonna come, I figure they would have come by now.  I could probably be better at being proactive and occasionally encouraging them to talk about where they are with all of this.  I will say that my wife and I haven’t been all that secretive in our conversations about church and such, so maybe the kids already pretty much know how we feel, but that’s no excuse for not bringing it up ourselves.

Our main concern as parents is that our children grow up to be rational and compassionate adults.  As such we always encourage them to think through things that don’t make sense to them rather than simply providing them with cut-and-dry answers.  We also try to promote empathy in any situation where one of them may have either hurt someone else’s feelings or may be in danger of doing so.  If they exercise these traits, then we are confident that whatever decisions they arrive at as far as belief or non-belief are concerned will be the best ones for them and for those around them.

Also, this site may help when the time comes: http://parentingbeyondbelief.com/  There is one video in particular where he discusses influence versus indoctrination, which I think does a better job of explaining what I just said in the previous paragraph.

Overall, the biggest word of parenting advice that I can give to new or prospective parents is don’t parent from fear. Sure, we worry about our kids, but when fear is our motivator in decision-making, it almost always leads us to want to control rather than guide, which in turn leads to unhealthy dependence instead of freedom when the time comes for them to finally leave the nest.

Hope that helps.