 |
| A house of cards falling down. Image source. |
Back when I was a "good Christian", on fire for God, I was really into apologetics. Apologetics means arguing about why Christianity is true. I read lots of apologetics books which presented questions like "are there contradictions in the bible?" and "how can a loving God send people to hell?" and "what if Jesus didn't actually die on the cross, he was just pretending to be dead?" These apologetics books presented arguments for why the Christian answer to these questions was the right answer.
Initially I just read the Christian side of it, but eventually I started reading the atheist side too. (The apologetics resources don't really pay attention to any other religions- it's just Christianity vs atheism.) Instead of just reading a Christian book that said "here's what atheists say, and here's why they're wrong" I would also go to the atheist resources directly and see what I thought about their arguments. (Christians are warned against doing this, because you may be "led astray" if you directly hear what the atheists are saying, without a Christian authority figure there to immediately tell you why it's wrong. ... Yeah honestly very shady that they don't want you to listen to anyone else except approved authorities...)
And sometimes the atheist side raised some good points! The problem of evil, for example. Why doesn't God intervene in the world to stop evil and suffering? Is it because They can't? Then God is not all-powerful. Is it because They don't want to? Then God is not all-loving. Either way, this God doesn't sound that good.
Of course, Christians have all sorts of answers to it, like God valuing free will and wanting people to have a choice to do right or wrong- but I feel like most of these arguments aren't that great.
So I recognized that there were some points where the Christian apologetics side didn't really have a good answer- but I viewed it as very all-or-nothing. I thought, I have all these other reasons to believe in Jesus, so I will continue to believe even though there are a few weak points.
Yes, very all-or-nothing. I felt my options were:
- Christianity- specifically evangelical Christianity- and the whole package of beliefs that came with it: you have to have a personal relationship with God; you have to spend time reading the bible and praying every day- if you don't, it means you don't love God enough and you should feel bad about that; the bible is inerrant; the bible doesn't have contradictions; God created the world; all the miracles in the bible really happened; literal virgin birth; literal resurrection; evolution is not true; Jesus was fully God and fully man; every sin is an infinite offense against a holy God; everyone deserves to go to hell because we are all sinners; Jesus died as part of God's plan to pay for our sin and get us into heaven; God sees you as totally worthless and ugly because of your sin, but when you get covered by Jesus, God is able to accept you; only people who believe in Jesus get into heaven; if you are a good person but you're not a Christian then you go to hell; if you do terrible things like murder people and then repent on your deathbed, you go to heaven; also everyone secretly knows that God exists and the gospel is true but they deny it because they love to sin; everyone has a "God-shaped hole" in their heart; everyone worships something; God wants women to dress modesty; the husband has to be the "spiritual leader" in marriage; premarital sex is a sin; everyone who has sex before marriage regrets it; God is extremely interested in what everyone is doing with their genitals; masturbation is a sin; and the ideal is you shouldn't even have any physical contact at all with your spouse before marriage- that's the ideal because it's the most pure, though realistically it's not likely to actually happen; God answers prayer; if we have more faith and pray for things that are in "God's will" then God will answer those prayers; you have to sit quietly and listen to God because God really does plant thoughts in people's heads about what they're supposed to do, or you could even open the bible and point to a random verse and perhaps that will be a message from God for you; also, be ready for the possibility that God will "call" you, meaning you have to give up your whole lifestyle and your plans and change to what God tells you to do, like moving to a foreign country as a missionary; the bible is God's love letter to you; we need to always "put God first"- if you like something, that could be bad because what if you love it more than God; we need to put others' needs before our own, always sacrificing in order to help other people; it's good to "submit" instead of standing up for our own rights; suffering can be a good thing because it helps you get closer to God; God has a plan for your life; if something bad happens to you, it's fine because it's part of God's plan; God will never give you more than you can handle; God has picked 1 specific opposite-sex partner that you are supposed to marry; we need to do evangelism to get people saved; all the other religions are about people trying to earn their way to heaven, but Christianity is different because Jesus already did the work and we just have to believe; it's really not possible to have morality if you don't believe in God; the most loving thing we can do is warn people about hell; and also we need to warn gay people about their sin; being trans isn't a real thing; hate the sin, love the sinner; the reason for most of society's problems is the breakdown of the family- casual sex, divorce, acceptance of queer people, abortion, etc; everyone who gets an abortion regrets it; life begins at conception, and abortion is murder; and so Christians all need to vote Republican; if you're obeying God and other people don't like it (perhaps because you are telling them about their sin), that's a sign that you're doing the right thing, because Jesus said the world will hate us, hey it could even be "spiritual warfare" which means the devil is attacking you; Christians are persecuted in the US; the US was founded as a Christian nation and it's terrible that it's becoming more and more secular; there are lots of people who claim to be Christians but they're not real Christians, probably most Catholics are fake Christians; you have to go to church every week; people have all sorts of excuses for not going to church, but they are wrong, they should be going to church
- Atheism
When I say "all-or-nothing", I mean that because overall, I believed the Christian side of the apologetics arguments, that meant I had to believe this whole package of quirky beliefs. That's what Christianity is, right? Perhaps I had heard of some Christians who didn't believe a few of these things, but surely they were fake Christians and we didn't need to listen to them. We know that the bible is true [citation needed], and the bible says all of these things [citation needed] and so they were all true.
It was because of Rachel Held Evans, that I learned it doesn't have to be all-or-nothing.
The things she wrote on her blog were unlike anything I had ever read. She knew how to speak evangelical, and yet, she frequently said things that good evangelicals weren't allowed to say. I was so confused; I couldn't figure out if she was a Christian or not. (Yes, she was.) She knew all the apologetics answers, but said those answers weren't good enough. She knew all the logical reasons why, for example, God needs to send all non-Christians to hell, but she also knew that her God-given conscience said that's terrible, no matter what kind of logic you can find to prop it up.
She had all the evangelical cred- she loved God, loved the bible, knew the bible so well, she was doing her best to follow Jesus. And she did NOT believe in some of those things that I thought all Christians had to believe- God sending people to hell, women not being allowed to be leaders, things like that. And yet she was still a real Christian.
That's how I learned it didn't have to be all-or-nothing.
For my whole life, I had been on the Christian side, in opposition to the atheist side. It was binary- I'm either a Christian or an atheist- and since I'm a Christian, I need to listen to the Christian leaders and find out the correct Christian view on all of these topics, and I need to believe that.
So, for example, why should I pray and ask God to do something, if God has already decided what They're going to do? Well, I couldn't answer that, but I believed in Jesus for a bunch of other reasons, so I could ignore this bit of confusion and keep believing it anyway. And keep praying to ask God for things anyway. The alternative would be to give up on Christianity entirely, right?
The other thing that happened was, in 2012 I had some health problems that totally derailed my life, for about 1 year. Before that, I had a very strong belief in the concept of "trusting God"- no matter what happens, it must be good, because it's God's plan! Even if it seems bad, you can trust that somehow it's actually good! But... my gall bladder just decided to try and ruin my life one day, for no reason- if that can happen, then what does it even mean to "trust God"? I can't trust God to not let some random health problem totally screw up my life. If I can't trust Them for that, then the whole concept of "trusting God" is pretty meaningless. (At the time, I blogged about it here and here.)
So I started to view my Christianity like this: If there's some belief I have that doesn't logically make sense, then I modify my beliefs to no longer include that bit of nonsense. Here's an example: Because of the problem of evil, I don't believe God intervenes in our lives, and I don't pray to ask God to do things. Because no, it doesn't make sense that there's a God who is always working in the little personal details of my life, and also allows suffering to happen on a large scale in this world. It doesn't make sense to attribute my success to God, when part of it was because of white privilege, and people with black-sounding names get called for job interviews less- maybe God should be working on that problem, instead of helping me. It doesn't make sense to believe I can pray and God will respond by helping me, when there are many people in this world in worse situations than me, and God hasn't stopped them from getting into those situations. It doesn't even make sense to postulate that the reason bad things happen to other people is that they don't pray- what a horrific God that would be, choosing to let bad things happen to people who don't have the correct beliefs and/or don't pray correctly.
So whereas before, my perspective was "I don't have a good answer for the problem of evil, but I do have other reasons for believing in Christianity, so just plow ahead and try to ignore the problem of evil," now I see it as "I don't have a good answer for the problem of evil, so I let that inform my Christianity, and I discard common Christian beliefs which are inconsistent with an honest awareness of the problem of evil."
I don't really believe in "I believe, help my unbelief"- the idea that faith and doubt kinda coexist in a person, and the overall belief system is totally true, so you *should* have 100% faith and 0% doubt, but we are flawed human beings and have doubts anyway, and that's okay, we don't have to be perfect, we just do our best to keep pushing ahead in the "faith" part and try to ignore the "doubt" part. No, I don't see it that way. Maybe you have some beliefs that are not actually true, and doubt is a useful indicator that you should examine them and maybe change them.
Doubt is not something to fight against. If you have "doubt", ie, you realize you believe something that doesn't really make sense, then you can consider what would happen to your overall belief system if you changed that one specific belief to something more logical. It doesn't have to be all-or-nothing. (Or, maybe you have some beliefs that you don't really have a good reason for, but you're okay with that. I do... That's fine, but you have to know you're not going to win any arguments with those.)
And some Christians will disagree with me, saying that this path basically leads to atheism. Someone starts out evangelical, and then they change it, one little belief at a time, and then eventually they become an atheist. Uh, okay, this argument is kinda lost on me, because I don't think there's anything wrong with being an atheist. But if that's your concern, then let me tell you, the house-of-cards religion where one weird little belief is overturned, and then the ENTIRE THING falls- that kind of ideology makes more atheists than what I'm advocating here.
Believe in something that you can actually believe. Not something that people say you need to believe, as part of a whole ideology. Doubt is not an attack; doubt is an indication that you should think about the reasons for your beliefs, and maybe change to something that makes more sense.---
The Slacktivist has a very good post on this: Hold on to the good
Siggy has a post which makes some similar points: Christian Doubt
Related:
She was the first (Thank you, Rachel)
On believing that "prayer works"
Gotta Love That Full-Blown Atheism
Taking My Kid To Church: "The Belief That Baffled the Best of the Buddhists"