(This is a repost.)

A while back I ventured the opinion that a young person thinking of marrying someone who doesn’t share their religious belief system would do well to carefully consider the advisability of such a match.

In response an atheist friend of mine wrote the following letter, which he thought I might share with you:

I’m a bona fide marriage expert. Not because I have some fancy Ivy League degree hanging on my wall, nor because I’m a published marriage counselor—no, I’m a marriage expert because I’ve been married twice. I’m a big believer in the school of you-don’t-know-it-until-you’ve-done-it. Having done it twice, I now know it twice as well. Hence, marriage expert.

My first marriage was to a lovely woman of like-spirituality. We were both humanists (which is a fancy term for do-gooder atheists) of Jewish descent. That marriage failed when she realized that she didn’t love me. ME! How could she not love me? You probably don’t know me, but I am very lovable. I know this, because my second wife, an even more lovely Christian woman named Rachel, told me so. Rachel also told me that our marriage is a resounding success, and I believe her. We both have no doubt that we will be together until we die, at which point we will be separated. According to her, I will go to hell and she will go to heaven—or, in my version, we will be dead. Either way, we won’t be together anymore, and that’s sad.

But how can this marriage really be a success? Rachel is a Christian and I am a heretical Jewish humanist. How can we fully be together when we don’t share the same spirituality? How can we unleash the full potential of our marriage if we have a spiritual chasm between us? How can we possibly understand each other when we approach life so differently? What will we teach the children? For Pete’s sake, think of the children! (If anyone knows Pete, or why he cares about the children, please let me know in the comments—oh, and tell him I want back my copy of ABBA Gold.)

As tempting as it was to ignore the problem of our differences and hope it went away, Rachel and I talked about it, and decided that since we valued our marriage too much to leave it to chance, we would be proactive about addressing our differences: we’d do it the hard way. What is it about Jews and Christians that they need to suffer to feel alive? Wait a minute, maybe we aren’t so different after all! No, that’s not it. We’re different. Might as well face it. We’re really, really different.

Women and men are different. Christians and people of other faiths are different. Christians of different denominations are different. Republicans and Democrats are different. Bostonians and San Diegans are different. Mice and men are different. Even Milli and Vanilli are different—in fact, they aren’t even themselves.

I am not a woman who was born in San Jose, CA, grew up on a farm in upstate New York, matured in Washington, has six siblings, and is passionate about her family and her faith. I never will be that woman, and while I can understand her, empathize with her, feel pretty in her clothes, and love her deeply, I will never really know the depths of her experiences or the convictions of her beliefs. No one will, except God (if you’re into that sort of thing). I don’t want to be her Savior, I want to be her husband. I want to spend every day getting closer to her and knowing her more, faith and all.

Everyone has faith of some kind, even atheists (we can’t prove there is no God, we simply believe there is no God). By recognizing your own faith, even if it’s belief in mammon—or as Washington Irving called it: “The Almighty Dollar”—you can understand how essential faith is to the core of our being. Everyone has the ability to relate to the fervent wholeness of faith, and to understand how it can permeate every aspect of one’s life. You don’t have to share the same faith to know how your spouse feels about their spiritual connection. It’s the universal feelings that come from faith, even if the faiths are different, that are the foundation from which you can connect, share, learn, and grow. Your marriage won’t fail over differences; there will always be differences. It will fail if you are not honest with each other, and lack respect for one another—spiritually or otherwise.

Marriage is a partnership. Each partner brings the best and the worst parts of themselves to their marriage, and the success or failure of their union depends on how they embrace the good and the bad. In a successful marriage, two people, who are different by virtue of being people, find the common ground on which they relate to each other, and use that as a foundation. They grow toward each other by learning about and respecting their differences, and then stay together by willingly meeting each other’s needs, whether they fully understand them or not. That last part, that really hard part—that’s love.

That love is what my interfaith marriage is all about. Rachel would call that the manifestation of God’s love and grace in our marriage. I call it my profound privilege to be able to spend every day of the rest of my life growing a little bit closer to my wife.

Based on the enduring lack of conclusive, objectively verifiable, purely empirical evidence, agnostics claim to simply not know whether or not there’s a God. As a rational response to the question of God, it’s an unassailable stance. All emotions, intuition, and inspiration aside—all subjective affirmations aside, that is—the unadorned fact remains that we don’t know whether or not there’s a God. Struggle though so many do to muddle the two categories of knowledge, belief remains distinctly different than fact.

So, since agnosticism is easily the most logical position to take relative to the question of God, why are there so few agnostics in the world? I don’t know anyone who doesn’t think of themselves as highly rational and logical.

And yet … nary an agnostic to be found!

What gives?

The reason agnosticism fails to attract people is because its core truth is in direct contradiction to the actual experience of life. Agnosticism and reality go together like wax fruit and a hearty appetite.

Agnosticism is all about doubt, about being uncertain what ultimately rules or determines life. But the things that actually do rule and determine life couldn’t be more certain or clear. Like death, for instance. Talk about a firm, clear reality. Death is as definite as it gets. As is being sick. As is being pregnant. As is being born in the first place.

Family. Stress. Joy. Taxes. Hunger. Getting evicted. Falling in love. Losing your job. Getting cut off on the freeway. Tripping on the sidewalk. A dog attacking your ankles. All of our lives are utterly dominated by conclusive, objectively verifiable, purely empirical facts and truths.

Life consists of a lot of very real stuff. Real stuff brings up real questions. And real questions need real answers.

“I don’t know” is not an answer anyone can use. You can’t do anything with it. It’s like bringing a ping-pong paddle to play golf with. No good.

The core of agnosticism is ambiguity. Life, on the other hand, is anything but ambiguous.

Bad match.

*****

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By way of researching a book of mine (I’m OK – You’re Not: The Message We’re Sending Nonbelievers and Why We Should Stop), I posted a notice on Craigslist sites all over the country asking non-Christians to send me any short, personal statement they would like Christians to read.

“Specifically,” I wrote, “I’d like to hear how you feel about being on the receiving end of the efforts of Christian evangelicals to convert you.” (To that I added, “I want to be very clear that this is not a Christian-bashing book; it’s coming from a place that only means well for everyone. Thanks.”)

Within three days, I had in my inbox over 300 emails from non-Christians across the country. Reading them was one of the more depressing experiences of my life. I had expected it to be a message of anger, but if you boiled down to one the overall sentiment most often expressed in the nonbelievers’ statements, it would be this: Why do Christians hate us so much?

Below is a pretty random sample of the statements non-Christians sent me (each of which I used in I’m OK). If you’re a Christian, they make for a mighty saddening read. Or they certainly should, anyway.

“The main thing that baffles and angers me about Christians is how they can understand so little about human nature that when, in their fervor to convert another person, they tell that person (as they inevitably do, in one way or another), ‘You’re bad, and wrong, and evil,’ they actually expect that person to agree with them. It pretty much guarantees that virtually the only people Christians can ever realistically hope to convert are those with tragically low self-esteem.”– E.S., Denver

“I feel that Christians have got it all wrong; it seems to me that they’ve created the very thing Jesus was against: Separatism.”– T. O., Denver

“I am often distressed at the way some Christians take as a given that Christians and Christianity define goodness. Many of we non-Christians make a practice of doing good; we, too, have a well-developed ethical system, and are devoted to making the world a better place. Christians hardly have a monopoly on what’s right, or good, or just.”– C.R., Seattle

“Christians seem to have lost their focus on Jesus’ core message: ‘Love the Lord your god with all your heart and with all your soul, and love your neighbor as you love yourself.’”– R.M., Tacoma

“I have no problem whatsoever with God or Jesus – only Christians. It’s been my experience that most Christians are belligerent, disdainful and pushy.” — D.B., Atlanta

“Whenever I’m approached by an evangelist – by a Christian missionary – I know I’m up against someone so obsessed and narrowly focused that it will do me absolutely no good to try and explain or share my own value system. I never want to be rude to them, of course, but never have any idea how to respond to their attempts to convert me; in short order, I inevitably find myself simply feeling embarrassed–first for them, and then for us both. I’m always grateful when such encounters conclude.”– K.C., Fresno

“I don’t know whether or not most of the Christians I come across think they’re acting and being like Jesus was – but if they do, they need to go back to their Bibles, and take a closer look at Jesus.” — L.B., Phoenix

“I grew up Jewish in a Southern Baptist town, where I was constantly being told that I killed Christ, ate Christian babies, and was going to hell. So I learned early that many Christians have – or sure seem to have – no love in their hearts at all. It also seems so odd to me that Christians think that if I don’t accept their message my ears and heart are closed, because it seems to me like they have excessively closed ears and hearts to anyone else’s spiritual message and experience. They seem to have no sense of the many ways in which God reaches out to everyone. As far as I’ve ever known, Christians are narrow in their sense of God, fairly fascistic in their thinking, and extremely egotistical in thinking God only approves of them.”– B.P., Houston

“I wish Christians would resist their aggressive impulses to morph others into Christians. Didn’t Jesus preach that we should all love one another?”– M.G., Shoreline, WA

“I’m frequently approached by Christians of many denominations who ask whether I’ve accepted Christ as my savior. When I have the patience, I politely tell them that I’m Jewish. This only makes them more aggressive; they then treat me like some poor lost waif in need of their particular brand of salvation. They almost act like salespeople working on commission: If they can save my soul, then they’re one rung closer to heaven. It’s demeaning. I always remain polite, but encounters like these only show disrespect and sometimes outright intolerance for my beliefs and my culture. In Judaism, we do not seek to convert people. That is because we accept that there are many paths to God, and believe that no one religion can lay sole claim to the truth or to God’s favor. Each person is free to find his or her own way. To Christians I would say: Practice your religion as you wish. There is no need to try and influence others. If your religion is a true one, people will come to it on their own.”– M.S., Honolulu

“When did it become that being a Christian meant being an intolerant, hateful bigot? I grew up learning the positive message of Christ: Do well and treat others with respect, and your reward will be in heaven. Somehow, for a seemingly large group of Christians, that notion has gone lost: It has turned into the thunders and lights of the wrath of God, and into condemning everyone who disagrees with them to burning in the flames of hell. Somehow, present-day Christians forgot about turning the other cheek, abandoned the notion of treating others like they would like to be treated themselves; they’ve become bent on preaching, judging, and selfishly attempting to save the souls of others by condemning them. What happen to love? To tolerance? To respect?” — S.P., Nashville

“There are about a million things I’d like to say to Christians, but here’s the first few that come to mind: Please respect my right to be the person I’ve chosen to become. Worship, pray and praise your God all you want–but please leave me, and my laws, and my city, and my school alone. Stop trying to make me, or my children, worship your god. Why do we all have to be Christians? Respect my beliefs; I guarantee they’re every bit as strong as yours. Mostly, please respect my free will. Let me choose if I want to marry someone of my own sex. Let me choose if I want to have an abortion or not. Let me choose to go to hell if that’s where you believe I’m going. I can honestly say that I’d rather go to hell than live the hypocritical life I see so many Christians living.”– D.B., Seattle

“I had a friend who was, as they say, reborn. During my breaks from college she invited me to her church, and I did go a couple of times. In a matter of a month, at least ten people at her church told me that I was going to hell. The ironic thing is that I do believe in God; I’ve just never found a church where I felt at ease. However, in their eyes, I was nothing but a sinner who needed to be saved. I stopped going to that church (which in the past four years has grown from a small to a mega-church), but in time, through my friend, have seen some of these people again. None of them ever fails to treat me exactly as they did four years ago. All I can say is this: Constantly telling someone they’re going to hell is not a good way to convert them.”– A.S., Chicago

“I am a former ‘born again’ Christian. It’s been my personal experience that Christians treat the poor poorly–much like the Pharisees did in the parable of the old woman with the two coins. I found the church to be political to a fault, and its individual members all too happy to judge and look down on others. As a Christian, my own fervor to witness was beyond healthy. My friends would come to me to vent and express emotions, and all I would do is preach to them. I was of no real comfort to them. I never tried to see anything from their perspective.”– J.S.W, Philadelphia

“Once Christians know I’m gay, the conversion talk usually stops. Instead, I become this sympathetic character who apparently isn’t worthy of the gift of Christ. From my childhood in a Baptist church, I recall the ‘loathe the sin, love the sinner’ talk, but as an adult I can’t say I’ve often found Christians practicing that attitude. Deep down, I’m always relieved to avoid disturbing “conversion” conversations with Christians; discussing one’s most intimate thoughts and personal beliefs isn’t something I enjoy doing with random strangers. But at the same time, I feel as though Christians make a value judgment about my soul on the spot, simply because I am gay. I don’t pretend to know the worth of a soul, nor the coming gifts to those who convert the masses, but I would guess converting the sinful homosexuals would merit a few brownie points. But I get the feeling that most Christians don’t think we’re worth the hassle.”– R.M., Houston

“Religion always seemed too personal for me to take advice about it from people I don’t know.”– D.P., Denver

(Relative to my recent, “The Cross That Batman Bears.”)

I would no sooner suggest that an atheist can’t be moral than I would that a bug can’t be creepy a wino can’t be ambitious Batman can’t suffer jock itch any other stupid thing I might say. Of course atheists can live according to an ethos anyone would recognize as moral.

But that they can raises an interesting question. Namely; from whence the atheist’s morality? If you’re religious, you (tend to) think that your morality is an extension of God’s nature; that in endeavoring to be more like God, you assume and evince as much of His nature as you can, and thereby behave and feel more moral. So in that very real sense, the primary source of your morality is outside of yourself.

But what about the atheist? He looks up to the heavens, and sees nothing more (and nothing less!) than atmospheric science.

As the source of their morality, most atheists point toward The Common Good. They are motivated to be moral because they want to do what’s best for others. “Cause the least harm” is their inspiration; they join with the Christian (and everyone else in the world) in wanting to treat others as they themselves want to be treated.

Excellent!

What’s interesting is to think of where and/or how the atheists’ nexus of morality is, or becomes, abstract. Pointing to The Good the atheist points to nothing real, nothing tangible. He points to an idea. What inspires the atheist to be moral — to put the needs of others ahead of his own — is the power of an abstract ideal.

The atheist believes in the truth, power, and compelling goodness of an abstract ideal.

But we Christians are idiots.

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When I very suddenly became a Christian, I was in a supply closet at my job. By the time I was coming out of that closet (har! okay, grow up) — and I mean the exact thought that very strongly came to me as I was turning the doorknob that would lead me back out into the real world — I knew that I was never going to evangelize to others.

Can you imagine? You fall on your knees; out of nowhere you become a Christian; dazed, you get back up onto your feet; you reach for a doorknob; and the one thought that blasts through your head and physically arrests you for a moment is, “I’m not evangelizing. That’s not part of what this is.”

I’m not saying that thought came from God. Without question it felt like it did, but I understand that the mind is one of the trickier organs. (And, yes, I’ve aware of the argument that perhaps my tricky mind duped me into becoming a Christian.) I do know that the conviction that at that moment nailed me about evangelizing seems as true to me now as it did then. Before I was a Christian I felt like it was unbelievably offensive for one person to tell another what they should believe about God; fourteen years later, I still think that. Looking to the Bible to make sure I was right about that, I became so convinced I was that I wrote I’m OK–You’re Not.

I’m still listening to God; I’m always open to anything God might say to me about how to more perfectly understand him. And, believe me, if God ever tells me to grab a soapbox, go down by the bus station, and start screaming at people about being saved, I’ll be there just the second after I pull over to buy a bullhorn.

It’s weird though, isn’t it? About the third thought I had after becoming a Christian was, “Oh, no. Now I have to be one of those people I hate who are always telling others why they, too, should become Christian. Oh. Wait. No, I don’t have to do that. Thank God!” And then the first thing of any substance that I write after becoming a Christian is “Penguins,” in which I make a case for the argument that becoming Christian doesn’t necessarily mean becoming an irrational zombie.

“Penguins” is an apologetic. It’s an argument for Christianity, intended for non-Christians.

It’s a work of evangelism.

That God. He is tricky.

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While sitting at Starbucks yesterday I’m pretty sure I overheard the following exchange between two men whom I’ll call Chris and Stan:

Stan: But that just doesn’t make any sense.

Chris: What doesn’t?

Stan: That if I don’t believe in the reality of the same God that you just told me loves me, then that God will condemn me to hell for all eternity. It’s not possible for him to love me and do that to me.

Chris: Yes, it is. God loves you enough to let you determine your own fate.

Stan: But at the end, if he wanted to, God could change the fate that, in my ignorance, I’ve chosen for myself. If God really wanted me to be okay after I die, he could choose to send me to heaven instead of hell. He could commute the sentence I brought upon myself. He has that power, right? Because he’s all-powerful?

Chris: God can do anything.

Stan: Which can only mean that my ending up in hell is due entirely to God’s will. Ultimately God wanted that to happen to me, so it did. God actively chose hell for me. He could have put me somewhere else, but he chose not to.

Chris: You chose hell for yourself by refusing to accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior.

Stan: That I made that mistake doesn’t alter the fact that God has chosen to punish me for that mistake by forcing me to spend eternity being physically tortured. And anyone who would choose for me to suffer horribly throughout eternity as punishment for nothing more egregious than having used the mind and soul he gave me to arrive at a conclusion that doesn’t hurt one single person on earth, but only displeases him, cannot possible love me. Under no definition of the word does that qualify as love.

Chris: It’s divine justice.

Stan: Really? That’s justice? I’ve got the little tiny span of my lifetime to try to figure out a whole bunch of stuff about God and man, and, with the extremely limited range of information available to me in the course of that time, I decide incorrectly—I guess there’s not a God, or I decide that I just can’t be sure either way, or I choose to believe in a different God than the one prescribed for me by Christianity—and, as punishment for that mistake, God decides to condemn me to spend the rest of forever having the living flesh seared off my bones. And you’re comfortable with that as a definition of the word “justice.” That doesn’t strike you as … oh, I don’t know … excessively punitive? Like the kind of unbelievably cruel thing you might expect from a petty, egomaniacal despot, rather than a God of love?

Chris: It’s God’s judgment upon the sinner who refuses to accept God’s love.

Stan: We can talk forever about what it is. But there’s no question whatsoever about what it’s not, which is love. Look: After I’m dead, God either has the power to send me to heaven instead of hell, or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t have that power, then he’s too weak to matter. If he does have the power to send me to heaven instead of hell, and he wills me to go to hell, then he’s without compassion–or at the very least he certainly doesn’t love me. But those are the only two choices. By your own definition, your god is either not all-powerful, or not all-loving. But he can’t be all-powerful and all loving if I—a nice guy, a loving guy, a guy who gives to charities and actually does help people in the world—can end up in hell. It just doesn’t make sense. I can’t love somebody and shoot them in the head because they refuse to answer my phone calls.

Chris: You’re looking for rational explanations for mysteries that only God comprehends.

Stan: That’s so typical. Whenever Christians run into a simple logical inconsistency that cuts directly to the viability of their entire belief system, they resort to the only “argument” left to them, which is that we inferior sinners, who are so pathetic that we think it’s a good idea to use our rational minds to help us understand things that don’t seem to make sense, can’t possibly begin to grasp how and why God works in the “mysterious” ways he does. At the slightest challenge, you absolutely abandon logic. It’s ridiculous—and at best should be embarrassing to you. If you can’t explain the simplest, most obvious, most terrible contradiction in the qualities you say your God possesses–much less in the primary quality you say he possesses, which is his love for all mankind–then how in the world do you expect anyone but a sheer moron to take you or your religion seriously?

Chris: God bless you, man. I fear for your soul.

Stan: Bypassing all the repelling, presumptive arrogance inherent in that statement, I’ll share with you this one thing: I fear for your mind.

Kidding!

[In the afterlife.]

Atheist: Wow. I can’t believe I’m dead.

God: Believe it.

Atheist: Whoa! Didn’t see you there! Who are you?

God: Hi. I’m God.

Atheist: Ha, ha. No, but seriously. Who are you?

God: I’m seriously God. It’s nice to finally meet you.

Atheist: You’re God. You’re telling me that you’re God.

God: This is what I’m saying.

Atheist: I don’t believe you.

[God instantly transforms into a colossal version of himself as Studly Old White Man, with the white robes and beard and all. In a dramatic gesture he thrusts his staff aloft. The skies rent and crack with lightning. As quickly as he changed it, God then resumes his former appearance.]

Atheist: Um. Okay. You’re definitely God.

God: Really? Are you sure? Because you don’t want to jump into anything. Perhaps what you just saw was an illusion of some kind. Maybe you’re asleep, and this is all a dream. Maybe there’s a scientific explanation for what just happened.

Atheist: [pause] You know, you’re right. Perception is a tricky thing. There could always be—

[Instantly Atheist has a second head---which, like his first now, wavers at the end of a long, rubbery neck. The two heads swing into view of one another. They both start screaming. After a moment God switches Atheist back to his former appearance.]

Atheist: [dropping to his knees] I believe I believe I believe I believe.

God: So that’s what it finally took? Two heads?

Atheist: I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so terribly sorry.

God: Well, you should be. Please—stand up.

Atheist: [slowly rising]: I can’t believe I’ve been wrong all this time.

God: Well, that’s not important now. Right now the only thing that’s important is whether or not when you died you happened to be wearing flame-retardant underwear.

Atheist: [panicked] What?!

God: Relax. I’m kidding. They’re not going to help you.

Atheist: What?!

God: Kidding! I’m kidding, okay? I do have a sense of humor, you know.

Atheist: [calming down] No, actually, I didn’t know that. I’ve heard you don’t.

God: You hear all kinds of crazy things about me. But trust me: I have a sense of humor. You have seen pictures of dinosaurs, right? How are they not funny? Those little heads!

Atheist: Yeah, I guess dinosaurs are pretty crazy looking. Hey, whatever happened to those guys?

God: Long story.

Atheist: I’ll bet.

God: Listen, about you.

Atheist: Must we?

God: We must. You know that for the entire time you were on earth, I was almost desperately trying to communicate with you. You do know that, right?

Atheist: I guess I do now.

God: No, you do know now. I’m telling you. I never stop trying to communicate to people who have chosen not to believe in me that I am, in fact, real. That I’m here.

Atheist: I’m so sorry I didn’t listen to you.

God: So am I. And I’m sorry for no other reason besides that you knowing that I was here would have made your life so much better for you. You would have been so much happier.

Atheist: I would have been.

God: Boy, do I love me some atheists.

Atheist: You do? I mean, I’m super-glad to hear it. But why do you love atheists?

God: Well, for one, I made them, didn’t I?

Atheist: Yes. Yes, you did.

God: And I made them with free will, didn’t I?

Atheist: Yes.

God: Well, once you give someone true free will, they’re free to think, believe and do whatever they want. That’s part of the package. Besides, what kind of God would I be if I designed people so that they couldn’t do anything but love and praise me? How excruciatingly boring for me would that get?

Atheist: Pretty boring?

God: Gee, ya’ think? Who needs a bunch of applauding zombies? What I want are partners. Friends. People who love me because they choose to, not because they have to. I want real relationships. In that regard, I’m just like you or anyone else.

Atheist: I wish I would have … known that about you.

God: Well. You were stubborn.

Atheist: I was.

God: And you were also an especially capable person, weren’t you? Smart. Resourceful. Good-looking. Great personality. You had it all, baby.

Atheist: I guess I did.

God: No, you know you did. You certainly knew it then. And people like the person you were—strong, smart, capable people—are always more resistant to my overtures than are people with a little more reason to look beyond themselves.

Atheist: [pause] Yikes.

God: Yeah. Funny, isn’t it? On earth, the very things that make a person a winner are most likely to keep them a loser.

Atheist: I always thought I could handle everything myself.

God: I know you did. And how’d that work out for you?

Atheist: Terribly.

God: But you kept up a good front, didn’t you? Nary a crack in the ol’ facade, right?

Atheist: Right. That’s right. I kept up a front.

God: And all along I tried to let you know that you didn’t have to do that. I tried to let you know that I was here, that I was loving and watching out for you. The whole system you were in is designed to unceasingly prove the reality of my loving presence. The earth. The sky. Wind. The seas. All of it.

Atheist: How I wish I had listened to you!

God: How I wish everyone would!

I also wrote Bob, Satan and God in Heaven.

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Here's a standard Christian youth camp indoctrination game we like to call Follow Jesus.

Atheists: I hereby declare that you are right. I give up trying to pretend otherwise. You win. You’ve got my number. Despite everything I’ve been saying and writing for years, you know the truth, and your laser-like focus upon that truth has finally burned through my facade of deception.

So here, finally, is the truth I’ve been too long denying: All Christians are, in fact, ignorant, narrow-minded, self-righteous, intolerant, intrusive, hypocritical, fear-driven, gay-hating, misogynistic, money-grubbing, imperialistic war-mongers. And you’re right about all Christians thinking and believing exactly alike. We do. We’ve all been thoroughly indoctrinated into the machine of Organized Religion (which is the only kind of religion we care capable of liking or understanding), and are at least once a week brainwashed by our craven, egomaniacal Pastor Overlords into directly correlating our self-worth with how much money and allegiance we pledge to The Church. We’re like helpless children desperately eager to hand over responsibility for our lives to Our Leaders, in whom we unquestionably believe. We’re absolutely incapable of independent or rational thought. That’s why the mere sight of a chart of elements or a microscope makes us react like chimps being poked at with lit torches. The simple fact is that science terrifies us.

We fear knowledge.

There. I said it. And I feel so much better!

The sole reason I ever pretended to care or be interested in anything you ever said, atheists, is because I was trying to lure you into becoming part of the Christian Borg. How else could I tolerate your soulless prattle? Besides relinquishing our money and time to The Church, we Christians are programmed for one thing, and one thing only: the recruitment of fresh blood into our ranks. Each Sunday every pastor tells every Christian in his congregation how many people they’re responsible for recruiting that week. If by the following Sunday a Christian has failed to meet that week’s personal conversion quota (PCQ), he or she must do penance by washing and detailing the pastor’s car right after the service. That’s why pastors’ cars always look so great. It’s amazing what a little Turtle Wax and a lot of guilt can accomplish.

I want to thank you, atheists, for finally breaking down my barriers, and allowing me to admit that you’ve been right all along. None of we Christians are intellectually curious, genuinely compassionate, congenitally independent, or more interested in truth than doctrine. You were right to insist that we’re all exactly alike, despite all the faux-evidence that we take pains to everywhere provide you to the contrary. Some people say that bigotry and blindly stereotyping groups of others is lazy, stupid and caustically arrogant. But I think it’s safe to say that, in my case anyway, you have absolutely and finally proven its value.

Yesterday, did I say that Christianity is 5% brains and 95% emotion?

What I was thinking?

Let’s change that to 95% brains, and 5% emotion.

Here’s why that formula also works: You would have to be one drool-stained moron to commit your heart, mind and soul to any faith or belief system that isn’t obviously, and in every last possible way, logically coherent and rationally defensible.

There may be a God. There may not be. People can screech about it until their eyes pop, but the fact remains that (um … as of this writing) it is exactly as reasonable to guess one as the other. (Doubt it, Thomas? That can only mean you haven’t read my brilliant, revolutionary, illuminating, tolerably cohesive piece, Logically There’s No Arguing It: We Can’t KNOW If There’s a God or Not)

For me personally, I think it’s more reasonable—and certainly more fun, which for me pretty seriously matters—to choose to believe that there is a God.

Given all the God Options in the world (and discounting, as I do, the dumb hassle of making up my own religion), I find that none makes as much raw, logical sense as Christianity.

God loves us; he wanted to alleviate us of the guilt and pain that’s a necessary result of our free will without at the same time violating that will; he became human so we’d know how utterly he gets us; he told anyone who would listen exactly why he was going to do exactly what he did; he did it; and then he left the entirety of himself available ever afterwards to anyone who simply and sincerely asked for it.

And voila: I’m all in.

I’m a smart guy. (At the very least, I promise, smart enough to realize what a hopelessly lame thing that is to say.) I didn’t become a Christian and then immediately jam a fork into an outlet in order to irreparably short-circuit my brain. Instead, I became assiduous about understanding and then evaluating Christianity’s core assumptions and prescriptions in terms that were rigorously and exclusively logical.

I spent some 30 years despising Christianity. (And three studying formal logic with one of the world’s premier logicians—but whatever.) I wasn’t about to jump that ship without being perfectly sure that, of all things, it was rationally defensible to do so.

Christianity passed every test with which I could think to hammer it. Logical. Emotional. Historical. Even literarily—which, you know. Talk about the gift that keeps on giving.

Like millions upon millions of people before me much more discerning and scrupulously intelligent than I, I did not find the system of Christianity (as opposed to its trillion iterations) in any way wanting.

God become man is still on the cross.

And without question I’m still all in.


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I think those of us who believe in God are sometimes too reluctant to acknowledge that first and foremost the religious experience is about emotion. It has an intellectual aspect, of course—but the intellectualizing of religion comes way after the swooning, singing, crying, hoping, and repenting it inspires.

First you cry; then you write a book. Even if you’re an atheist writing about religion, that’s the order. First you get upset about how wrong and harmful religion is—and then you cobble together an outline and call your agent.

Everyone operates the same way. Feel First; Think Second. That’s the Human Motto, for sure.

We Christians should consider spending less time debating, rationalizing, and trying to logically defend our faith. And though it’s true we’re kind of stuck doing that—since we know that breathlessly crying, “Can’t you just feel the truth of Christ?!” isn’t likely to move non-Christians to take us particularly seriously—maybe we should still declare some sort of moratorium on endeavoring to rationally “prove” the validity of our faith.

Religion addresses our emotions. Emotions are as personal as personal gets. When we Christians use the term “personal savior,” we mean that to a degree that … well, that we should fully and readily acknowledge.

To put it brainiacally, the story of Christ contextualizes our emotions.

And that’s a beautiful thing.

It’s more than enough.

On this same General Topic, see also my posts Extra! Extra! Atheists Whip Christians In Debate! Again! And Again! and Rationalists/Atheists: Don’t Too Readily Dismiss the Believer, and Atheists of America Agree: Christianity Makes Eminent Rational Sense!. Or don’t. You know. Whatever.


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