Letter to Atheist

Here's a conversation I had with an atheist.

Hi Shawn!

It's good to put a name to the person I'm speaking with, thanks for writing back and nice to "meet" you. Now, concerning your statement about there being over 33,000 denominations of Christianity, I just wanted to make the following statements. I agree that there are many different denominations of the faith. However, the many denominations does not disprove the faith as not being true, nor does it give you reason to say that it is impossible to accurately represent Christianity as a whole. Here's why: Unity does not necessarily mean uniformity, therefore all Christians don't have to believe everything the same way. To explain even further, Christianity is based upon certain core essentials doctrines of the faith. Every true Christian denomination ALL AGREE on these core essentials, therefore when I said that "you misrepresented us," you did; as again we all agree on these essentials. Conversely, we disagree on the many non-essential issues - issues like eschatology and things of that sort, we can disagree (and still walk together in unity).

That being said, I can now move on to the meat of your writings. Firstly, "in order to be perfect, you must live your entire life according to God's will." Right away Shawn, I want to say that you're not thinking logically (please I mean no disrespect, so don't think me a jerk). Being perfect, Shawn, means more than just living your life in accordance to God's will, but desiring nothing short of that as well. You see, you are basing your conclusion on some false assumptions - viz - you assume that we truly cannot be free if we don't have the choice to not follow God. Moreover - and this is your line of thought, not mine - you wonder how we aren't robots if we choose to live accordance to God's will. What I said before is key: "being perfect not only includes doing good all the time, but desiring to do good all the time." Even more, being perfect is not wanting to do disobey your Creator's commandments. Still yet, being perfect is being absolutely free from evil. On the flip side however, being imperfect is both having the desire to disobey by doing wrong, but also actually doing wrong. Here it would be good to quote our Creator and Lord, Jesus: "The person who sins is a 'slave' to sin" (Jn 8:34). Imperfect people - that is people who disobey God by breaking his commandments - are "SLAVES" to sin. These sort of people aren't free to do good (in the sense of God recognizes as actually being "good"), and so scriptures apologetically tells us that, "whatever that is not from faith is sin" (Rom 14:23).

Secondly, you said that "eventually everyone will use their will to do something contrary to God's will." Sir, that is only half the truth. The whole story is much more dark and much more frighting. Not only are you a sinner because you actually sin (and you do), but you are a sinner because of Adam. Here again is high Christian theology, and it is scary truth: In our first federal head (Adam), we all are born sinners and born condemned. Our most Holy Uncreated Creator deemed it right that because of Adam's sin, all his prosperity would share the consequence of sin - namely death and hell. Incidentally, when you said that "the only reason Jesus is needed because it is impossible for humans to live their entire life according to God's will," that too isn't true. Here again you misunderstand our doctrines and misrepresent us. You see, it is not as though people do some good, but have nevertheless sinned and therefore come to need a savior, but that apart from being in Christ (united only through faith), we have done NO good and all that we do is wicked in God's sight. As it is written in the prophets..."all of our good works are as menstruation rags before God" (Isa 64:6).

Third, you said..."God gave you the ability to do things contrary to his will, but he will sentence you to Hell if you do anything contrary to his will." I agree with that statement. And what's more, I see, at least to some degree, the "reasonableness" of hell. My reason for agreeing with hell is as follows (I'm certain that some smarter guy that myself may see more reasons to agree with God's justice in hell):

Our Creator created us and gave us life, sustains our lives, and gives us all the things we hold precious, e.g., family, friends, art, leisure, music, good tasting food, sex, laughter, and a plethora of diverse excellencies. Yet, rather than appreciating and loving God above those things, we esteem those things higher than him. Let me say it in the words of Romans 1:19-23..."For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things." You see that, Shawn? Sinners "exchange the glory due God, for created things - even things like animals (as shown in some older religions), self, other people, money, sex, etc., etc. It would be as though you were married to someone like...um...Cameron Diaz, and you cheat on her with Oprah Winfrey. I'm not saying this to make fun, but rather to paint an image of how we trade God's glory for lesser glories. For this reason, we should go to hell. How dare we exchange the infinite glorifies of God for such small things in comparison? God is infinitely better than any and everything we could ever image to be precious and fun and glorious and enjoyable. Yet, we continue to treat God as if he is something of a small treasure; something like last year's toy. What I mean by that is this: We treat the infinitely precious one as if he is hot dogs, when he's more liken to a gourmet meal (and yet infinitely better). God is a jealous God; not in the human sense of the word, but rather, God knows his infinite worth and is very zealous for His glory. As he himself ask, "who is like me?" The testimony of one who has had just a glimpse of God; yea even a pin poke of a view of God's worth, is as the Apostle Paul who said... "I count 'all things' as dung next to the 'surpassing greatness' of knowing God."

Forth, about me being presumptuous and rude. I really wasn't trying to be. You have no reason to believe me, but I hope you do! Let me say incidentally, that I didn't mean to offend you and that I am sorry if I did. That said, when I said that you choose to deny obvious and axiomatic facts in order to fulfill your sinful desires, especially the desire to remain autonomous (or your own god), I'm just reiterating what your Creator teaches about us sinners. Now I know you say you don't believe in God, but that's what makes this whole talk interesting. You see, you really do believe in God. The fact that you spend so much time looking for reasons not to believe in him, tells me that you have an innate knowledge of his reality. Again, the whole reason why you waste so much of the time he's given you to disprove his existence, is because you like being independent and want nothing to do with his rules, or him for that matter. More plainly, since God is Holy and you're not, you'd do and say anything to try to suppress the truths of God. Even more clear, you hate God because God reveals that you are evil. Please don't picture me a some sort of fanatic with an evil grin typing this with a great and evil smile, I too had to come to these trues about myself. Prior to coming to Christ for forgiveness of Sins, I too loved my sins and hated God; though I wouldn't say that. In fact, I'm not sure I even knew it until I really sat down and thought about it. I realized, for instance, God said, "you must not commit adultery and that all who look upon a woman to lust after her, has already committed adultery with her in his heart." I on the other hand, wanted nothing more than to go to clubs to look for the next attractive girl that I could boast about sleeping with. When I was presented with God's laws, like the one just mentioned, I automatically put it out of my head. I suppressed that obvious true expounded in God's laws. Even though my conscience agreed with the laws of God (that in itself testifies to our instinctive knowledge of God's commandments being right), I choose to deny my conscience in order to break God's laws because I just plainly loved my sins. This is what I mean when I said, "you deny facts in order to fulfill your desires."

OK, I said a lot. My prayer is that God would use my feeble words to shed some light on some things for you, and my hope is that you'd consider what I said insomuch as to at least represent us correctly.

Thanks for the talks


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