Hi everyone,
Today I’m reaching out for help,today is considerably more troubling than last night.Let me out the point straight that IM COMPLETELY AGAINST ATHEISM AND AGNOSTICISM,but it’s seemingly that I’m some sort of double-minded state,”I’m scared of atheists having the true knowledge and us Christians somehow being the ignorant ones” I REFUSE to EVER leave the Lord.Can someone help?
So what if Christians have it wrong and atheists are the ones who've got it right? Is following Christ, living according to his teachings and example, a bad way to live? Is it worse than the way a nihilistic atheist lives? Not that I can see. Nihilistic atheism leaves a person with, well, just themselves.
Without God, we are an accident of Nature, a DNA-replicating meat sack, without any higher purpose, here for only a short time and then gone forever and forgotten. If there is no God, no Higher Authority to whom we answer for our living, just ourselves and whatever power we have to enact our will, then the most sensible plan for living is that we act to maximize our own pleasure, follow our own preferences and philosophy, while we can. After all, if God does not exist, Mother Theresa and Hitler have the exact same end. Their lives make no difference whatever to how their lives conclude. Genocidal maniac or saintly servant of the indigent, there is at the conclusion to life just the grave and oblivion.
If this is truly the case, why should one sacrifice anything for anyone else? Why should one care about the welfare of the herd or the continuation of the human species? Why should one subject oneself to limiting social conventions of morality and/or bother with maximizing herd flourishing? If the final end to living is the same no matter how we live, why not live in radical self-service, maximizing one's own pleasure no matter the cost to everyone else? One has only the single, finite opportunity, if God does not exist, to be conscious, to enjoy life, and the length of that opportunity may end abruptly at any time in accident or fatal disease. And so, as Paul wrote, if there is no God-Man, no Savior, no life beyond the grave, we ought to work to make the most of our time by pleasing ourselves as much as possible:
1 Corinthians 15:29-32
29 Otherwise, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why then are they baptized for them?
30 Why are we also in danger every hour?
31 I affirm, brethren, by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.
32 If from human motives I fought with wild beasts at Ephesus, what does it profit me? If the dead are not raised, LET US EAT AND DRINK, FOR TOMORROW WE DIE.
If you look around, though, this approach to living is...unlivable. People who are nihilistically and radically selfish, thinking they answer to no one, ultimately, but themselves, accruing and exerting power over others to serve their own ends, end up cruel, vicious, ugly, dangerous people. They grow slowly darker and more twisted, the more they pursue their own agenda at the expense of everyone else, becoming serial killers, genocidal fiends, obscenely rich global elites working to subjugate the world under themselves, drug dealers, sex-traffickers, addicts, billionaire pedophiles, and so on.
Practically, then, is nihilistic atheism superior as a view of reality to Christianity? Not that I can see. Even if it is the truth of things (which I don't believe for a second), Christianity provides a positive framework for living that nihilistic atheism cannot.
Selfishness is always the ground of our fear. Concern for ourselves, our welfare, our continued well-being is always at the bottom of our fear. And this is why God in His word tells us such fear has no place in the life of any of His children. (
1 John 4:16-19) Obsessive, manic fear is a sign of deep self-preoccupation, of a person's attention fixed intently upon themselves rather than upon God. So long as a person is absorbed with themselves, there is little (or no) room to be absorbed with God. But even when such self-absorption leads progressively to more and darker, and increasingly irrational, fear, many simply won't turn away from it. God would bring the fearful into joyful peace and rest in Himself, if only the fearful would cease to have their eyes glued to themselves, if only they would release their intense self-preoccupation and let God, instead, fill their minds and hearts. (
Matthew 11:28-30; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Hebrews 12:2-3)
God won't simply erase the effects of our choices, blanking out from our minds and hearts the unhappy consequences of the selfish thought-life we've embraced. He can't do this and deal with us in love at the same time. Love, by definition, cannot be coerced. God cannot force us to love Him, nor can He love us and just negate in an instant the effects of what we have, over much time, freely and repeatedly chosen. We bring ourselves, day-by-day, choice after choice, into bondage to Self and fear and so we must
by the same process of daily choice, move with God out of such bondage into the liberty of life in Christ.
Continually calling on God to just make a puppet out of you, over-riding your free agency, canceling out the consequences of your choices, is to call on Him to deal with you in an unloving way. It's so much easier for us, though, if God would just uproot all the effects of our bad decisions in a single moment, but this is the same selfish thinking that brings us into the bondage from which we want God to instantly free us. Be assured, though: God is not going to nurture such thinking in the slightest. We have walked by free choice (at least, at first) into the valley of fear, developing over time a habit of selfish anxiety, and God will walk us out of this valley by developing in us new habits of thinking and choosing that gain depth and strength over time, just as our habit of fear and self-centeredness did.
If you refuse to walk with God in this way, demanding He simply suspend in a single moment the consequences of your selfish thinking and behaving, you are going to find yourself drifting farther and farther from God along the current of selfishness and fear you are presently in until He vanishes from sight altogether. God offers you freedom but His way, not yours. Will you take it? Will you actively move in His will and way, or continue to insist He treat you like a puppet instead, allowing you to be entirely passive about winning free of the consequences of what you've chosen?
