The Thinking Atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol, an idea.
The population of atheists this country is going through the rule, rejecting faith,
pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I tell the truth, it's
because I tell the truth, not because I put my hand on a book
and made a wish and working together for a more rational world. Take the
risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness, truth, beausire, and
wisdom will come to you that way. Assume nothing, question everything, and
start thinking. This is the Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews. I
can't tell you how many times I will log on in the morning and waiting
for me is an email from somebody, and I get these from all around
the world, people of all ages, all shapes and stripes, all circumstances,
but they have one thing in common. All hell has broken loose in
their life. And the scenarios go something like this. A woman sends an
email and she says, when I married my husband twenty years ago, we
were both devout Christians, and we met at church, and we went together
all the time to church, and we had Christian everything. But you know,
a few years ago I just found myself thinking, I'm not sure I
buy that anymore. It just doesn't work out. This doesn't make sense to
me. I didn't tell anybody, but I was thinking, and over the
course of time, I realized I no longer believed in God. I still
went to church, and I went to all the Christian stuff, and I
kind of played along with the certainly didn't tell my children, but in my
brain atheist. So I finally decided I was gonna tell somebody. I told
my husband and I came clean, and he freaked out and he shouted at
me, and he said that I'd been watching the wrong videos and reading the
wrong books, and that, you know, the devil was inside me,
and that's not what he signed up for, right, that he didn't sign
up to be married to an atheist. And what about the kids. He
doesn't want the kids to learn anything about life from anybody who doesn't believe in
God. He storms out of the door, He takes the kids with him.
He threatens divorce, says he's going to get full custody, and you
can flip that right. The husband tells the wife he's the atheist, she's
the devout Christian, and she freaks out and does the same. You can
apply this with children, whether the young kids are grown. You can apply
it to parents' friends, employers' church communities. Secretly, you have been deconstructing.
There's been a whole series of conversations happening right underneath the skin, and
you've told no one until you decided I have to tell someone, and all
hell broke loose. We've all heard the stories. We've shared them on this
show. Somebody in the church, right, They're in a fundamentalist religious community
that they loved, but over the course of time, all the sermons started
to sound really pretty harsh and unfair and kind of cruel and bigoted. So
the moral part of this person was like, well, no, I don't
know. If I had a god, he wouldn't judge or condemn or burn
gay people. He wouldn't tell a woman what to do with her body.
I think that's between her and a god. Anyway, why are we getting
in. I'm not even sure that the whole Adam and Eve's story makes sense.
It just sounds like Harry Potter to mean, maybe the Bible isn't totally
true, maybe it's just kind of an allegory kind of thing. Useful for
them, but not really. I don't know what it is. My Christianity
now has really nothing to do with the Bible. I'm just you know,
if there's a Jesus, that's going to be a me and Jesus one on
one personal relationship, and we'll just skip the Bible. And so you start
to step away from the hard lines, the black and white, the structure
of your Christian faith, and then you make the mistake of telling someone so,
you know, I just don't think the Bible is totally true. I
think the pastor's wrong on this. Huh. I don't think that makes any
sense. And the person you told tells somebody else, who tells somebody else,
who tells the youth pastor, who whispers it to the assistant pastor,
who reveals it to the lead pastor, and before you know it, you
are hung out to dry in front of the entire community, and the people
that you once loved and respected and relied on they turn on you. They
don't know what to do with you, they lose their minds, and potentially
they shun and shame you. So there you are, without the people that
you grew up with, your entire social circle, the activities that you do,
the phone calls that you make, the dinners that you enjoy together,
the safety net that was for so long underneath you. It's all gone.
Your whole life is in chaos. What do I do now? I get
these messages and I say, I don't know. I don't have the magic
bullet. First of all, I don't think there's any one method. People
are so complex. Every circumstances unique, So the context is important. But
I haven't had a lot of success in my life when it comes to boundaries,
and I've had to draw some pretty hard lines. How do I make
someone get it? I mean, that's the million dollar question, right.
I was at a speech that I had given years ago when little Rock and
a guy came up to me and he was pretty down. He had just
told his wife recently that he was no longer a Christian and she flipped out
and his marriage was pretty much over. I think they had not divorced yet,
but she was this close to signing the documents, you know. And
he had come alone for that reason, because he had no one else.
And I was really moved by a story. I had four hours on the
drive home to think about him and When I got back, I produced just
off the Cuff, a short video that I called Letter to a Christian Spouse,
and it was a message to her and people like her. Well,
it's been a while and I wanted to go back and revisit that and update
it and kind of polish it up a little bits. If you've followed my
stuff, if you've followed me over the past several years, you've seen that
I've been working on trying to de escalate and rehumanize and attempt moments of understanding.
Not always possible, but we have to try, right at least I
feel like I have to try, and so I have produced a video.
The link is in the description box. It's something that you can forward directly
to the believer in your life who is freaking out and who is grieved and
scared and desperately trying to save your soul and maybe the driving you crazy right
and you're like, I wish I could make them understand what I'm going through.
I'm going to try to do a tag team event with you. I'm
supposed to be a professional communicator. I am trying to communicate to the Christian
in your life, spouse, child, parent, friend, boss, pastor
whoever. Okay, so that video has just released. The link is in
the description box. This is the audio of that message. So, for
what it's worth here, it is a letter to a Christian spouse. Regardless
of what the title of this video says, I'm not just speaking to a
Christian spouse right now. I'm actually talking to anybody and everybody who is a
believer who knows and loves somebody who is either not a believer anymore, or
they're expressing doubts, they have left the church, they're on a kind of
journey that has given you real concern. You're not exactly sure what's going on.
You are the believer connected to at least a potential non believer. If
you're that person, Right off the bats, I want to ask for a
favor, okay, and that favor is this. Do not look at the
name of this channel with the word atheist in it and just give up and
click stop. If you googled my name and you found out who I am
and you don't trust me, totally fair. If you are nervous about what
I'm going to say, I'm going to make a guarantee right off the bats,
all right, A guarantee that I am not here to talk you out
of you or faith. I promise you I'm not going to attack you.
I'm not mocking Christians at this moment, right now, I have zero interest
in changing your mind on what I am sure is a deeply held personal belief
in God. It is a belief that means the whole world to you.
In fact, I'll go a step beyond that. I'm an atheist. I'm
an atheist activist, but I will find alongside you for your constitutional right to
believe what you believe. You and your personal faith are protected by law in
this country, and just as I get to hold to my values and perspectives,
you have the right to do the same. There are important discussions to
be had about religious claims and theology and all that stuff, but they can
wait right Those are for another day. Today, I want to talk about
the person in your life that has been keeping you up at night. I'm
what they would call an ex vangelical. I was a Bible believing Christian for
three decades. As my ex Christian buddy Dan Barker likes to say, he
said, if I wasn't a true Christian, nobody was, and that's true
for me. I'm not trying to sound more convincing. I'm not selling credibility.
I'm just letting you know that I've been there. My own journey caused
my loved ones a whole lot of concern. And there were calls and emails
and texts and arguments and tears and raised voices and prayers for my soul.
And there were people I care about who cared about me. They felt tremendous
pain at the idea that they might not see me in heaven or have a
truly good and fulfilled life here on earth. Maybe you're that person. You're
a parent, brother, sister, spouse, friend, pastor whatever. You
have been witnessing what looks like to you a train wreck. Somebody that you
love is becoming the prodigal. They're saying alarming things, They're doing alarming things,
these weird questions they are asking, and the arguments they are making,
and the books that they have been reading and maybe even recommending, and all
the videos that they have been sharing, and in a whole lot of ways,
you are looking at this person going what has happened? Like? What
has happened to the person that I once knew? In my own life,
my mother and father, they were the most devout Christians that I have ever
seen. I mean, to date, my father passed away recently, but
I've never seen anyone as devout. So you can imagine as they raised me
up in the faith, they felt like they had done a good job.
You know. I was a good Christian man who had grown up with Sunday
Church and Christian school and Bible study. And my siblings were Christian, my
friends were Christian, my music was Christian. For many years, my career
was Christian. I was a broadcaster in contemporary Christian radio, playing Amy Grant
and Michael W. Smith on the radio. I remember there was a day
when my dad's brother was in town from Minnesota, and my dad brought him
up to the radio station and there I was playing Jesus music. I was
doing God's good work, and Dad was so proud. I just thought he
was going to bust a button right off of his shirt. He was smiling
from ear to ear. He and my mother had trained up their child in
the way that he should go, and it had all paid off. And
then twenty years later, my father was desperately scrambling to keep me from going
to hell. My personal life journey had taken me to places my parents never
intended, scary places, danger places. They felt like I had failed them,
that they had failed me. They just didn't understand. They didn't know
who I was. They didn't like who I was becoming. My father did
not know how to talk to me, and if we did talk, there
was always that elephant in the room. Seth is an atheist. He's not
going to go to heaven. He's going to go to hell. We have
to fix this, whatever it takes. And that grief and concern came from
a very sincere place. They wanted to keep somebody that they love from harm.
If you're a Christian and you're watching someone else and you feel that they
have left the straight and narrow, I understand your concern and worry and grief.
I know it is sincere and it's very real. I would never mock
anybody for empathy. We need more empathy in this crazy world. Right We
live in a culture of cruelty, So compassion and concern and empathy they are
so refreshing, so necessary, And I think that caring about other people is
something that unites us all as human beings. Regardless of our theology or culture,
color, geographic location, whatever. My parents were grieving over me because
I had become somebody that they did not intend. I grieved over them because
I saw their inability to process what I was going through and it made us
strangers. Especially on their part, I think they felt that accepting me the
way I was might be a de facto acceptance of my atheism. So when
we did get together, we sat at the dinner table, or got together
on the holiday, everything was kind of on mutes. My family was there,
We talked, but it was weird, and that made me weary because
I always felt like I was kind of the broken branch on the family tree.
I felt like another not fully accepted for who I was. It made
everything really really hard. I heard somebody say that all families are dysfunctional,
and if you're like me, you're probably smiling because I think we can all
think of examples. Right, families are dysfunctional. I mean at some point,
family dynamics, family drama, family trauma. But I can pretty much
guarantee you this, the person that you know who is no longer a believer
in God has no desire to cause trauma to you. Or the rest of
the family or anybody else. They didn't wake up one day and say,
you know, today I think I'll walk away from God and I'm going to
traumatize the people I care about. Personal journeys do not work in this way.
Your loved one did not choose to struggle the way they are struggling.
They didn't choose to have doubts. They didn't choose real questions about claims being
made. They certainly didn't choose to hurt you, or to scare you or
to disappoint you. Right, That wasn't the point to begin with. What
I'm trying to say, is this your spouse or a child, or sibling,
parent, friend, whoever. They are not doing what they're doing because
they're trying to hurt anybody else. It's not about anybody else. They are
doing what they are doing because they're desperately, desperately trying to be true to
themselves the Bible itself. If we're going to be honest, it's pretty hard
on doubters. Who's the one disciple our parents told us not to be like?
It was always doubting Thomas Right, But I personally think that any loving
God would never be bothered by doubts. A loving God would not punish doubts,
and that God would probably tell you to feel the same way. You
and I use doubt in our lives every single day. We do every day,
and it's a good thing. We teach children to doubt the stranger who
opens the car door and says, get in, I'll take you home.
That doubt keeps them safe. It might even save their life. But the
salesperson calls up and says, hey, I've got a great deal, or
you've been hacked. I need all of your banking information and passwords. If
you doubt that, your doubt might just keep you from getting scammed. If
you think the ice is not thick enough to walk on, your doubts might
keep you from falling through and drowning. Doubt in that way is a filtering
system. It's part of how we keep ourselves from making bad decisions and maybe
even getting hurt or killed. And for that reason, I want to reframe
doubts not as a weakness, not as sin, but as a way of
helping navigate the world. That's not anything that a good God would be angry
about or were afraid about. You shouldn't be angry about it or afraid about
it. So I mean this person, whoever they are, their doubts are
part of a journey. They are on a journey, just like you are
on a journey. We're all on a journey. Life is a journey that's
got straightaways and twists and turns and detours and roadblocks and rest stops along the
way. Right, It's messy sometimes, but I've become convinced that it is
absolutely critical to as best I can, take my journey authentically, and you
should take your journey authentically. Your friend or family member, the person you
love and have so many concerns about the be encouraged and protected as they take
their journey authentically. Would you allow anybody else to tell you what to think,
what career to take, who to have as a friend, who to
marry, how to vote, where to go to church, or what religion
or denomination to belong to, which God to believe in. Of course you
would not allow that, because your journey belongs to you. That's a sacred
space. You are not going to be an echo of their voice. You've
got a voice of your own, and you're going to speak in that voice
as best you can. You're not going to be guilt tripped or emotionally blackmailed
or coerced by anybody else. You're going to go where you go and do
what you do and be who you are because it's your life, not theirs.
As messy as it is, it's your life. You're listening, receiving
counsel when you can, trying to lean on the wisdom of others, but
your life belongs to you, and you are attempting to live authentically regardless of
the consequences. This is exactly what is happening to the person you love.
They didn't wake up and say they had all the answers. I'm guessing they
mostly have questions and challenges. They didn't wake up and start hating God.
They didn't go crazy. They don't just want to sin. I've heard a
lot of that. It's not as shallow as just attention seeking behavior. I
mean, take an honest look at the person you love. If they were
a Christian last year and an atheist yesterday, what's different. Did they undergo
a total personality change and now they're just no longer lovable or they don't love
you anymore? Has their life derailed into moral anarchy and chaos. You know,
did they sprout horns? Are they chanting mantras to the dark lord?
Or is their person who they are? Them? Of them? Is that
unchanged in the most important ways. If they were trustworthy a year ago,
I'll bet they're trustworthy now. If they had a great sense of humor a
year ago, I'll bet they've got a great sense of humor now. If
they worked hard back then, or loved their spouses and children and parents and
friends back then. If they were creative, had a wild imagination, if
they were charitable, did good things for other people. If they had amusing
or fun quirks and idiosyncrasies and qualities that were unique to them, I'll bet
they still have all of those attributes now. In the most important human way,
we're talking about the same person, and they've made really a noble commitment
to be honest. They're not going to take shortcuts or lie to you because
they don't want to hurt your feelings. The point was never that they wanted
to hurt you. They're simply trying to be true to themselves. And I'll
bet they've had struggles and stress and sleepless nights. They're worried that they're going
to lose you, lose the community that they love, lose their job.
That kind of thing happens all the time. Somebody stops fitting in right,
they're the square peg. They make someone else uncomfortable, and there are consequences.
And then beyond that, the big question what happens after this and my
own journey? I was asking, if this is where I am, how
is it going to alter the trajectory of the rest of my life? Who
even am? I? You see what I mean. This is not something
that you choose. It's something that you face, and I think there's a
lot of merit in facing it head on as best you can. Honestly,
if there is one constant in this crazy world, it is change. Change
is the only constant. Beware anybody who proudly says that, no matter what
happens, I will never ever, ever ever change. I'm the mighty Oak
kind of thing. This is not the flex that they think it is.
Being rigid is not necessarily a good thing, because if we see better data,
if we find a better model, if we know a better way,
we want to change and adapt to that. But it doesn't mean we're different
people. The person you love may have changed in some ways, but it's
still that person and they need you, or at the very least just know
that they're desperate not to lose you. The point was never to grieve or
disappoint or embarrass or trouble you. I'd wager they wish they could just open
a window into their mind so you could hop in there and feel what they
feel, and think what they think, and sort of see it all and
experience it all for hands. And they're wondering, what's going to happen.
Is the love of their family and friends conditional? Are they going to be
accepted and respected for who they are regardless. I'm not saying that lives are
always compatible. I'm not saying it always works out. But I do find
that a lot of people discover ways to live around disagreements and differences because the
rest of their lives is so good it's worth holding on to and protecting.
It is possible to love someone while also respecting them and staying out of their
way. You know, it's your journey to take. It's not mine,
And watch those people say the same to you. Hey, go and be
you. You do you on your terms, take your road tell me where
the journey takes you. Let's get together later and compare notes sometime. Thank
you for listening to this total the guy that you might have been warned about.
Some people are scared of people like me. They're scared of the A
word, you know, the a theist. I was weird about that word
for a long time when I was a Christian. But on my own journey,
I discovered people who were on their own journeys, and many of them
so good, so good without a God, and it's been an honor sharing
my life and this world with them. So take a breath, take the
pressure off of yourself. Trust that any God who is powerful and caring enough
to prove himself will do so. He will appear on the road. He
will make himself unmissible and unmistakable. But if that never happens, value that
the person that you care about has had the courage to carve a path in
the best direction they can find. They are giving themselves the very same gift
that I hope you have given to yourself, an authentic life. Again,
the YouTube link for the video version of this is in the description box.
It's probably the optimal method. It's my preferred format to get some eye contact
going with the believer in your life. But it's a message I sure would
like a lot more Christians and people of all faiths to hear and understand.
We're all on the journey and I wish you the best in yours and thanks
for sharing that with me. A short show this week. I'll see you
next Tuesday. Hang in there,