Are We Populating the World with Atheists?

Let me try this on you:

Remember a post I did a couple of weeks ago, Steve McCoy’s Broken Babies Born in Sin? It’s based on the theology that we are born sinners, born bad, born broken, born atheists. Basically, it convinces you that you are a sinful child of the devil, which is meant to humble you, which is meant to prepare you for repentance, which is meant to make you ask for salvation, which is meant to get you saved, which is meant to teach you that you are now a child of God.

I suggest this hermeneutic that really came to full bloom during the Reformation in the 1600s is no longer serving its purpose. It is in fact becoming meaningless and even harmful.

We don’t need to starve our children to teach them to appreciate food.

We don’t need to beat the hell out of our kids to teach them to appreciate the times we don’t.

We don’t need to put our kids up for adoption for a while then adopt them back just so they will appreciate our family.

In the same way, we don’t need to put people through the whole justification by faith gauntlet to teach them to be grateful they are children of God. People can be humble without being told they’re worthless. People can be good without the threat of Hell. People can feel good about themselves without feeling bad about themselves first. People can know they are already children of God without having to believe they were adopted.

I suggest that the whole biblical narrative, including Jesus, as well as all subsequent theology, is one vast story illustrating the simple fact that, in the end, we are all one, connected to each other and to our common Ground of Being.

Of course, some people will cling to this old paradigm for as long as possible, just like we have people who belong to the Flat Earth Society, who believe the creation story in Genesis is to be taken literally, and who believe the lunar landing is a hoax.

I want to personally invite you to The Lasting Supper, where we process this kind of stuff  in the safety of a non-confrontational community.